ALPINE skier Alex Heath can relax knowing that he has Olympic qualification in the bag.

Having already qualified for the slalom, giant slalom and Super-G events, Heath, from Lyminge, was keen to add the downhill to complete a clean sweep of the Alpine events at the next winter Olympics in Torino, Italy next February.

The only chance he would have, before next February, were races in La Parva in Chile.

His arrival in La Parva, east of Santiago, coincided with a severe weather warning for the entire High Cordillera region of the Andes. The snowstorm lasted three days with seven feet of snow falling.

Roads to the resort were blocked, there was no electricity, and no telephone or internet. Racers from 20 countries had to sit it out for four days.

The storm passed but with now only one day to prepare before the first races, Heath was keen to utilise the opportunity to train. All went well until the afternoon when he crashed, fracturing two vertebrae.

However, he decided to ignore the injury and in two successive downhill races he scored 81.02 and 96.34 FIS points respectively, the average of which gets him well below the Olympic qualification cut-off point of 120 FIS points.

For good measure he added a third place in the Slalom at the Brazilian National Championships a week later.

Heath, now recovering at his parents’ home in Lyminge, said: "Having worked so hard to be able to afford this trip to the South American qualifying races, I was under pressure to compete.

"I am very lucky the way it all turned it. The injury could have been far worse."