British ski ace Kirsty Muir has revealed that her preparation for the Winter Olympics included a 56ft dive into freezing, pitch-black water in a Cornish quarry. The 21-year-old from Aberdeen qualified third for the women's ski slopestyle final at Livigno Snow Park, crediting the extreme training for her calmness under pressure.
Muir, who is competing at her second Olympics, took part in the exercise at Delphy Pool near Bodmin last year. She described holding her breath until her lips turned blue in the darkness, saying it taught her to manage stress. '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,' she said.
The skier explained that the training involved descending a rope to 17 metres (56ft) in a quarry. '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,' she added. 'It's helped a lot with my skiing because I realise now that I perform a lot better when I am calmer.'
Muir's qualifying runs placed her behind defending champion Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland and Chinese star Eileen Gu. She admitted feeling nervous but said she trusted herself to deliver. After the final, she plans to celebrate with her boyfriend, BMX rider Matt Harris, 26, from Cambridgeshire, who appeared in the first series of The Traitors.
