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Life as a world champion

Whistler's Ashleigh McIvor tries to find down time before Olympic season
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Ashleigh McIvor is feeling the pressure.

It seems like everyone wants a piece of her these days, as she gets ready for her Olympic season.

In her three-week hiatus at home in Whistler recently, McIvor did a big photo shoot for Oakley and one for Conde Nast Traveller . She's doing podcast filming for Whistler Blackcomb, media interviews and she's traveling to Toronto this week for a spot with team sponsor Cold FX.

And when she was offered the chance to meet Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla in early November, she just couldn't turn down that opportunity.

Such is the life of a world champion ski cross athlete.

"Until the Olympics, I'm so busy, it's insane," sighs 25-year-old McIvor candidly.

To look at her defies the statement as she lounges in her jeans and hoodie, shower damp hair, no make up, bare feet tucked under her legs - the quintessential Whistler girl.

It doesn't help matters that she's pretty, personable and the only member of the Canadian ski cross team to be nominated to the Canadian Olympic Team.

In many ways, she's been gearing up for this throughout her whole life and the stars seemed to have magically aligned.

Whistler and Vancouver were awarded the Games in 2003. The next year McIvor started ski cross racing. She became World Champion in 2009. And in February ski cross will be featured in the 2010 Games for the first time ever, on her home turf.

"Indirectly I've been training to be a top ski cross athlete my whole life, growing up skiing here, racing alpine. I just didn't realize the specific direction I would take," she says.

"(The 2010 Games are) going to open eyes for sure. It's such a good spectator sport. I think people are going to be blown away. And just the fact that our Canadian team is so dominant - I think it's just going to make everyone proud and everyone's going to get behind us, I hope," she says.

But right now she's trying to find that tricky balance between meeting her media and sponsor commitments without sacrificing time in the gym getting ready for the season. And not to forget what she came back to Whistler to do in the first place - rest up before the season.

McIvor is trying not to dwell too heavily on the big event in the middle of this season. She feels like she's in the best physical shape of her life, stronger than she's ever been before. As for the mental side, she feels as though she'll be ready by the start of the season.

"I'm trying to maintain the approach that the Olympics are just another race," she says. "And people keep telling me that's really naïve and that's crazy because it's the Olympics and it's going to be a complete zoo and it's going to be madness and mayhem. All I can do is my best, so I'll just keep telling myself that and just treat it like just another race."

She loves the Cypress Mountain course she'll be racing on; she placed second there in last year's test event. And she'll be expecting lots of family members on the sidelines cheering her on - one of the hometown advantages for the Whistler-born McIvor.

But her friends are another story.

"So many of them have been booted out of their places here, they're just like 'I'm out of here for the Olympics,'" says McIvor.

It's unfortunate and frustrating. Here she is competing in the biggest event of her career to date, one hour away from where she was born... "and all my friends are hating on them (the Olympics)."

McIvor thinks they may regret missing it in the long run. But she can appreciate their frustration. She's been through it herself - a reasonably priced room to rent in Whistler is hard to come by.

During the Games she isn't planning on coming to Whistler. The ski cross team will be staying in the Vancouver athletes' village for parts of the Games and she has been advised by people like former Olympic gold medal rower Marnie McBean to have friends and family visit her there.

"I made a lot of sacrifices to focus on my skiing," she says. "It's hard to poke my head in and out of the Whistler lifestyle and the Whistler scene. It's hard to come home and get back involved in the life I have here and stay motivated to keep training and going away on the road."

Here there's always powder to ski with friends she explains, mountain bike rides and boating in the summer time.

In the meantime, McIvor will wear the mantle of world champion for at least another year and a half. (The world championships are held every two years.)

She'll be replaying that win in her mind this year, and how she won it in Inawashiro, Japan. She recalls how she missed a gate in qualifying and had to hike up the steepest part of the mountain for two minutes to get back on course. All she really wanted to do after that hike was go back to her hotel room.

But she didn't.

Because of her poor qualifying runs she had the worst lane choice every run thereafter. It didn't matter. She took top spot on the podium. It was the win that guaranteed her place on the Olympic team.

"My result at world championships, it just gives me the confidence to know that I can beat all those girls, so I'll just think about that."