BEING an elite athlete can be a tough gig, but there are times when a few perks come with the job. While the rest of us are enduring the beginnings of a Scottish winter, freestyle skier Anna Vincenti will be training in, among other places, Australia and Dubai.

They’re not the worst spots in the world to spend a few months but it will be no holiday for the 21-year-old as she prepares for one of the most important years of her career.

Vincenti missed out on selection for the 2014 Winter Olympics by the skin of her teeth and while she admits to being devastated after coming so close, her omission from Team GB two years ago has made her even more determined to make her Olympic debut in 2018.

Vincenti’s disappointment two years ago was acute and she can recall only too well the moment she found out that she would not be going to Sochi. “I remember being in the gym and my coach calling me and telling me that unfortunately I hadn’t made it,” she says. “I started crying. It was gutting being so close and not making it.”

However, Vincenti, from Edinburgh, believes it may actually have been a good thing that she did not make her Olympic debut two years ago and, as all the best athletes do, she learnt a lot from that experience.

“I think that missing out might actually have been a blessing for me,” the slopestyle specialist says. “The course in Sochi was absolutely massive and pretty scary, and at the time I wasn’t very strong, so it would have been really tough for me.

“Looking back, I put so much pressure on myself to get there so I’m going to do it completely differently this time around.

“This time, I’m just going to focus on myself and not worry about anything else.

“Obviously the Olympics are in the back of my mind and I do really, really want to get there, but I have to just focus and if I can put in my best performances then hopefully that will be enough.

Vincenti has not had an easy ride since her Olympic miss two years ago, though. Last year, she ruptured her anterior cruciate ligament, an injury which is widely acknowledged as one of the most severe in sport.

“As soon as I fell, I knew that I’d done my ACL,” Vincenti recalls. “Apparently someone up on the ski-lift could hear me screaming, I was so loud. I think, though, that I was screaming not because of the pain, but more because I knew how long I would be out for.”

Her immediate instincts were accurate; the Scot missed the entire 2015 season and ended up being out of competitive skiing for the best part of a year. Her diligent attitude towards her rehabilitation helped speed up her recovery, although she admits that she was constantly asking her physios if she could progress quicker than they would allow her to. Regular sport psychology helped keep Vincenti’s frustrations at bay and a return to competition earlier this year yielded an impressive second-place finish in a Europa Cup event in St Anton, Austria, followed by a fourth place in the Silvaplana Europa Cup race in Switzerland.

It has given Vincenti a solid base on which to build her 2017 season. It is a year that will be vitally important if she is to qualify for the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang in February 2018.

Vincenti began skiing at the age of three and quickly realised that freestyle skiing suited her better than the more mainstream disciplines such as slalom.

“I was always the odd one out,” she says. “I’d wear baggy clothes while everyone else was wearing catsuits and lycra and I remember thinking that I was never going to be like that. And I’m an adrenaline junkie, which is why I like freestyle skiing.” There was a time when it looked as though football might be the path that Vincenti went down.

Scotland caps at under-15 and under-17 level meant she was seriously thinking about the possibility of going to America on a football scholarship.

The former goalkeeper admits her perfect life would be to play football in the US during the summer, and ski in the winter. This is, she admits though, a somewhat unrealistic dream.

There came a point in her teenage years when Vincenti knew that she had to pick one sport or the other and she recalls the defining moment clearly. It is a decision that she has never regretted.

“I had a Scottish Cup final the same weekend as the British Ski Championship and I really wanted to ski,” she says “My dad told me that I couldn’t let the football team down, though.

“But that made my decision for me because I knew that what I really wanted to do was ski.

“I love football but I’m 100 per cent sureI made the right choice with skiing.

“I absolutely love it and I can’t imagine my life without it.

“I don’t think I could go even a month without skiing – if I can ski for the rest of my life, I will.”



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