She is undisputedly one of Britain’s best paraskiers in a generation, but before Millie Knight had even turned 20 she was already considering walking away from the sport. Four brutal concussions in five years left her trying to pick up the pieces of a psychological trauma caused by so many crashes on the slopes. 

Endless meetings with sports psychologists followed, as she tried to process the memories of being thrown about like a rag doll on an icy course, helpless as her face burned up in the snow.

Knight’s visual impairment means hurtling down a snowy mountainside with huge black dots splodged across her vision. It’s a feat she has repeated thousands of times, having made her Paralympic debut at the Sochi Games in 2014 – at 15 the youngest ever British Paralympian, and a flag-bearer for the team. But back then she had little idea of just how extraordinary, or courageous, her achievements were.

“Circa 2017, I was a young teenager who was carefree who had never had a big crash and never fully understood that the sport that I did was dangerous,” the 23-year-old tells Telegraph Sport. “So I took the risks. I wanted to go as fast as possible. And then I had these crashes and it was a massive sense of reality. I gained a sense of mortality, I guess. Fear sunk in, which was obviously not present before.”

As Knight prepares for a third Winter Games, where she will compete in all five Alpine disciplines, she reflects on her journey battling the after effects of concussion. Just four weeks separated her first and second head injuries, the latter when she crashed out of the test event for the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games with symptoms that would continue for seven months. 

In a testament to her huge mental resilience, Knight returned to the same spot the following year and took two silvers and a bronze in Pyeongchang as a 19-year-old. But by that point, the constant grind of elite sport at such a young age had caught up with her. 

“I had been racing solidly at that point for eight years, without a break, combining schoolwork with A-Levels, GCSEs, Paralympic Games, World Championships, trying to kind of juggle every single ball under the sun,” says Knight. “I needed some time off.”