Scottish Olympic history has been rewritten with the four athletes named in Team GB’s cross-country squad for Sochi competing for the same ski club in rural Aberdeenshire.
Andrew Musgrave, 24, his sister Rosamund, better known as Posy, 27, Callum Smith, 21, and Andrew Young, 22, were added by the British Olympic Association to the dozen Scots already on the flight to Russia.
Remarkably, all four learned the sport at the Huntly Nordic Ski Club and trained at the Nordic Outdoor Centre Britain’s only purpose-built venue for cross-country skiing outside the town.
The sport is a running race on skis in which competitors propel themselves across the snow using poles and skis. Due to the fact every major muscle group is used, it is one of the most difficult endurance sports and requires supreme fitness.
Great Britain are yet to win a cross-country medal in any event at a winter games but Andrew Musgrave, who competed as a teenager at Vancouver in 2010, is turning heads on the sport’s international circuit.
Last weekend he sent shockwaves around the skiing world by winning the Norwegian national sprint title, overtaking three previous World Cup winners on the run-in.
His victory made front-page headlines.
Since Chamonix in 1924, Olympic cross-country skiing has been dominated by Norway, who have claimed almost 100 medals.
“The Norwegian press was definitely shocked,” said Andrew.
“They wondered how all their Olympic hopefuls had been beaten by someone from Britain. One headline was along the lines of: ‘They don’t even have snow in Britain!’
“With the Olympics just a couple of weeks away they expected their skiers to be in the form of their lives and expected a home winner. Hopefully, they won’t be too annoyed at me.”
Beating world champions, World Cup winners and former Olympic medallists put Musgrave on the Sochi radar.
“I don’t really know what to expect in Sochi, but I ought to be able to qualify, at least, for the semi-final. The top 12 reach the semis and anything can happen then.
“The funny thing is, I don’t think of myself as an out-and-out sprinter.
“A lot of my best results have come in distance races but because Sochi is at altitude and the sprint course is long and hard, it will really suit distance skiers who are also good at sprints.”
After attending Oyne Primary, Musgrave went on to Gordon Schools in Huntly where, along with his sister, Young and Smith, he became involved in cross-country skiing at the local club.
“The group of us skiing at the moment have known and trained with each other since we were 10,” he said.
At 19 he accepted an offer to train with a ski school in southern Norway. He now races for a professional Norwegian team while studying civil engineering in Trondheim.
Andrew and Posy started cross-country skiing in Alaska, where their father worked in the oil industry.
“My dad was there for about five years and we picked up the sport,” Posy said.
“Then we moved back to Scotland to Aberdeenshire when I was about 14 and joined the Huntly club. Everyone selected for the Olympics is from the club.
“They’ll be pretty excited about it.”
After school in Inverurie, where she swam with fellow Olympian Hannah Miley, Posy went on to take a Masters in Russian, spending six months in Moscow.
Debut Olympian Callum, from Inverurie, went along to an open day at the Huntly club when he was eight, joined there and then progressed through the children’s section to the British development squad and now enters the prized coterie of Team GB.
“I have never been to the Olympics before so I am not entirely sure what to expect,” he said. “I’m only 21, so quite young for my first games.
“A top 60 place would be OK, but I would be over the moon with a top 50.”
Dad Gareth and brother Euan will watch him in Sochi, where he hopes to take part in the sprint and distance events before returning to a chemical engineering degree.
Andrew Young’s results suggest an upward curve from his best place of 60th in the individual sprints at Vancouver.
“It’s been going pretty well this season so I’m feeling good and it’s great to be selected,” he said.
“My best results this year were 23rd and 29th in the freestyle sprint. It will be fantastic if I can equal those placings.”
Also from Huntly but now based in Lillehammer, he says life can be a struggle for those below elite level in the sport.
He said: “I live off the equivalent of Tesco value products, the cheapest bread you can buy and plenty bananas. A pint of milk, I think, is about £2.50 and a beer about £9. Fortunately, my mum is a doctor and she has supported me over the years.”
His father Roy Young, the Team GB coach, was one of the driving forces behind the cross-country development at Huntly.