Ireland’s Florence Bell has her big Olympic moment in today’s giant slalom

Florence Bell’s phone dinged the other day with a text from her school. At the same moment, her dad’s phone went as well. The message to both read the same.

Florence was absent from registration this morning. Please phone the school to provide an explanation.

You know your day is going well when a text like that makes you burst out laughing. Oh, to live one day as a teenager when you could text your school a one-word reply and it be, ‘Olympics’. There was obviously just a crossed wire somewhere and there was no good being snippy about it so she left it. Still, though. Best. Excuse. Ever.

“They do it all the time,” she sighs. “It happened the day I was in Dublin before the games as well. I was like, ‘I told you I was going to the Olympics’. But, whatever. We just ignored the message and got on with it in the end. I had training anyway.”

Bell, who turns 18 in a fortnight, is one of those Olympians for whom Sochi is the start of the story rather than the culmination. She skis in the giant slalom this morning and again in the slalom on Friday. From Sutton Colefield near Birmingham, she is the daughter of a Lurgan man and narrowly beat her sister to the sole Irish place in the games.

Huge fields
Having represented Britain up until the age of 14, she has since competed for Ireland at the World Youth Olympics in Austria and the European Youth Olympics in Romania. The slalom events always have huge fields at the Olympics – this one has 90 racers – because they are where skiers from outside the traditionally strong nations are given a chance to gain Olympic experience. Bell hopes to make this the first day of the rest of her Olympic life.

“I’m going to be starting at the back of the field, I don’t think conditions are going to be great. Hopefully I have a lot more Olympics to come after this one. But this has been a really great experience. I’ve had a great time and I’m just going to go out there and try my best.

“I know a lot of these girls from training. I was part of a group last year that was made up of small nation skiers and we went for training together, sponsored by the FIS. I know girls in that group from Cyprus, Lithuania, Latvia, places like that. We’re all in the same boat here. We’re not expecting big things but we’re out here in our first Olympics, ready to see what happens. I think we all see it as being in our own little race together.”

She won't trouble the big stars at the top of the start list – either in competition or out of it. Though some of them aren't that much older than her, they inhabit a different universe. Most days when she finishes training here, she heads to the bottom of the Rosa Khutor Alpine Centre to watch the races and feel the drama.

'Bit intimidating'
"I know a few of the top girls but I don't really speak to them though. I've raced against a lot of them before but I can't really go and talk to them. I find them a bit intimidating."

The sun has played havoc with all the mountain events this past week and nowhere will the divide between the head of the field and the also-rans be more pronounced than in these slalom races. Bell will be the 75th skier through the gate this morning, by which time the good snow will be long gone. “The heat has really affected training quite a lot. Each day the snow has been getting softer and softer. One day we went up quite high, up near the start of the downhill where the snow was better. but still it’s really soft. After one run when everyone’s been down the course, it’s in really bad shape.

"Basically, when there's a race on this kind of snow, the course will be in really bad condition after about 10 people have been down it. The tracks get deeper and it just gets harder to ski in. It just adds to the time for all the people coming late in the run. It's crazy hot. I can't believe how hot it's been. I thought Russia would be cold."

Every day’s a school day. Even at the Olympics.