Meet Millie Knight, the 18-year-old Winter Paralympian taking home two silver medals from South Korea

At just 18 years old, Millie Knight travelled to South Korea as one of Britain’s best chances of a medal at the Pyeongchang 2018 Paralympic Games. The predictions were right, over the opening weekend of the Games, Knight won two silver medals in the downhill and super G events.

The Kent schoolgirl and her Glaswegian submariner guide, Brett Wild, seem an unlikely pair but it was their combined talents that brought home Britain’s first ever gold medals on snow, at the World Alpine Para Championships in Tarvisio in January this year. Last season the pair also notched up a total of seven World Cup wins, making them overall visually-impaired World Cup downhill champions.

Knight started skiing as a six year old on a family holiday to Méribel just like thousands of other British kids, but for her, learning brought added challenges. “I started skiing about the same time that I started losing my sight so I used to follow my mum or a ski instructor and watch their knees to know if there were bumps coming.”  

She grew up on a farm near Canterbury and aged one contracted an infection that damaged the retina in her right eye. Knight was treated with steroid injections and the condition lay dormant until she was six years old, when the peripheral vision in her left eye also deteriorated. “I don’t even remember losing my sight, because my mum did such a good job of guiding me around and making sure everything was OK.”

The Knight family continued to ski recreationally until Millie had a light-bulb moment when she was 11 years old at 2010’s The Telegraph Ski & Snowboard Show. Here she met Paralympian sit-ski downhiller Sean Rose, who had recently competed at the Vancouver 2010 Paralympics.

“He told me about the event and it sounded amazing, so I decided that competing at the Paralympics was what I wanted to do.”  

Apart from the occasional ski school race Knight had never skied through gates, but after a trial was accepted onto the GB development squad.  

At 12 years old Knight was too young for a full World Para Alpine race licence, so she could only enter a limited number of lower level competitions and just compete in slalom and giant slalom events. For the first couple of competitions raced with her mum Suzanne as her guide.  “It was really, really good fun, but soon my coach said you’re starting to pick up speed and should look for another guide.”

In 2013, aged 14, Knight hooked up with Rachel Ferrier a 17-year-old ski racer and instructor from Glasgow and the pair had some initial success, and after a couple of attempts won an international race in Rinn, Austria.  

Although their results were encouraging the selectors said they were a longshot at best to make the GB team for the upcoming Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games. Yet on her fifteenth birthday, just seven weeks ahead of the opening ceremony, Knight received the call up. She has no idea why they changed their minds. “I was in a geography class when my phone rang and there was a message saying congratulations you’ve been picked to represent GB at Sochi.

“Going to the Games was all a bit of a whirlwind because I had not been to any of the briefings, or been to Russia before and it was the first time I was away from my mum.”  

As the youngest ever winter Paralympics GB competitor, Knight was also asked to carry the flag at the opening ceremony. Not old enough to race in the speed events of downhill, super-G and combined  she went on to place fifth in the giant slalom and slalom events.

The performances in Sochi of the other British visually impaired skiers Kelly Gallagher, who won downhill gold, and Jade Etherington, who won three silvers in downhill, combined and slalom as well as a super-g bronze medal, changed the way the governing body UK Sport looked at Paralympians.  “We went to the Sochi Games with no funding and one team coach spread across all the disciplines. Now we are so much more supported than four years ago, with four coaches, two physiotherapists and access to a physiologist, psychologist and nutritionist.”  

After Sochi, Knight was lacking something even more crucial – a guide. Ferrier’s decision to enrol in university left Knight using stand-in guides for the whole of the 2014/15 season.

Step forward bearded Glaswegian submariner Brett Wild. Luckily, he knew his way around the mountains as well as his way around Davy Jones’ Locker. Wild started skiing at Glasgow dry ski slope where his father was the manager, and progressed up the ranks of ski racing and made it into the Scottish team in his teens. University put an end to his ski racing plans as his parents could no longer afford it, but an enlistment to the navy meant he could dig out his race skis again, at least for Combined Services races.  

