I’m very happy to say that Virgin Active are now supporting me with free access to their amazing gym to help with my fitness and conditioning for skiing!
I can’t wait to work alongside their amazing trainers to help me improve my stamina and overall performance.
Just got back from two pretty successful weeks in Laxx!
(click on a photo to see it in full!)
I headed out to Laxx a week before all the competitions started on a GB youth training camp to get some practice in on the features! Unfortunately on the first day I badly injured my back! but with alot of neurofen and some massaging from the TENS machine I was able to recover quickly and still got in a very good week of training! Our coaches were the brilliant Neil McGrain, Dave Young and Jamie Cameron! I learnt a few new tricks in the pipe and hit some of the biggest jumps I have ever done in my life with the help from these guys!
We got up to the top of the hill and saw that on the day of the competition the pipe was wrecked! The walls had chunks taken out of them and they were covered in fresh snow. We spent a while side-slipping and shaping the walls to make as easy a ride as possible. Despite the pipe, everyone threw down in the qualifiers. I made the finals, finishing 10th overall and placing 3rd in youth mens!
This year the skiercross course was a lot more dangerous than last year. There were a lot of high speed jumps and sharp corners! The competition started the same way as usual…2 timed runs which then put us into heats but because there was only 6 in my category we went straight into the finals. I qualified for the final in 3rd along with two extremely fast racers and Ethan Prince. The racer who was favourite to win overshot the first jump, losing his skis and crashing out!
The second racer, Ethan and I had to dodge him and his equipment which was scattered everywhere to carry on! At the finish it was extremely close with the racer catching up with me but I just managed to cross the line in 1st place!
Out of all of the disciplines, I was looking forward to slopestyle the most! I had been hitting the biggest jumps on the course all week but when it came to the practice runs in the competition I could only just get enough speed to clear the mediums! In Qualifiers I was extremly dissapointed with my performance and went off the watch the boarders compete in big air and ride the pipe for a bit. I was more than shocked when my dad came over to tell me I had got into the finals. I got back to the course just in time to get one warm up run before my final runs! I was worried to hear that during one of his runs Harris Booth had knuckled and injured himself.
During the finals I put down solid runs and later went to prize giving hoping for a place – I was stunned to hear that I actually got the Gold!! Later that night I found out that I got the highest rail score in the mens overall final and placed 4th overall narrowly missing out on an overall podium!
To be honest, I didnt really hit the big air kicker that much until the day of the competition because I didnt really like it but on the day, the more I hit it the more I loved it! My two qualifying runs went really well! I stomped a 3 tail grab and a cork 7 nose! I was stoked to make it into the finals but narrowly missed out on a podium in my category coming 4th!
A huge thanks to Neil Mcgrain, Dave young and Jamie Cameron for coaching and looking after me, a massive thanks to Becky Hammond for cooking all our meals during the first week!
Thanks to all of my sponsors for supplying me with my gear and helping me to be out there! A special thanks to the Gaskin family for coming to the rescue with new poles at such short notice after I snapped both of my old ones!
Finally, thanks to Stuart and Spencer for putting on such a fantastic week, and congratulations to all of the other medalists!!!