Menna Fitzpatrick column: Downhill fears and Norway cheers

Para-skier Menna Fitzpatrick became Britain's most successful Winter Paralympian, along with guide Jen Kehoe, when they won gold, two silvers and a bronze at the 2018 Games in Pyeongchang. Now working with new guide Katie Guest, she is aiming for the 2022 Games in Beijing, which start on 4 March, where she will bid to add to her medal tally. This is her second BBC Sport column.

We've just come back from the World Para Snow Sports Championships in Lillehammer in Norway, which didn't start the way I had hoped - but got better.

The first event was the downhill, which isn't my favourite and it's an event where historically I have struggled with nerves.

Not many visually-impaired athletes do the downhill, because it's crazy - you are going at speeds of around 70 miles per hour, getting instructions from your guide and literally pointing your skis down the slopes and hoping that everything will be fine.

Fitzpatrick and Guest had mixed fortunes at the World Championships

But we do it because we love it, and you can't get those sort of feelings anywhere else - my visual impairment means I can't drive a car, for example.

It's like being on a rollercoaster but you're in control. At those speeds, anything can happen, but you have to stay as calm as possible and think fast and that is a great test of skill.

Downhill is also the event which is most difficult to train for because you need so many resources - the perfect slope, safety nets, a lot of staff around the course so you have eyes on you and you also have to close the piste off completely, which resorts are reluctant to do.

We always have official downhill training sessions before competition and in Lillehammer it was both my first downhill since I broke my leg in 2020, and also my first time doing speed races with Katie.

I wasn't really expecting too much because we knew it was one of our weaker events, but I ended up psyching myself out of it on the second training run, so we decided not to race it at the Championships.

Skiing can be a dangerous sport and it's definitely not the safest if you're not 100% confident in what you are doing. You cannot have any doubt in your mind or any nerves when you do the downhill.

It allowed me to focus on the next event, the Super G, which I was much happier with, and each race after that got better and better.

Our final event was the Slalom and we were third after the first run behind two Austrians Elina Stary and Barbara Aigner.

We knew we had a good second run and we just hoped that it would be enough. We still led after Elina's second run but then Barbara fell in her run and it looked really nasty.

I wanted to make sure she was ok first but she was and then Katie and I could celebrate our first World title together - it was a lovely moment after what we had gone through together earlier in the week.

Fitzpatrick and Guest celebrate their first world title together

It meant a lot to us to win a world title because we are still a new pairing and getting to know how each other works and what we need to make the partnership succeed. Every race we are learning new things and coming up with new ideas.

So to ski like we did in the slalom was amazing and proves that we can we can do it, especially in an event where the standard is rising.

Previously, there may have only been five or six athletes in the race, but in Norway there were 15 athletes, which is great to see.

Now it is time to relax at home and watch the Olympics and wait to hear about Paralympic selection. My coach is Jo Ryding, the sister of skier Dave Ryding, and Katie's sister Charlie will also be skiing for GB, so we'll definitely be cheering them on.

Dave won his slalom in Kitzbuhel just hours after Katie and I won our gold and I was watching his race with Jo.

When it happened she was crying - there was so much emotion and it was amazing to see.

Dave has worked so hard for so many years. He never gives up and never misses a training session and I am in awe of how determined he is.

They are our Great Britain team-mates at the end of the day so seeing them do well is almost as special as doing it ourselves.

Menna Fitzpatrick was speaking to BBC Sport's Elizabeth Hudson

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