Three days later, after returning to a hero’s welcome in Aviemore, the skier would get a phone call which would change his life. He had tested positive for drugs and subsequently his medal was to be stripped and given to fourth-place.

The rest, of course, is history. The miniscule traces of methamphetamine found in his urine sample were proved to have come from a Vicks inhaler he bought over the counter in the USA.

“You could spend days talking about this,” he tells us. “But with slalom being the last event, the mobile lab had already packed up and left. So my sample went to LA, which was one of three labs in the world at the time that went below 100 nanograms.

Alain would never get his medal, a decision that many – the majority – of the skiing community still see as a shocking injustice.

He continued: “I went from such a high point to the low of thinking that my career was over. I had no idea where [the positive test] had come from or what I was going to do. I just handed over my wash bag with everything in it I had taken – a herbal sleeping tablet and things like that – and we found out it was the Vicks inhaler. That was about three weeks later.

“When you have no idea and it comes out that it’s something that you’ve bought over the counter in America, compared to what you’re hearing in the news these days… It’s a disaster. The IOC just weren’t budging, even though I had cleared my name they just weren’t budging on the medal. They kept me disqualified and gave the medal to fourth place.”

“The IOC just weren’t budging, even though I had cleared my name they just weren’t budging…”

That fourth place would be Austrian Benjamin Raich, and the bitter irony would be that in Alain’s next race, the first of the following season, the Scotsman would again take third while Raich finished in fourth.

The debate over the medal would be drawn out in the following years and beyond, resurfacing often when the Winter Olympics rolls back around.

Over 5,000 people signed a petition for the return of Alain’s medal, including prominent MPs, after the Sochi games in 2014, where Jenny Jones of course took Britain’s first official medal on snow with her bronze in Slopestyle Snowboarding.

“I first came across [Crashed Ice] years ago,” says Alain. “I think this is the tenth year at the moment. I saw it when I was at our base in Austria and thought it looked amazing, but I never had the time to try it out.”

He’s found that time now. After being invited along to one of the trials for the Scottish Bravehearts team by Red Bull earlier this year, the Olympian impressed by winning all of his heats and booked his place in Belfast a few weeks later.

It does seem fitting that he’s on the ‘Bravehearts’ team given that he also blazed into the headlines in Salt Lake for dying his hair into a Scottish saltire before being told to remove it by Team GB – “I didn’t realise we weren’t allowed to,” he laughs. “It was classed as a political statement, but I was just being a proud Scot. As usual I had absolutely no idea it was going to cause so much trouble!”

It’s not only his ski skills that are helping him out on the Crashed Ice course though. The Scotsman is a vigorous athlete in pretty much every sense of the word. It’s in his blood.

Baxter’s parents competed, his auntie was an Olympian, his brother Noel was on the Team GB ski team with him and cousin and snowboarder Lesley McKenna has competed in three Winter Olympics as well. He grew up not only skiing but playing shinty and ice-hockey competitively as well, the latter of which set him up nicely for his latest endeavour.

The Scot missed out on qualifying during that first weekend in Belfast, and narrowly did the same in Edmonton in March, but it’s clear to see that he’s progressing through his results. He’s happy to admit that the past year has been somewhat of a learning curve.

“It takes a little bit of getting used to,” he tells. “I was taken quite a bit by surprise in Belfast, but when you get used to the speed it’s fine. I knew how to tackle the course.

“If you go down hard then you hurt yourself though, just like you do in other sports. The transition was rough and there were a lot of people getting hurt there. These things happen.”

They certainly do. Alongside Alain in the medical room were riders boasting bust ankles and dislocated shoulders. It’s a dangerous sport, and after watching the guys in action, it’s hard not to wonder how the injuries aren’t often more severe.

Baxter remains hopeful for the rest of the season though, aiming to regain his health and strength in the next few weeks and fight back to battle on the ice as soon as possible.

“It’s just about gaining experience all the time, because it’s a very difficult thing to train. The guys that are winning have a lot of experience and that was only my third event.

“Anything can happen in these four-at-a-time heats, though. I know I can qualify and get in there; it’s just how much further I can take it from there. I’m just as competitive as I used to be.”

He’s clearly still got the same drive as he always did. He’s confident of his abilities on the ice, of his fitness and his skills, and he speaks in a measured voice that tells of his fervour.

If Baxter doesn’t make it back for Munich, he’ll certainly be back in the line up when Crashed Ice touches down in Finland at the end of January, and for the final of the four-part season in Saint Paul, Minnesota almost exactly a month later.

We’ll be keeping a close eye to see if he can build on his performance in Quebec and defy expectations again. Because when Alain Baxter is involved, you know there’s always another twist around the corner.

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