A little knowledge... not such a dangerous thing!
Head for hire: Since moving from Alpine to Ski Cross this year, Pam has been on the look-out for sponsorship
I have read reports recently that the well-known Academical, Professor Niall Ferguson, has been invited to present the 2012 BBC Reith Lectures. This is considered to be a great honour and a recognition of the deliverer`s success in their chosen field and he must feel proud to have been asked. I can, however, claim a connection to Lord Reith which even Professor Ferguson can`t match (Niall Ferguson was born in 1964, the year I left the Academy), in that, I have actually met Lord Reith face to face. This historic event came about when, sometime in the mid-Fifties at the Academy, I won my year`s ‘General Knowledge’ prize, which was presented to me by the “great man” and former Academy pupil, Lord Reith. My abiding memory of him was as a grey giant of a man with hands the size of snow shovels! I remember that, as prize-giving day approached, I asked my dad just who Lord Reith was and what had he achieved since he left the Academy. On hearing that he had been Director General of the BBC, I asked my dad if he thought his lordship might know Tony Hancock, who was, at that time, my favourite radio comedian. Dad replied that, although the BBC probably paid both their salaries, he thought it most unlikely that the two would have had anything in common, as it was widely believed that Lord Reith had no sense of humour whatsoever. I was warned not to raise the question during our brief encounter! It transpired that, lifting my General Knowledge prize was to be the pinnacle of my academic career, as I never graced the prize-giving stage at the Academy again. To justify this lack of academic prowess and my inability to embrace wholeheartedly some of the more obscure offerings on the curriculum, to my parents and my teachers, I always put forward the defence that ‘it was better to know a little about a lot’ than to know ‘everything about algebra’, a mantra which I insist still holds good to this day! Jim Shearer (1964)
Olympic dreams Pam Thorburn (2003) is one determined young lady! Having worked her socks off to achieve one lifetime ambition only to see it ripped from her at the last minute, she changed tracks at the age of 25 and has started patiently to build towards the realisation of another, quite different, dream. ‘I was 10 when I decided I wanted to be a skier. All other sports including my favourite horse riding had to take a back seat when I was selected for the British Children’s Skiing Team.’ And make up her mind is exactly what Pam did. At school, she was single-minded about skiing and tended not to get too involved in hockey and other sports, something that perhaps inevitably led to her being a little bit isolated from her fellow pupils as she was often away competing. But pursuing the dream of being an Olympic downhill skier was what made it all worthwhile. It looked as if that dream was about to become a reality in 2010 when she had been picked for the GB Alpine Downhill Team. And then, a month before the Vancouver Games, something totally unexpected happened, something over which she had no control – her skiing federation went bankrupt and, along with two other teammates, she was told that they couldn’t afford to take her. ‘It was quite heart-breaking. You train for it your whole life and then…’ she says with a wry smile. Recovering both from that major disappointment and a serious shoulder injury, Pam decided to take a look around at alternatives and her eye fell on ski cross, a relatively new sport included
in the 2010 Olympics for the first time. So what is ski cross? ‘It’s like motocross on skis with lots of jumps – kickers they call them – and there’s four people going down at once with lots of elbows and bumping as you go down. The first two qualify for the next round… I just love head-to-head competition, so it seemed like the right decision for me to switch.’ The rightness of that decision was confirmed for her by the fact that she became British Ski Cross champion this March in only her third ever ski cross race. However, there was a price to pay in that she had to say goodbye to all her lucrative sponsorship deals in moving from the glamorous world of Alpine downhill to what some might see as the ‘new kid on the block’ of the skiing world. It takes a bare minimum of £35k a year just to keep her competing, so the issue of sponsorship is key. ‘I just couldn’t continue to ask my parents for help,’ she says. What keeps her driven? ‘I just keep looking forward to the next thing. It’s going to be bigger and better – and just achieving it is what keeps me focused. My plan is to be in the top 16 of the world by February 2014 – the time of the next Olympics.’ And no-one who’s met her would bet against that outcome. With the body of an athlete, the looks of a fashion model and that kind of determination, she’s the kind of prospect that businesses should be queuing up to sponsor. Pam’s website can be found at www.pamelathorburn.com
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