BANGKOK: In an odd announcement by hugely popular violinist Vanessa Mae, she now wants to go for top-level international skiing. And she wants to ski for Thailand at the 2014 Winter Olympics. She is already in training to become an Olympic skier with the goal of competing in 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. While Mae is a British citizen but she also holds a Thai passport. She is actually half Thai. Her father, Vorapong Vanakorn, is Thai, her mother, Pamela Tan-Nicholson, is Chinese, and now a British citizen through re-marriage. Thailand has had only one Winter Olympian in its history, Prawat Nagvajara, a cross-country skier at Salt Lake City 2002 and the 2006 Turin Winter Olympics. And Mae hopes to add a second. “People are surprised when they see me skiing,” she told Reuters in a telephone interview. “But it has been my dream to be a ski bum since I was 14. This is something I am determined to do." Vanessa-Mae has been training in Zermatt, Switzerland, for the past three years in the hope of making it to the Games in Sochi, a city on Russia's Black Sea coast near the border with Georgia, in February 2014. The International Ski Federation said that Vanessa-Mae needed a minimum of five starts in Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS) competitions and certain points to qualify for the Olympics. “She has a full year to quality and there are many events, so there are plenty of options still,” FIS spokeswoman Riikka Rakic told Reuters. Bikyanews.com
