Chemmy Alcott: Climate change means skiing may not be around for my sons

Chemmy Alcott with her husband, ex-British ski racer Dougie Crawford, and their sons

My eldest son Locki, who is seven, wants to be a ski racer like me and his dad, but I'm really torn.

I don't know if this sport, which has brought me so much opportunity and love, will be around for Locki and his little brother Cooper to enjoy.

It is 100 years since Chamonix hosted the first Winter Olympics in 1924, but research by the International Olympic Committee last year found only 10 countries will be able to host snow sports by 2040 due to the impact of climate change.

Chamonix's legacy is rightly being celebrated - but actually, I think there's a sadness in celebrating something that is changing so radically.

We're in Chamonix at the moment and wanted to bring you the men's downhill World Cup action from here in this week's episode of Ski Sunday. But it has been cancelled, along with the women's downhill in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, due to high temperatures and therefore poor snow conditions.

Cancellations are becoming the norm. I feel like we're not giving the mountains, which give us this opportunity to show how great our sport is, the love and the protection they need.

We're not adapting to the environment. We're asking the environment to adapt to the races, and we can't do that. Instead, we need to look at the calendar, look at the mountains and the snow levels, and work with nature.

Everyone now knows they have to use their voice and the athletes are demanding change.

'The height of Big Ben, lost in my lifetime'

I learned to ski when I was 18 months old, and I first skied the Vallee Blanche - an off-piste run on glaciers next to Mont Blanc - when I was 10. It was an iconic moment for me because I was skiing one of the most famous runs in the world.

You always remember your first win in sports. Well, I remember the first time I skied Vallee Blanche.

And then I went back there 25 years later thinking I knew what to expect. But I was just blown away by how much it had changed.

When I was 10, I took five steps from the run to walk to the gondola. When I went back 25 years later, those five steps had become 580.

The glacier has lost so much volume at the bottom, more than 100m - that's more than the height of Big Ben. Think of that vertical height, lost in just my lifetime.

Chemmy Alcott on the Vallee Blanche

Now, when you hike up the steps, there is a plaque every 10m showing the retreat of the glacier, and you can see how quickly it is happening.

It's something that you can't ignore once you've seen it. I have become passionate about it, but I'll admit it's something that took me a long time to become passionate about.

When I was a ski racer for Great Britain, I didn't really look up at what was around me. From 1999 to 2014, I spent my life in a very selfish, vicious circle of travelling the world racing, training and then travelling again. It was about me being as fast as I could be.

It took this second time at Vallee Blanche for me to realise how the mountains are changing right in front of my eyes - and for me to really start caring.

That danger of the very immediate future is causing me to try and make the changes that I can. So many people care about the mountains, but they don't know how to make a change.

But it's about us all collectively trying to be more positive towards protecting our winters.

There's hope in terms of resorts becoming powered by renewable energy, there's hope that there are snow trains running now from London to the Alps that help you massively reduce your carbon footprint.

There's hope in terms of what you can do. I rent my clothes, I drive an electric car, I eat less meat and this winter I used the snow train to get out to the Alps. It's about purpose over perfection, adapting your expectations and making a few sacrifices.

I 100% fear for my sons' future in skiing. There's no way they could lead the life that I did as a professional skier. I used to fly to New Zealand to ski every summer, but that's not something I'm going to encourage to my children because it's not good for the planet.

So we're just enjoying every moment on the snow that we can right now because we know that those moments aren't infinite.

Watch Ski Sunday on 4 February from 17:15 GMT on BBC Two and BBC iPlayer.