Aberdeen student Katie Guest has lifted the lid on the world of para skiing ahead of her expected trip to the Beijing Winter Olympics with Team GB star Menna Fitzpatrick.
Guest, 26, is a full-time guide to visually-impaired skier Fitzpatrick – Britain’s most successful Winter Olympian – with the pair expected to be selected for the Games in March next year.
Fitzpatrick was a star at the last Winter Paralympics, which took place in PyeongChang, South Korea. The Macclesfield athlete, then guided by Jennifer Kehoe, returned with four medals, including slalom gold.
Guest and Fitzpatrick have been working together for six months, building their rapport and Fitzpatrick’s trust in the person now tasked with leading her down the slopes.
Robert Gordon University physiotherapy Masters student Guest said: “Although we’ve qualified (for the Paralympics), the team selection isn’t until January.
“I’ve been really lucky in that I haven’t been with Menna that long and Menna actually qualified by herself before I joined her.
“When Menna qualified, I qualified as the guide with her, so it’s super exciting to train with somebody like Menna and have the privilege of guiding her down, knowing that she has the potential to do amazing. It’s really rewarding.”
The relationship between para skier and guide is all-important, given the speeds involved and technical nature of the courses in Alpine skiing, and is developed by sessions out on the slopes which can last up to six hour.
Weather conditions can sometimes mean even fully sighted skiers can only see a few inches ahead of them.
Explaining how a para skiing guide helps their athlete down the hill using a variety of tools, Katie said: “Menna actually has no vision in one eye and only 5% in the other, so, for her, depth perception I think is the most impacted thing.
“I actually ski in bright orange clothing in front of her and that just helps give her that small visual cue of where I am.
“We also have small two-way Bluetooth headsets in our helmets, so we can actually communicate backwards and forwards with each other on how the distance is between us. I can say what’s coming up, so if there’s a change in terrain, a combination change or a bit of icy conditions, I can relay that to Menna before she’s gone over them.
“A combination of wearing the orange, good verbal cues and a good inspection of the course before we go down are probably the most important things.”
Should the pair get selected for the Winter Paralympics, it is expected they will head to Asia for around a month to prepare and compete.
Although she’s never skied in China before, prior to getting involved in guiding, Katie was an international-level competitor in her own right.
She said: “I went away to America for two years to carry on my skiing career.
“I was based in Killington, which is up in Vermont and two hours north of Boston.
“When I came back, I thought: ‘I’m going to go to uni now, hang the boots up, get a degree and move on’.
“I’d only been back in the country two months when I was first approached by the British para team. This must have been back in 2015.
“They asked if I could guide Millie Knight – who is actually still on the programme – at a couple of training camps, so I was like why not. It was something completely different and I thought I might enjoy it.
“So I was really lucky I got that phone call out of the blue asking if I’d be willing to help.
“I took up that opportunity and I’ve been Millie’s reserve guide ever since, and this year I got phoned by the team and asked if I’d come on full-time for Menna.”
During her guiding journey, Katie not only got through an undergraduate degree in Newcastle, but also picked up postgraduate study in the Granite City – living in Garthdee and using the RGU:Sport gym when she’s able to be in the north-east.
Having started her RGU physio course at the end of 2019, Katie has naturally been caught up in a potential Paralympics trip, with training requirements meaning she has had to spend a lot of time skiing indoors in Manchester, as well as on the slopes of Continental Europe.
However, following a whirlwind start to 2022 which will also include the world championships, she will back to her studies, saying: “I managed to balance it quite well up until a few months ago. That’s when the winter season kicked in.
“Physio is heavily based on placement and you do have to be in hospitals for five weeks at a time.
“RGU have been phenomenal and have managed to postpone quite a lot of it for me until after the Games.
“I’ll be going back to full-time study in April, but, because of Covid and with everything being online, it’s actually been really beneficial for me and helped massively. It doesn’t matter where I am in the world, I can still access all of the material and can still plug away at it in the afternoons after training.
“It’s worked out really well.”