ALPINE SKIING: There are plenty of new extreme sports on the Sochi 2014 Olympic program, but for the purists out there, it doesn’t get any better than Alpine Skiing.

Australian Olympic hopeful Emily Bamford is one of those purists. Her pulse quickens at the thought of this downhill race-against-the-clock sport where skiers fly at around 120km/h down courses with vertical drops of up to 220m.

“Brakes and slowing down weren’t really options for me,” Bamford says of her humble early days at Mt Buller.

“My parents put me in ski school when I was four or five and I just hated it! I liked being out on the slopes with my mum and dad - not standing in a line full of kids learning how to pizza. My parents actually have footage of me hysterically crying in ski school while they hid in the bushes laughing.”

The 21-year-old from Melbourne grew up on a horse-racing farm and was forced to make a choice between two diverging futures at the age of 14 - equestrian and skiing.

“I chose skiing because I loved it more,” Bamford says now. “I don’t regret my decision at all. I do miss riding, but I was given a window to take with skiing and I took it!”

Bamford took hold of her opportunity with both skis and at the age of 16 moved across to Stratton Mountain School - a ski academy in Vermont. It was the making of her.

“Everyone there had the exact same interests – we were all young dedicated athletes with the same goal, becoming the best winter sports athlete we could be. It was a perfect way for me to balance skiing and schooling.”

Bamford is still based in America where she is studying a Bachelor of Arts (Rhetoric) at Bates College in Maine, although she deferred the past semester to pursue her Sochi hopes. The rigours of chasing snow means Bamford is only “home” for about three months every year and even that is spent largely at Mt Buller or training at Coronet Peak in New Zealand.

“Seeing photos of all my friends at the beach and having a summer can get a little tough, but I don’t regret anything I’ve done. I figure, I can have a summer when all of this is done.

“I have been filling out goal sheets since I was 12 and on each form under long-term goals, I always wrote ‘represent Australia at the Olympic Games,’ so being able to tick that off my list will be so rewarding.”

With 24 days to go, Bamford is in a high volume training blitz in Europe gaining as much time on snow as possible for the Games. With two weeks of competition before the Olympic rankings are finalised and eight races in the next nine days ahead of her, Bamford is confident she can score some more good FIS points.

Bamford and teammates Lavinia Chrystal and Greta Small look set to be Australia’s first female Alpine competitors since the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City - a Games Bamford remembers fondly.

“When I was 10 my mum taped all of the Alpine events during the Salt Lake Olympics and I watched them so many times the video started to fall apart! The Olympics is definitely something I have dreamed about since I started ski racing.”

From plastic skis and moon boots to interschool races, Mt Buller Race Club and Vermont, Bamford has packed a lot into 21 years. Adding the Olympic rings to her repertoire looks to be only a few weeks away.