Britain’s Almost Olympic Medallist in Alpine Skiing

In all of Olympic history, Britain has never won a medal in alpine skiing*. However, in 1968 Gina Hathorn came closer than any British skier before, and arguably since.

When Gina Hathorn stood at the start gate for the women’s slalom at the 1968 Winter Olympics, she had no idea she was on the verge of making history for British skiing.

“A medal, or close to a medal, didn’t enter my vocabulary,” she said reflecting on the race almost 58 years later.

Despite her expectations, Hathorn found herself in fifth place after the first of her two runs down the mountain, closer to the Olympic podium than any British skier before her.

With just one run and a handful of competitors separating her from a medal, her thought process was quite simple, “Don’t make a mess of it now.”

Her second run was far from a mess, though she did narrowly slip behind reigning world champion Annie Famose, placing Hathorn in second with four skiers left to take to the course.

Two of those skiers, Judy Nagel of the USA and Brigitte Seiwald of Austria, suffered from major mistakes in their runs, ruling them out of contention. However, the other two, France’s Marielle Goitschel and Canada’s Nancy Greene, put together near-flawless runs, securing them the gold and silver medals respectively, while Hathorn was forced to settle for 4th.

In the end, it was a margin of three hundredths of a second that separated the Briton from a medal, but she did not truly appreciate how close she was until she spoke to the media.

“I was being interviewed by the press and people were saying, ‘Oh Gina, three hundredths!’ And I thought, ‘Rats! That is a bit close.’

Despite missing out on a medal by such a fine margin, Hathorn’s 4th place finish in Grenoble was still groundbreaking. Never before had a British competitor placed so highly in an Olympic event on snow, and her result would not be bettered by another British snowsport athlete until 2014, when Jenny Jones won bronze in the women’s snowboard slopestyle. In alpine skiing though, Hathorn’s 4th place remains Britain’s Olympic best.

Her result, though, was not merely a fluke.

By 1968, Hathorn was an experienced skier on the international circuit, having competed among the world’s best for a number of years.

Although born in Johannesburg and raised in Hampshire, Hathorn – who now goes by her married name Sopwith – learned her craft on the slopes of St Moritz, where family would rent a chalet for several months each winter to facilitate her father’s work.

By the age of 13 she was competing in local competitions, and at the age of 17 she made Olympic debut at the Innsbruck 1964 games.

She left Innsbruck with mixed emotions though. In the slalom, her preferred event, she crashed out of the competition on her first run. Though in the downhill, she pleasantly surprised herself with a 15th place finish, despite claiming to have had her eyes closed for most of the way down the course.

In the years following, she became a regular on the alpine skiing circuit, and won Britain’s first ever medal in a World Cup race – a silver in the slalom at Grindelwald, Switzerland in 1967.

All of this paved the way for her historic performance at the 1968 Olympics, after which she had planned to hang up her skis. She decided to continue competing, however, after being persuaded by Mark Birley, the owner of London nightclub Annabel’s, who provided her with the financial backing to continue competing until the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan.

Unfortunately for her, she was unable to replicate her performance from four years earlier, with her best result being an 11th place finish in the slalom.

“I was so disappointed,” she said reflecting on the Sapporo games, “I really thought I could a lot better. But I was four years older, I probably wasn’t as fit as I was before, and really nervous.”

Soon after those Olympics, Hathorn retired from competitive skiing, however she stayed close to the sport for a number of years, presenting a show called ‘Skiing with Gina’ on Yorkshire Television before opening a skiwear shop in London with her former teammate Divina Galica.

Today, at the age of 79, she has a far more distant relationship with the sport, noting,

“I don’t even watch Ski Sunday. It’s not the same. I want to do it, not just watch it.”

She does, however, remain supportive of Britain’s skiing team and said she would be “delighted” if her 4th place could be bettered at the upcoming Olympics in Milan-Cortina, though she expressed doubt as to whether they would be able to keep pace with the established alpine nations.

But for now, at least, her performance remains unsurpassed.

(*Editor’s Note: Alain Baxter won the bronze medal in the slalom at the 2002 Winter Olympics before having it taken from him in a decision many feel was cruel and unfair, but his result has been effectively erased from history).

The post Britain’s Almost Olympic Medallist in Alpine Skiing appeared first on InTheSnow.