Fred Warburton caps remarkable rise with Paralympic debut

As Fred Warburton held his arms aloft as he crossed the finish line on his Paralympic debut at Milano Cortina, he completed a whirlwind journey to the summit of his sport.

The visually impaired Para alpine skier from Winteringham finished seventh with a time of 1:30.32 in the men’s downhill VI to achieve an ambition not long in the making.

It marked Warburton first-ever downhill race, having only started training the discipline this week, a fact that belies how rapid his journey to the top has been.

He had only begun competing in skiing just over a year ago, and making his debut alongside guide James Hannan marked another milestone.

“Wow what a rollercoaster ride. It was our first ever downhill race and we had our first ever ski race just a year and five days ago,” he said.

“So, it was a really amazing experience to ski that hill. Absolutely iconic.

“It’s a story of grit and determination and it really shows that anyone out there who is faced with some adversity in their life, if you put your best foot forward, you can do anything.”

The 31-year-old, who juggles training with full-time work as a software engineer admitted that the race to qualify to compete at the Winter Paralympics had been as much of a challenge as pushing out of the start gate on his debut.

“[Not long ago] I was just a tourist going to a ski resort. I knew that I was losing my vision around seven years ago and I decided to put my best foot forward and absolutely attack it. It’s been an amazing journey,” he said.

“We’ve absolutely compacted [everything] into just over a year. We’ve got qualification, we’ve got here. It was a race within a race for us really.”

“A big goal for us is 2030 and building towards that bigger goal.”

But when Warburton sets goals he does not do it by halves. Despite never having tackled Para alpine skiing’s fastest discipline, he was never going to turn the opportunity down.

And with four events still left to compete in, there is plenty of time to put his rapid learning to the test once again.

“This week we just thought, ‘You know what we’re going to jump in at the deep end,‘” said Warburton.

“We’d never actually trained a downhill either so the first training run was our first ever training of a downhill.

“I loved it. It was absolutely amazing.”