Four-time Olympian Chemmy Alcott revealed exclusively to HELLO! in August 2016 that she was expecting her first baby with former ski champion husband Dougie Crawford. The couple revealed their exciting news on the snow-capped mountains of Wanaka, on New Zealand's South Island.
Chemmy, who represented Team GB throughout a 20-year-sporting career, said at the time: "It was my acupuncturist who first told me. How phenomenal that he could tell before I even knew." Chemmy had injured her knee five months earlier and was having treatment to make sure she was recovering well. "He'd stopped me drinking coffee to help the healing but I think it also helped my fertility. He knew we wanted to start a family. At one session, he told me, 'I can’t do your normal acupuncture today because your rhythms are off.'" The next morning the acupuncturist messaged, saying: "I think you should do a pregnancy test." "I thought, 'I won’t get my hopes up, I'll wait until Dougie gets back.' I lasted three hours. I did the test and it was positive." Immediately, Chemmy called Dougie to share the news. "He was on top of a glacier in Austria about to take one of the most important ski instructor tests of his life. He was so excited. We were both screaming down the phone."
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Dougie was there for the first scan and says: "It was possibly even more emotional for me, as Chemmy had felt that she was pregnant as everything happens in her body. For me, it had been more distant. Then to see the heartbeat and our tiny baby was so amazing. I was very emotional. It became very real." The couple, both now retired from professional skiing, run their own business, CDC Performance, to help young people develop life skills through sport. Their busiest camp runs from 16 December to 9 January in Austria, Switzerland or Italy when their baby arrives. "I’m so hoping he'll be there that I’m not even thinking about a back-up plan yet. I have a great family and friends who would keep me calm. I'm in a bit of denial as I want him to be there." Dougie proposed aboard a boat on the Thames, which laps the end of their garden.
How about baby names? "We have a girl's name but we're struggling with a boy's. I like different names, in that I'm called Chemmy [after Sophia Loren's role in 1960s film El Cid]. I love the idea of giving quite a quirky name to our baby. Dougie is Scottish so there may be a Gaelic influence." Since retiring from competition after the Sochi 2014 Games, Chemmy's life has continued apace. She has taken part in the Arctic Circle Race in Greenland, known as the world’s toughest cross-country ski race, and the 100-mile cycling road race Ride London. When they retired they said they'd get married, which they did at Syon Park in Middlesex in 2014. "Then we said we wanted to do business, breakfast bar and babies," says Chemmy. "The business is going great, the babies we’re now on top of and, for the next few months, we'll have to move out of our house while we do our kitchen extension so we will have our breakfast bar!" As for the kind of parents they hope to be, Chemmy says: "Dougie might be a little stricter than me, but we will definitely compete over who can have more fun with the baby."