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Skier’s perfume blends rose oil with confidence

posted by Pretty Tough | Girls Who Are Fun Fierce & Feminine
Friday, October 16, 2009 at 6:40pm EDT

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Ahh, the sweet smell of success.

2009 U.S. freestyle skiing champion Michelle Roark, has never lacked ambition. At age 5, she decided she wanted to become a chemical engineer and compete in the Winter Olympics.

Roark has been to one Olympics (Torino), is hoping to compete next February at the Vancouver Games, and is only a couple of classes shy of earning a chemical engineering degree.

Her record includes a World Cup season title, six World Cup victories, 15 World Cup podiums, and a world championships silver medal but Roark’s most recent endeavor may be her most impressive achievement.

Convinced that the scent from a patent-pending perfume blend that she developed and calls “Confidence” is as important to her athletic success as a good night’s sleep, Roark has been putting her chemical engineering education to good use and developed a natural fragrance line called Phi-nomenal.

Roark blends her patented perfumes in a lab located in a beautiful old brick building in downtown Denver. There she also owns a beauty salon and spa. The space next door houses a trampoline, along with other workout equipment so she can train for the ski season.

She began working on creating natural fragrances because synthetic perfumes gave her headaches. Synthetic perfumes use an ethanol alcohol base, which Roark says is toxic. Claiming that a natural essence really has a life to it you can’t get with synthetics, Roark goes to Bulgaria for rose, Hungary for lavender, Florida for citrus. She wants to go to Madagascar for vanilla and India for sandalwood.

A recent WSJ article profiling Roark explains:

Scientific studies have shown that smell and emotion exist in the same network of neural structures known as the limbic system—an ancient core of the brain that dates to the beginning of human evolution. People might experience the connection when the smell of baking cornbread returns them to a Thanksgiving morning decades ago.

Ms. Roark’s research is designed to take this connection to a practical level by creating a concoction that will be as universal in its ability to improve performance as aspirin is in relieving headaches. Her scent, “Confidence” is a mix of rose oil from Bulgaria, bergamot from Italy, and grapefruit from Florida. She insists that these scents help her succeed and that they can be used to create the same emotional effects in others.

Before competing, Roark claims to douse her neck-warmer in the natural fragrance and spritz it on the back of her neck and behind her ears. At the age of 35, she’s still tearing up the slopes so it seems there’s something to her theories.

Since developing Confidence, Roark has created scents for Focus, Balance, Adventure and Imagination and she does custom blends as well.

Not only is she Pretty Tough, but Pretty Smart as well.

For more info, check out the Phi-nomenal website.