Keeping it in the family

Daughter guides mom down slopes in last-minute linkup

Veteran Belgian vision-impaired skier Linda Le Bon is having to dig extra deep at the 2022 Winter Paralympic Games.

Le Bon's sighted guide was unable to make it to Beijing, so her own daughter had to step in as a last-minute replacement.

Despite being 57, Le Bon is still a force to be reckoned with on the vision-impaired skiing circuit, winning silver medals in the downhill and super-G at the 2021 world championships in Lillehammer, Norway.

Le Bon took up skiing at the age of 20 and worked as a ski instructor, physical education teacher and horse-riding instructor before being diagnosed with macular degeneration in 2012.

Her original guide, Pierre Couquelet, a 1984 Winter Olympian who she had trained with for over a year before the Games, was a late withdrawal from the Beijing Winter Paralympics.

Faced with the possibility of missing out on the Games altogether, Le Bon turned to her 22-year-old daughter, Ulla Gilot, herself a sighted guide.

Despite mixed emotions and dashed medal hopes, the experience of skiing with her daughter as a guide has been unforgettable.

"When she was 3 years old, I guided her. It's a bit incredible. But it's not always easy because I have to switch off, she is the guide now," said Le Bon.

"We practiced for only a week before the Games, and we've never skied together before.

"With my previous guide we trained 16 months, so there is a big difference. But we are improving," Le Bon added.

Despite their relative inexperience working together on the slopes, Le Bon's results at the Games have so far been respectable. She placed fifth, sixth and seventh in the vision-impaired women's super combined, downhill and super-G, respectively.

Le Bon will compete in the vision-impaired women's slalom and giant slalom later in the week at the National Alpine Skiing Centre in Yanqing.

Vision-impaired skiing requires an unprecedented level of trust between skier and sighted guide, with the skier needing to have nerves of steel.

"Of course I'm scared sometimes. We sometimes reach speeds of 100 kilometers per hour. But I still think that I should do it," said Le Bon.

For Gilot, besides the excitement of racing with her mother, she's sorry things haven't played out the way mom wanted.

"I'm just a reserve. I wasn't supposed to be here," said Gilot. "It's great to be here but of course for her it would have been better if her guide was here."

Her mother disagreed. "It's great to be here, together with her," she said.

When asked if she would choose her daughter as a sighted guide in future, Le Bon replied: "I think so."