Kirsty Muir: Scottish skier at Winter Olympics Beijing 2022, who is Team GB teenager aiming for skiing Big Air gold?
First it was Peter 'Snakebite' Wright's PDC World Darts Championship win, then Scotland triumphed in the Calcutta Cup – now the nation is gearing up for another sporting high tomorrow (Tuesday) thanks to Team GB’s youngest member.
Kirsty Muir will be competing at 2am BST in the Beijing Winter Olympics, hoping to bag the gold medal coaches have anticipated ever since she first took her first steps on dry slopes.
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Hide AdWho is skier Kirsty Muir?
Still just 17, Muir has long been one of the sport’s most exciting freestyle skiing talents.
She tapped into her talents on Aberdeen’s dry slopes aged just three, and from there her natural talent meant she was tipped to be the next great hope for Team GB’s skiers.
Set for snow sports stardom since her school days, she landed her first senior World Cup podium in 2021, finishing sixth at the World Championships to add to two junior world medals won in the Youth Olympics, where she won silver in 2018.
Fellow Scot and Winter Olympics gold medal winner Lesley McKenna dubbed her a ‘once in a generation’ talent.
What is Big Air skiing and how can I watch?
Qualifying in seventh for the Olympic Big Air final last week, Muir dazzled audiences on her first run, which included a breathtaking two flips with one-and-a-half degrees rotation off a 50m ramp at 60mph.
Competing against one of her skiing idols in the Big Air final, Muir will go head to head with the 31-year-old Swiss gold medallist Sarah Höfflin at 2am BST time live on the BBC.
But despite her tender years and those weighty expectations, the young Scot does not appear to be feeling the pressure out in Beijing.
"I'm just doing what I can,” she said after claiming a place in the final. “In the end I just have to try my best and try to zone everything out. It's just me and the course, you know?
"I've definitely just been trying to enjoy the journey.
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Hide Ad"There are a lot of different things I want to do in my career, and going to the Olympics would be one of them, but I don't want to make it my be all and end all in a sense.
"I’m so happy and just really excited to be in the finals. It's a dream come true, I just can't believe it. My first Olympics, my first Olympic final, that’s everything I wanted.”
Recalling the journey that led her to that final, Muir said: “I was at a Saturday kids' club and they went to the freestyle slope at the end of each session and they suggested I try it.
"I started the freestyle nights because they could see that I loved it.
"I was seven at the time. It was all for fun, there was no thought of what could happen. Especially at that point because the sport wasn't in the Olympics.
"And it was at the age of 10 - on my 10th birthday, actually - I did my first front flip."
Now, seven years later, Kirsty Muir is on the brink of Olympic glory.
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