Her quest for Olympic glory has seen Kirsty Muir hit new heights on the frozen slopes of the Italian Alps.
But it is the depths to which she plunged in preparation for the Winter Games that Britain’s newest ski ace credits for her performances.
The 21-year-old from Aberdeen’s aerial skills ensured she qualified in third place for Monday’s final in the women’s ski slopestyle competition at Livigno Snow Park.
She was able to stay cool on the slopes in Italy after surviving a test of nerve while training at Delphy Pool near Bodmin in Cornwall last year, when she dived to a depth of 56ft and held her breath until her lips turned blue in the freezing darkness.
‘It was to put ourselves in a high-pressure situation and see how we reacted, how we managed ourselves and told our minds to chill out in this high-stress situation,’ the ski star revealed a few weeks before the Olympics began.
‘We started off just breathing on the ground, then we moved into a static tub and that’s where I held my breath for three minutes in the end,’ Muir said. ‘Then we moved into a quarry, went down a rope and ended up 17 metres down. It’s pitch black, you can’t see anything, and you start overthinking – that’s when you’ve really got to centre yourself and calm down.
‘It’s helped a lot with my skiing because I realise now that I perform a lot better when I am calmer.’
Muir hit the top three in each of her qualifying runs on Saturday to reach the final behind Switzerland’s defending champion Mathilde Gremaud and Chinese superstar Eileen Gu.
Kirsty Muir trained for the Winter Olympics by diving to a depth of 56ft and holding her breath until her lips turned blue
Pictured: Skier Kirsty Muir
‘I feel like my heart was maybe racing just a little bit more than usual,’ Muir said after the qualifiers. ‘After I put my first run down, I felt a bit of a relief and felt like I could just be a bit smoother in myself. Just knowing I can do it when I’m feeling a little bit nervous, when I’m feeling a little bit of pressure, knowing that I can trust myself and put it down.’
Muir, who is competing at her second Olympics, will be hoping to celebrate after the final with her BMX rider boyfriend Matt Harris, 26, from Cambridgeshire – who starred in the first series of The Traitors.
