Surbiton's snow queen

In a fair world, Chemmy Alcott would simply not be allowed. On the grounds that there are only so many good genes and a limited supply of natural ability to go round, it would be ruled wholly unfair that one 19-year-old should be allowed Anna Kournikova's looks, a four-A-grades-at-A-level intellect, and an athletic ability that has sports pundits claiming she is the best skier this country has ever produced. So there has to be something wrong with her. She must be a bitch. An indulged, starry little prima donna. The Christina Aguilera of the piste. Jennifer Lopez on skis.

On the day I meet her near the British Olympic Association's base in Lofer, Austria, she has quite a lot of things on her mind. For starters, there's the fact that her first shot at the Winter Olympics, in Salt Lake City, is looming on the horizon. Nobody, particularly not a competitor, can ignore the fact that the threat of terrorist attacks is going to make this year's games the highest profile ever. Then there's the pressure of knowing that she has to prove to the world - and to potential sponsors - that a girl from Surrey can be a world-class skier. And just in case all that were not enough, she's got a streaming cold.

But, as it quickly becomes apparent, Chemmy Alcott is not only beautiful, bright and athletic. She's a nice person, too. For example, she's more than happy to stand about in the snow for the photo shoot. 'I'm so sorry about this, I'm messing up your make-up,' she apologises, reaching for one of the stylist's tissues which are quickly taking on the rigidity of poppadoms in the sub-zero chill of the Austrian Alps. 'I promise you're not going to catch anything, it's not viral, it's just that I've been training really hard and my body's run down.'

She's also sorry that she's late, sorry that the Austrians can sometimes seem a bit curt ('It's not your fault, honestly, guys, it's just their way'), sorry that she might stretch the clothes she's been given to wear for the photographs, and sorry in case her smile looks cheesy ('It's wider than my face - just look at it!).

Were you to bump into Alcott on the streets of Surbiton, where she grew up, you would be forgiven for not immediately realising that she's an Olympic-class skier. In fact, forced to make a snap judgment, you might guess at her being a visiting actress from an Australian soap. Months spent in the company of Aussie skiers and her New Zealander coach, Chris Knight, have given her an accent that lies somewhere between Surbiton and Sydney. Most of her sentences sound like questions and she frequently finishes them with a 'hey?' Then there's the hair - long, blonde, glossy and completely inappropriate for hurtling down mountains at break-neck speed.

And finally, there's that body. As we're taking some pictures on the slopes, a couple of male skiers come sailing past and only narrowly avoid slamming into a tree as they check out what Alcott refers to as her 'glutes'. She laughs at the recollection of being summoned to a London clinic to undergo a gender test (compulsory for all Olympic competitors). 'They phoned me up the next day and asked me to come back because there'd been a problem with the test,' she giggles. 'At the time I really thought they were going to try and claim that I was a bloke. Can you imagine it?'

But appearances can be deceptive. While Alcott may look like a girly girl, she's far more interested in slalom poles than she is in nail vanish. 'When I go back to England and meet guys and they find out I'm a ski racer, they start trying to impress me,' she says. 'You either get those really funny Eddie the Eagle lines, or they assume that they could out-ski you and start banging on about how good their parallel turns are.'

Not that Alcott has much time for extra-curricular activities. Since she was selected as the youngest member of the British Children's Ski Team aged 11, skiing has pretty much been her life. She even did a large proportion of her A-level work via e-mail from somewhere snowy. And she doesn't intend to slacken off for the foreseeable future.

Take the weekend that I meet her. While I'm swanning about in a bathrobe at Salzburg's opulent Hotel Sacher, trying to decide between the smoked salmon and the Austrian sausage on the breakfast menu, she's out working on her 'programme'. This involves getting up at 5am, being on the slopes by 6am and skiing for four hours, before working out in the gym and analysing the day's performance. She has one week off a year and is usually in bed by 7.30pm. She doesn't drink or smoke, she watches what she eats and it costs her - or rather her parents - £50,000 a year to keep her and her coach in the mountains.

'People do tend to think it's all about the apr?s-ski,' says Alcott. 'And that's partly because they can't imagine a British person taking the sport seriously. If I could have one wish it would probably be to make the public understand that we aren't in this to come last. We do this for a living. This is serious.'

It certainly is. Although Alcott likes to play down the danger inherent in hurtling down a mountain at speeds of up to 84mph (she claims she only realised how fast that was when she learnt to drive), there is no escaping the fact that she puts her life on the line every time she races. At 12, she broke her neck in a skiing accident ('But I was lucky, I was out there again within six weeks') and just last autumn she had to be air-lifted off a mountain in New Zealand, with medics fearing she had broken her back.

Apart from the physical concerns, there are also the psychological and emotional pressures involved in pushing her body to its endurance limits on a regular basis. Alcott admits that she suffered briefly from the eating disorder orthorexia (a condition where the sufferer becomes obsessed with healthy eating) and that, after being what she describes as 'a chubby child', she remains conscious about her size. This morning, for example, she missed breakfast and had to eat a boiled egg that she found in her car. 'I ate the middle and everything,' she says, as though this were the most decadent act she could possibly commit. 'Very bad of me because egg yolk is full of cholesterol.'

She also clearly feels a pressure to pay back her parents who, since they introduced her to the sport at the age of 18 months, have paid out thousands of pounds to fund her career. 'At the end of last season, my dad made me sign a contract with him saying that I'd give him a percentage of any money I earned,' she says. 'It was around the time that LeAnn Rimes was trying to sue her father for taking money out of her bank account when he said he'd put it all there in the first place.'

I ask Alcott if she believes her parents (both sporting achievers - her mother was a swimmer, her father a rugby player) have pushed her too hard. 'They've only ever pushed me as hard as I've wanted to be pushed,' she insists. 'They have made it quite clear that I could give up any time I wanted.'

I'm not entirely convinced, but she, at least, seems to truly believe this. Alcott does concede that there are numerous problems with her background - mostly to do with the fact that she's English. A quirk in the Lottery regulations means Scottish skiers are eligible for funding while she gets nothing and, until she wins a major race, Alcott can only ever hope to make about ten per cent of the money she needs to continue racing from sponsorship deals.

But until the cash dries up, Alcott intends to stay in the mountains. She has, she says, a recurring dream about winning the Olympics. 'It's weird because I've just won a gold medal for skiing, but suddenly I'm there on the podium in the middle of a running track.'

Asked how she rates her chances at Salt Lake City, Alcott is circumspect. 'I don't expect to win because I'm still very young and I haven't been doing this full time for very long. My big moment, if it happens, will be at the Turin games in 2006. I'll be 23 then, the perfect age.' But having said that, she does admit that she believes in the power of the mind, in being able to do something if you want it badly enough. And she's had the Olympics dream every night this week.

See Alcott in the Women's Downhill on BBC2 on Monday