She was the Chemmy Alcott of her time, Britain’s fastest female downhill skier and captain of the British women’s squad for the 1948 Winter Olympics.
Isobel Roe, of Le Varclin Orchard, St Martin’s, was her name and in a world long before presenter Clare Balding was born, the half-pipe was merely a left over remnant of war time bombings and the world prepared to follow the ‘48 Games in St Moritz, Switzerland, by radio and newspapers only, the Guernsey Press briefly heralded her achievements and informed locals that she was very much ‘ours’.
Now that might have been stretching the point a little, but more than once in the build-up to the first post Second World War Olympics, the Press would refer to ‘Guernsey’s international skiing star’ and ‘Miss I Roe of Guernsey’ alongside pictures of this woman who had been well-known in the Sarnian sporting world via tennis but, over time, has very largely been overlooked.
The younger daughter of a retired Naval man, Commander D W Roe, Isobel seemingly lived a fairly privileged life and never married.
Just how long she was a ‘Guernsey girl’ is unclear, but in 1933, aged 17, she was winning both the island singles and women’s doubles tennis titles and 15 years later the Press was still declaring her to be Guernsey’s, and not of Amersham in Buckinghamshire where she was likely living by then.
Was she good? Good enough to mix it with Europe’s finest female post-war skiers and chalk up some strong results on the post-war tour.
In January 1948, less than a month before the Olympics, she again won the British slalom title in Switzerland. This was fully a decade after winning the British ‘ski-running’ title on the slopes at Murren, Switzerland.,
Come the Winter Games, Ms Roe was leading home the British contingent, placing 27th of the 37 downhill starters.
She also placed 23rd in the slalom and the same position in the combined downhill and slalom standings.
By now, the Roes had very likely left the quiet lanes of St Martin’s and moved back to England and other than that Isobel spent time in the WRNS and became an LTA tennis coach running the Buckinghamshire Tennis Centre, the only available information on this previously unheralded Guernsey sporting star is that while cycling in Cheltenham she was hit by a lorry and killed. She was 71.
On hearing the news Elizabeth Hussey from the Ski Club of Great Britain said: ‘Everyone in the ski world knew Isobel. She was very influential.’