After an invite from Knight’s coach Euan Bennet, who used to race with Wild on the Scottish team, the pair met on a trial camp on the Stubai glacier in December 2015 although a snowstorm meant they could only ski powder. Despite the limited time together, Wild was invited to guide Knight at the World Cup finals in Aspen, Colorado later that season. The pair placed third in the giant slalom and then went on to win both the super-G and downhill events - competitions she was now old enough to enter. You need to be over 16 and she was 17 at the time. Wild says, “From the start we realised speed events were our strength.”  

After those results Wild was able to take a sabbatical from the Royal Navy and become a full-time athlete.

No matter how unlikely the pairing, Knight has no doubts about Wild as her guide. “I trust him completely and when he shouts go, I go. What Brett does very well is shout encouragement and technical action words while we are racing. And he is very vocal.”  So vocal that Knight’s mother Suzanne says she even heard Wild shouting at the start of a super-G, from the finish area. Wild says, “I suppose if the comms ever go down then Millie is still going to hear me.”

Last season was their first full one working together and the results started to flow. A giant slalom World Cup win in Kühtai, wins in both giant slalom and slalom in St Moritz pre-Christmas, and a clean sweep of the speed events in Innerkrems put Knight and Wild into the position of favourites going into the Tarvisio World Championships in January. Victory in the opening downhill event was slightly soured by a crash in the finish area once they had crossed the line. However Knight says, “Climbing gingerly to the top of the podium and being crowned World Champion was the best feeling in the world, and the support back home was amazing too.”

In March 2017 Knight and Wild travelled to Pyeongchang for an Olympic test event, a trip designed to prepare them for the Paralympic Games. “We planned everything exactly how it would be for the Paralympics, the flights we caught and the length of time we spent at a holding camp acclimatising – everything was planned to the minutest detail.” Knight however, suffers from coeliac disease and they did not plan for her reaction to soy sauce, “I missed four days of training and then all I could eat was rice and fried eggs, because everything had soy sauce in it.”  

In downhill, Knight and Wild were beaten into second place by their arch-rivals, Henrieta Farkasova and Natalia Subrtova from Slovakia. A result that was mirrored in the super-G, except this time Knight again crashed in the finish area, injuring her badly enough so she couldn’t compete in any other disciplines. The test event had become a painful learning curve.  “Because I don’t have depth perception I have no idea how far away the barriers are so I tried to turn too quickly and caught an edge. I flipped a couple of times and landed on my head.”  

Wild has another way of looking at it. “I don’t stop guiding Millie until she is safely back in the hotel, and we will definitely be focusing on stopping in practice this season.”  

This winter Knight had more time to train having left King’s School in Canterbury last summer after taking her A-levels.  “It will be fantastic just to purely focus on my performance as I never get much downtime when racing or training, and fitting in my school work as well was quite stressful.” After Pyeongchang, Knight is planning to continue her education at Loughborough University and take a degree in sports psychology.

The pair have never lacked dedication and drive. As Wild said before the Games, “We are training really hard right now, and keep saying we don’t want to have any regrets. When we get to that start line in South Korea we want to have done everything we possibly can to win.”  

Knight is of a similar mindset. “When things get tough in the gym, the dream of winning an Olympic gold medal is what keeps me going," she said before the Games. "But when we get out to Pyeongchang we are going to try and treat it like a training run, except faster, and not get hung up on the outcome, just focus on the performance.”  

Knight’s main rivals

Henrieta Farkasova, with guide Natalia Subrtova, won three gold medals in Vancouver 2010 in super-G, combined and giant slalom. In Sochi 2014 they won gold in downhill and giant slalom, and in Pyongchang they will again be the ones to beat.

When to watch

March 10 2018: women’s downhill
March 11 2018: women’s super-G
March 13 2018: women’s combined
March 15 2018: women’s slalom
March 18 2018: women’s giant slalom