So much for the pragmatism of Jose Mourinho and the winner-takes-all shibboleths of modern sport. Winning without style? Hide under the table.
At 31, McKenna is the grande dame of snowboarding, nose-stud and all, one of those rarities who progressed from two skis to one and didn’t learn the lingo of the snowboard from birth. She is the chief spokesperson for a sport still uneasy about its inclusion in a movement as monolithic and materialistic as the Olympics. The symbol of the five rings sells equipment, millions of dollars’ worth, but the riders find the blazers and clipboards of Olympic officialdom rather less appealing. Left to themselves, they would be happy messing about on the slopes, trying new tricks and feeling their freedom.
“I do feel a bit like a mother figure these days,” says the Scot. “Maybe more like a big sister. There’s no reason not to help the younger ones. I started riding when I was a bit older, so they look up to me, I suppose.”
McKenna’s restless energy has been channelled into setting up a film production company with her friend, the photographer Josie Clyde. ChunkyKnit Productions was founded after a conversation about the dearth of all-girl snowboard films.
“Right, let’s do it,” Clyde said. So they did. DropStitch was their first release; Transfer, last year’s sequel, premiered in New Zealand. Part of the ambition is to publicise the sport more widely, but McKenna also wanted to create a community of European-based female boarders to match the spirit of the Americans. In Turin she will feel among friends, not frozen by the prospect of competing in front of 40m viewers and her parents, her fate in Salt Lake City four years ago. “I got to the top of the half-pipe and I felt like I would be letting everyone down if I didn’t do well,” she recalls. “You can freak out.”
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Injury has curtailed her preparations for her second Games, which both increases and eases the pressure. At last, you sense, after 15 years in a precarious sport, the girl from Aviemore can compete on her own terms, not surmounting impossible odds on a wing and a prayer but with the support of decent sponsors — she is a member of the Volvo for Life team — and a realistic understanding that if it is her day, she can win a medal; if not, never mind. It has been a long and arduous journey from the slopes of the Cairngorms where she learnt to love the hills and the outdoors.
The formative moment in McKenna’s life has just passed its 10th anniversary, the day the British ski team retreated from the Tyrol to mourn the death of Kim McGibbon, their teammate, killed in a freak training accident at just 20. McGibbon and McKenna were kindred spirits, curious about life and eager for an adventure largely denied them by the suffocating politics and lack of funding in British skiing at the time.
McKenna came back to her home in Aviemore to find a card written by McGibbon before her death. “Flip beyond the dimensions in ’96,” it read. A poem composed by McGibbon on the night before she died was read out at the funeral by her sister, the words standing as a monument to a tragically brief life: “Do not be afraid as others will follow, we will meet at the path’s end.”
A disillusioned McKenna took refuge in snowboarding and the warmth of her friends back home. Dropped from the ski team and with £2 in her pocket, she unilaterally set up the British Snowboarding Squad — captain and chief member, L McKenna — and drummed up some sponsorship.
Blank looks greeted her first World Cup event, but her bubbly personality and sheer bravado soon marked her out, and she was away, winning two World Cup half-pipes and regularly reaching the podium.
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“I feel very close to Kim’s spirit because it’s a spirit we shared,” she once told me. “She believed that whatever you’re doing in life, you should live by it, and that’s how I’m living now.” Ten years on, McKenna is still chasing the dream for both of them. “The ChunkyKnit stuff and all that, yeah, Kim would have been in there, 110%.”
Even in the past nine months while McKenna was nursing a snapped tendon back in Aviemore, her sport has moved on. Half-pipes have become superpipes, with broader sweeps of snow and higher banking to encourage more extreme moves. Young kids barely out of school are extending the limits of possibility.
In Turin the half-pipe will be barely recognisable from Salt Lake. Yet so subjective is the judging, so instinctive the feel for competition, that any of the 12 finalists could come away with gold.
McKenna has to qualify first. “I’ve got nothing to lose,” she says. “I was supposed to spend the season putting the finishing touches to my preparations for Turin, but I was on crutches for three months and doing rehab for four, so we’re on to plan B. It’s a matter of throwing caution to the wind. I know I’m a stylish rider, and if I’m having a good day, who knows? “But I wouldn’t give up any of the past 15 years just for a piece of metal. It’s about chasing a dream, and I’ve pretty much lived my dream. Medals don’t mean much.”