Jade Etherington and her guide, Caroline Powell, completed a remarkable journey from total strangers to Winter Paralympic medallists in 11 months by winning silver in the women's downhill in Sochi on Saturday. In their third competitive downhill run together, they claimed Great Britain's first Paralympic medal on snow for 20 years.
It got Britain's games off to a flying start and ensured that less than an hour into day one they had already exceeded their medal total of four years ago in the Vancouver Games and were halfway to their UK Sport target of at least two medals.
The pair became the first British women to win a Paralympic skiing medal, their rise all the more astonishing given how little time they have had to build a relationship, which is key to success in visually impaired skiing. It was last April that they first got to know each other, August when they first skied competitively together and January they first competed as a pair in a downhill.
Etherington, who celebrates her 23rd birthday on Sunday, said: "I knew we could do it. I said to her [when we met]: 'Come on, we can do this, we're going to get a medal.' "
The pair, whose previous two downhill races yielded gold medals at a World Cup event in Tignes, did not have a training run on Friday because the session was cancelled, and a crash curtailed a previous attempt.
Etherington said: "I was really happy there was no training run, because I feel if you're going to be scared for your life you might as well get a result at the end of it."
She did just that, finishing in 1min 34.28sec, 2.73sec behind the Slovakian winner, Henrieta Farkasova, at the Rosa Khutor Alpine Center. She crashed into a barrier at the side of the course after crossing the line but was unhurt, with the medal joy more than making up for the bruises.
Etherington communicates with Powell down the course via radio, meaning complete trust is crucial to the partnership working.
Powell, who is 19, said: "It's basically a friendship, so you have to build a friendship and that can take years. In our case, we had to build it within a short space of time, but we were really honest with each other from the beginning. She taught me so much about guiding, I just went with what she said and it's worked. It's come together now and we're so happy."
Etherington's team-mate Kelly Gallagher, with guide Charlotte Evans finished sixth, paid tribute to Etherington: "Jade has the guts of somebody a lot bigger than her. She is a little lady but she has got it."
Olena Iurkovska dedicated Ukraine's first medal of the Winter Paralympics to independence for her country. The 30-year-old won bronze in the six kilometres sitting at the biathlon, less than 24 hours after Ukraine announced they would take part in the Games. She said: "I devote my first medal in Sochi to an independent Ukraine. Every time I race it will be for Ukrainian independence and peace in my country."
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