Ellie Soutter (25 July 2000 – 25 July 2018) was a British

snowboarder Snowboarding is a recreational and competitive activity that involves descending a snow-covered surface while standing on a snowboard that is almost always attached to a rider's feet. It features in the Winter Olympic Games and Winter Paralympic ...

. She won a bronze medal representing

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the north-west coast of continental Europe, consisting of the countries England, Scotland, and Wales. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the List of European ...

at the 2017 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival in the snowboard cross.

Early life and education

Soutter was born in England and grew up in

Oxted Oxted is a town and civil parish in the Tandridge District, Tandridge district of Surrey, England. It is at the foot of the North Downs, south-east of Croydon, west of Sevenoaks, and north of East Grinstead. Oxted is a commuter town and Ox ...

. Her parents, Tony Soutter and Lorraine Denman, divorced when she was young and Soutter and her father moved to Les Gets in the French Alps when she was nine years old. She attended local schools until 2015, at which point she was home-schooled for two years.

Career

Soutter first learned to snowboard at the age of ten. She was a member of the inaugural British Europa Cup snowboard cross programme, and specialised in the freestyle, freeride and snowboard cross events. She began competing in international events in the 2016 snowboarding season, coached by French Olympic snowboarder Déborah Anthonioz. Soutter won Great Britain's only medal at the 2017 European Youth Olympic Winter Festival, a bronze in the snowboard cross, and was also the team's flagbearer at the closing ceremony. In 2017 she was nominated and shortlisted for the

Ski Club of Great Britain The Ski Club of Great Britain is a not-for-profit recreational snow sports club. It was founded on 6 May 1903 during a meeting at the Hotel Café Royal in London. Until the 1960s, the Ski Club of Great Britain was responsible for British Alpine s ...

's Evie Pinching Award, an annual award for young snowsports athletes. Soutter had been selected to represent Great Britain at the Junior Snowboard World Championships in New Zealand in August 2018. Prior to her death, Soutter had been training in New Zealand.

Personal life

Soutter was in a relationship with French snowboarder Oscar Mandin.

Death

Soutter died by

suicide Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death. Risk factors for suicide include mental disorders, physical disorders, and substance abuse. Some suicides are impulsive acts driven by stress (such as from financial or ac ...

, near her French home on her 18th birthday, on 25 July 2018. A few days later, her father Tony said he thought her "history of

mental health Mental health is often mistakenly equated with the absence of mental illness. However, mental health refers to a person's overall emotional, psychological, and social well-being. It influences how individuals think, feel, and behave, and how t ...

issues", combined with the pressure of high-level performance expectations, contributed to her death, and called on sports authorities to provide better support for young athletes. He said "mental health awareness needs to be really looked at and made more public". Several years later, her father would be more explicit, telling that Soutter suffered 7 major

concussions A concussion, also known as a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), is a head injury that temporarily affects brain functioning. Symptoms may include headache, dizziness, difficulty with thinking and concentration, sleep disturbances, a brie ...

between 2013 and 2018 and that every time she had another one, they got worse, and they took longer to recover from. Despite being told by doctors after each case that she was young enough to bounce back to full health, she was hospitalised after a final "huge" concussion. It was so bad that she didn't recognise her father or where she was. But even then, a

neurologist Neurology (from , "string, nerve" and the suffix -logia, "study of") is the branch of medicine dealing with the diagnosis and treatment of all categories of conditions and disease involving the nervous system, which comprises the brain, the ...

concluded after a CT brain scan that she could continue competing and "was absolutely fine”. The Soutter family set up a fundraiser in her name to help poor young winter sports athletes. A family statement read, "as a junior athlete coming from a family without substantial wealth, Ellie often had to miss out on competing and training through lack of funds".Ellie Soutter: British snowboarder's family start fundraiser for young athletes
BBC SPORT. Published 30 July 2018. Retrieved 31 July 2018.

References

External links

The Ellie Soutter Foundation

Ellie Soutter reflects on Erzurum 2017

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. Uploaded by

Team GB Team GB is the brand name used since 1999 by the British Olympic Association (BOA) for their British Olympic team. The brand was developed after the nation's poor performance in the 1996 Summer Olympics, and is now a trademark of the BOA. ...

on 17 February 2017. {{DEFAULTSORT:Soutter, Ellie 2000 births 2018 deaths 2018 suicides 21st-century British sportswomen British emigrants to France British female snowboarders Olympic snowboarders for Great Britain Sportspeople from Haute-Savoie Sportspeople from Surrey Suicides by hanging in France