Skiers with disabilities reflect on Paralympics

A club which helps people with disabilities learn to ski has said it was "amazing" to watch Team GB at the Winter Paralympics.

Solent Adaptive Ski Club, based in Southampton, cater to members with disabilities ranging from visual impairment to muscular dystrophy.

It follows the end of the Games, which saw visually impaired skier Neil Simpson win a silver medal.

Speaking about Team GB's success, the club's welfare officer Clare Holloway said: "It all starts here."

"We have people who are blind, deaf, who are amputees," Holloway said.

"We would start them off from being a complete novice, and then they're able to progress."

On the Paralympics, she said: "GB only have a small team... but they have done brilliantly - considering we're a nation without any snow.

"It's amazing to see those sit-skiers coming down, the amputees; it takes so much hard work and training for them to do that. But this is where it all begins.

"They will look at them and think - one day that might be me."

Elaine Smallwood has been skiing with the club for about two years.

She has had multiple sclerosis for 30 years, which means she has weakness down the left side of her body.

"I thought maybe I could do it as a disabled person," she said. "It's like starting again anyway."

She said she first tried skiing sitting down in adapted equipment but decided she wanted to learn to ski standing up.

"My goal for myself was that I would keep coming for a year and go skiing with them to Folgaria [in Italy], and if I didn't like it, I would give it up," she said. "But all it did was remind me how much I love it."

"I would hope that the Olympics would inject some enthusiasm for people to go skiing," she said. "Hopefully the club will get some more people coming to it."