British Disabled Ski Team
On 17 December 2010, it was announced that Mills has been offered a trial in the British disabled ski team's development squad for the 2014 Winter Paralympic Games to be held in Sochi, Russia and in April 2011, she bought a ski chalet near Goldeck am Millstätter See, in the Austrian Alps, for £1.4 million as a base for her Winter Paralympic Games training.
The Daily Mail reported, on 12 May 2011, that Mills had been airlifted to hospital by helicopter, "after her right shoulder blade broke in several places", following a skiing accident in which she collided with a frozen plastic pole while training with the British Disabled Ski Team’s development squad on the Mölltaler glacier in Austria. In May 2011, Hello! magazine ran an article about her ambitions for the 2014 Paralympic Games as well as her efforts to stay fit and healthy with her vegan lifestyle following the accident. On 27 November 2011 it was reported that Mills had again had a skiing accident on the Mölltaler glacier, this time injuring the stump of her partly amputated left leg, as well as breaking her thumb. Austria's daily Kleine Zeitung newspaper quoted her as saying that two male teenagers came to her rescue, but "when I took off my artificial leg they screamed in terror, because they thought the leg had come off in the accident". She was told that it will take five weeks before she can resume training.
According to the Daily Mirror, she won the Gold Medal at the Austria Cup Super G Ski Speed Race at Innerkrems on 12 February 2012, competing for the British disabled ski team, despite still suffering from a fractured shoulder and broken thumb and in March 2012, at the United States' Adaptive Alpine Skiing National Championships World Cup event held in Aspen, Colorado, she won a further four gold medals on the formidable Tiehack speed course (two Super G ski speed races and two downhill events) despite having to compete wearing a plaster cast to protect a broken thumb.
Read more about this topic: Heather Mills
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