Violinist Vanessa Mae to compete at Winter Olympics
Violinist Vanessa Mae is set to ski for Thailand at the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympics, which start next month.
Mae, a keen skier since childhood, has been competing as Vanessa Vanakorn using her father’s surname.
She raced four times in Slovenia at the weekend in a last-ditch bid to meet the qualifying standard.
She raced four times in Slovenia at the weekend in a last-ditch bid to meet the qualifying standard.
Manager Giles Holland, speaking on behalf of Mae, told the BBC: “It would appear that she’s done it. She’s done it by a whisker, but she’s done it.”
“Vanessa Mae has unofficially qualified for the Olympic Games. That I could say to you,” added Marko Rudolf, a Slovenian masters skier with links to the committee that organised the races.
Under current Olympic qualification rules, countries with no skier ranked in the world’s top 500 may send one man and one woman to the Games – to compete in slalom and giant slalom – if those athletes meet a second set of criteria.
Thailand has no skiers ranked in the world’s top 500 for any Alpine discipline. To meet the second criteria, Mae had to produce an average of 140 points or fewer over five recognised races. Athletes earn points on an inverse scale based on their performance, so the fewer points an athlete has, the better they are.