FROM pumping breast milk on the slopes as she interviews Olympians for BBC Ski Sunday, to going back to work within two weeks of giving birth, there’s no doubt that Chemmy Alcott is a real champ.
She became Britain’s top female downhill skier and a four-time Winter Olympian during her illustrious 17-year career.
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Now a Winter Olympics TV pundit, Chemmy broke 47 bones including her ribs and her neck during her time on the slopes — so you might think parenting would be a walk in the park for her.
But the 39-year-old mum of two — who begins co-hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics with Ed Leigh tomorrow — admits it’s actually been the toughest challenge of them all.
She says: “Motherhood is 100 per cent harder than any part of my skiing career. Being an athlete is the most selfish, narrow-minded existence.
“Every day you are thinking about yourself — what can you do to make yourself seem better and faster? — whereas as a parent, you are so low down in the pecking order.
“All that is important is your little people’s happiness and health. You rarely think about yourself.
“I am quite controlling but you can’t control these mad creatures, you just have to go with their flow. It is amazing.”
A double fracture in her right leg halted Chemmy’s sporting career in 2014, prompting her to focus on becoming a mum.
She now shares Lochlan five, and Cooper, three, with her husband Dougie Crawford, 34, once known as Britain’s top ski racer.
She says: “Starting a family is completely different to being an athlete. It took us 19 months to start a family, but throughout that I learned a lot more about my body that I never knew.
“As an athlete, I controlled everything in my life. I always thought if I work harder I will have the gains, but I couldn’t manage to work it out with getting pregnant.
“Months went on and I found a fertility acupuncturist in London. He did some tests and it turned out my body was in fight or flight mode. He was convinced I was stressed when I wasn’t.
“My body had so much adrenalin pumping around, making it impossible to get pregnant. I had an addiction to caffeine which was affecting my fertility massively, and I didn’t know it.
“When I was a ski racer I used caffeine a lot for my performance, on about eight shots a day. It would get my body heightened for racing, but I had to cut down.”
MUM-SHAMERS
After finally getting pregnant, Chemmy was targeted by mum-shamers, who criticised her decision to continue to exercise. She says: “I trained throughout my pregnancy, which I got judged for. It was difficult because when you are a mum for the first time, everything is new to you.
“But I researched everything — and who is the rest of the world to judge me?
“Everyone looks at my Instagram and thinks, ‘You’ve got your s**t together’. But I am a swan — my neck is above the water and my legs are as frantic as they could be.
“And of course I get mum guilt all the time, but I couldn’t be a full-time mum. I would really struggle with losing my identity.
“It’s really important that my kids know I am going to climb this 4,000-metre mountain, and it’s going to be really hard, and I am going to cry, and I want them to see that challenge that I am doing.”
With both children, Chemmy waited just two weeks before going back to work as a BBC sports presenter and says: “I got a lot of judgment for going to work that quickly.
“People didn’t understand that my earnings are only during the winter. I had a mortgage to pay and children to look after.”
And she recalls one memorable episode of the BBC’s Ski Sunday in January 2019: “It was one of the most empowering moments of my life, even more than skiing at 93mph down the slopes.
“I interviewed this world champion while pumping breast milk and I was just so on fire as it was so liberating.
“I finished the interview and turned to the cameraman and was like, ‘Do you know what I have just been doing?’
“He said, ‘Yeah, interviewing the world champion’, and I was like, ‘Yeah, and making milk!’
“I reached into my bra and pulled all this milk out and these guys were like, ‘We did not see that coming’.”
Chemmy and Dougie run international ski schools which mean he is away for 18 weeks a year, so it’s often just her and their two boys. It’s then that she often thinks of her mum Eve, who died suddenly in 2006.
‘DO SOMETHING WILD’
Chemmy says: “When I was holding my newborn for the first time, I really regressed into someone needing their mum.
“There’s a special bond there. You’re reminded of it entirely when you become a mum as well. I wish she was here all the time, especially looking after the boys, as it’s just me. I get jealous of people who can just call up their mums.”
This year Chemmy turns 40, and says: “I want to do something wild. That is who I am. I want to keep living life hard.
“You never know when it is all over. My mum was only 59 when she died, and so it’s really important for me to see the world.”
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