Skier slid 650ft to her death

Experienced skier Brenda Smith is thought to have skidded on ice and careered off piste in the French Alps resort of Les Deux Alpes before slamming into a tree and dying from multiple injuries.

Mrs Smith, 56, an occupational therapist, was married to Dr Keith Smith, a consultant maxillofacial oral surgeon at Sheffield's Charles Clifford Dental Hospital, who was in the region for a conference.

The couple had moved into a 500,000 home in Bessacarr, Doncaster, shortly before the tragedy on March 7 this year.

A Doncaster inquest heard yesterday that Mrs Smith, who had been skiing for 15 years, was behind her husband and a friend on a black (difficult) run she had successfully tackled that morning.

When Dr Smith stopped part way down and looked back for his wife he did not see her so assumed she had skied another way to the bottom of the slope but he could not find her there.

He went back up in the ski lift and was shocked to recognise his wife motionless on the ground with two people around her. "I saw her from the lift. I was aware there was a serious problem," he said.

It appeared his wife had died almost instantly after sliding unconscious, knocking over a snowboarder and then ending up in a copse of trees off the slope. One witness estimated the fall at 650ft.

Dr Smith told the hearing: "My wife was a very experienced skier and we went skiing at least three times a year."

Deputy coroner Fred Curtis recorded a verdict of accidental death. He said: "There was a very considerable impact. I am satisfied that death was almost instantaneous."