Ben Kilner, Britain's top male snowboarder, is finally set to swap his pipe dreams for a real taste of Winter Olympic action.The 21-year-old is on the brink of qualification for the half-pipe at the 2010 Games in Vancouver after a blistering year.
Not that he has done it the easy way. After turning down a place at university in an attempt to qualify for Turin in 2006 he agonisingly missed out before dislocating and fracturing his knee in 2007.
But speaking from the top of a glacier in the Austrian resort of Hintertux, where he is in the middle of a two-week training stint, Kilner insists all the hard work has been worthwhile.
'I've always had the Olympics as the dream,' said the boarder from Banchory, Scotland.
'It was always a bit of a dream that seemed miles away but now it's here. I've got two more qualifying events to go.
You have to be in the world top 40 to qualify for Vancouver and at the moment I'm 23rd so I'm in a good, secure position and one more qualifying event should do it. A medal is my top, top goal but top 15 is more realistic.
I'm looking to pick up as much experience as I can before the 2014 Games.'
Kilner, who started the year as an outsider for qualification before a string of impressive World Cup results, including a ninth-place finish in Italy, admits at times it has been a difficult path.
'Yeah, it was a tough choice to become a pro boarder.
Ever since I got my first sponsor I had to make the decision that I would have no time for education. I was very wary.
I had just finished my exams but decided to sacrifice university and aim for the 2006 Olympics. But my parents have been more than supportive and given me plenty of guidance.'
That support would have been tested to the full after a heavy fall while warming up for a World Cup event in Calgary, fracturing and dislocating his knee.
'It was just a heavy impact fall but I was out in the backwater and had to be airlifted into hospital,' he recalls.
'It was absolutely agonising, excruciating. But I recovered and was actually boarding again, before having an MRI scan on the knee as it still just didn't feel right. It was then I was told I had a bit of bone which had dislodged and lodged itself between the joint.'
But I was able to walk out of hospital two weeks after surgery and have forgotten about it since really. Snowboarding is such a high-risk sport, you're going to fall to learn. You suffer so much aches and pains you just forget about it. Just get on with it.'
Ben Kilner will be competing at London Freeze from October 30 until November 1 at Battersea Power Station. Tickets available at www.londonfreeze.com
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