Stardom beckons bronzed Baxter

Ian Chadband13 April 2012

From someone called Robert-Jan in Innsbruck, the message had winged its way through cyberspace. "Hey Alain, congratulations. Wonderful that you've beaten my arrogant countrymen! Bronze medal!! Have a drink for me as well, will you??"

Alain Baxter did. From the Dead Goat Saloon, where he clutched a glass of champagne and amid a hundred backslaps watched a re-run of himself slaloming into history, to the Olympic plaza, where 15,000 toasted one of the Games' most improbable medallists of all, the self-effacing Highlander wandered around with an air of heady bemusement here in Salt Lake City as if he had no concept of how he was going to cope with his new-found celebrity.

He'll have to learn quick, though. It wasn't just from Austria that the e-mails flooded into his personal website. Salutes also came from Switzerland, Italy and Germany.

These are three nations who have always looked upon British skiing with the sort of mirth that has us sniggering about Cameroonians slogging through the snow. Yet they were left cringing at finding themselves behind Team GB in the Alpine skiing medal table and the Scotsman now has a unique opportunity to make a mint from his success.

"I believe he can become a special international celebrity on the circuit. Among the Alpine nations, he already had the reputation and the respect, but, whether it's Austria or the US, the skiing world's got to love this - a British guy on the podium," smiled Baxter's coach, Christian Schwaiger. "He can be a big star but for me he already is one."

Quite right too. Okay, so we in Britain could go curling crazy and swoon over the skeleton but, let's be fair, nothing at these XIX Winter Olympics could beat the sight of a bloke raised in a caravan park behind a railway track in Aviemore winning what even those sneering Aussies, who thought it hilarious that our medals had hitherto emerged from a kitchen - tea trays and brooms - were forced to acknowledge as a "proper" medal.

Saving the best for last, this was utterly fantastic. Okay, so maybe there was an air of unreality about the big guns sliding one-by-one out of contention to let him in. But the excellence of his own skiing - remember he was given the hopeless start number of 20 - was no fluke.

Simon Clegg, the team chef de mission, admitted that he thought he'd never see the day we won a skiing medal, never mind one in the slalom discipline which is regarded as the true test of technical mastery on the piste. Him and everyone else, including the Canadian reporter who suggested that, never mind the fact that there'd been no UFOs spotted over Utah this past fortnight, this sighting of a blue-haired Brit with bronze quite made up for it.

This initial novelty value will pay Baxter handsomely. Schwaiger has noted these past two years, as his charge has "become an overnight success after 10 years slog", how Baxter has become far more celebrated in Austria than back at home.

"I've seen 50,000 at Schladming cheering for a dozen Austrians and one Highlander," he smiles.

Yet with an Olympic gong to his name, the man who used to be so impoverished while trekking round the mountains that he'd have to sleep in a battered Volkswagen Passat to save on hotel bills is poised to belatedly join the skiing jet set.

New, untapped, unprecedented markets have magically opened up for the 28-year-old. Fiona McNeilly, the operations director of the British Skiing Federation, reckoned here was someone-who, at last, could be a figurehead for the domestic skiing tourism industry.

In Austria too, ski manufacturers would be keen to sponsor a guy with a story like his.

"Someone raised in a non-Alpine world, a genuine Scot who isn't from a wealthy background, who isn't a hooray Henry, but is personable, charismatic, good looking and, against all the odds, has made it," reflected McNeilly.

Ultimately, though, like the other two British medallists here, it is not what the Olympics can do for Baxter but what Baxter can do for Britain's Olympic future which consumes both him and his backers.

"We have a lot more talented young skiers who could achieve a lot more if they had more funding and support, and that's what I want to see," said Baxter.

Otherwise, it really will be a one winter wonder. Schwaiger chose the moment to call for a complete restructuring of the British system "so we can bring kids into the mountains and educate the coaches".

In Turin four years hence, he said, youthful talents like Chemmy Alcott and Ross Green, both of whom enjoyed top 15 finishes here, could be flowering. After that, though, it looked bleak.

If he can't be the totem for a new generation, then we should celebrate Baxter for just being a one-off. A man who would lay fencing and dig holes as a labourer just to fund a distant dream; a man who came perilously close to crashing into the trees in a fearful training accident last Wednesday yet dusted himself down, ignored his injured knee and completed the races of his life just three days later.

Blind determination is the common thread which distinguished all our medallists here - be it the sacrifice of a mum like Rhona Martin, who didn't see her kids for months, or the cussedness of Alex Coomber, who suffered more injuries in the months leading up to Salt Lake than anyone should need to endure. And those few who show the right stuff in the white stuff merit a nation's support.

Clegg wants cash for future teams
WINTER OLYMPICS GUIDE
Medal Table

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