Snowboarder Jenise Spiteri takes a break from training in Switzerland to speak to Adriana Bishop about how she achieved her dream to represent Malta at the Winter Olympics...
What is your dream? What’s stopping you from making it come true? Whatever it is, it cannot get more extraordinary than representing Malta at the Winter Olympics and that is exactly what Maltese-American snowboarder Jenise Spiteri has managed to achieve.
But do not think her journey to the Olympics was all sunshine and fluffy snow in picture postcard scenery.
By some happy coincidence that was indeed the setting of our interview in the Swiss ski resort of Laax a couple of weeks ago.
It was a welcome reprieve for Jenise after a tortuous decade of long hours of training in sub-zero temperatures, competitions all over the world, expensive lift passes and coaching sessions, so expensive that she spends several months of the year sleeping in a freezing van to save on rent and often hikes up the mountain carrying her snowboard on her back to skip paying for the ski-lift in order to have enough money to pay for a coach.