Since Team GB’s success at the Sochi Winter Olympics in 2014, British snowsport success has gone from strength to strength. We are only in February and we have already had buckets of success in both snowboarding and skiing…
Skiing
With previously finishing sixth and seventh this year, Dave Ryding went on to match Britain’s best ever Alpine Skiing World Cup result by claiming second in Kitzbuhel Slalom, Austria. It has been a whopping 35 years since the last silver in the Alpine Skiing World Cup!! Since then Ryding narrowly missed out on his second World Cup podium place, by 0.06 seconds during the Stockholm Parallel Slalom. Pretty good effort considering it was his first Parallel Slalom competition. As it stands Ryding has earned 306 points that puts him fifth in the Slalom World Cup standings and fourteenth overall in the World Cup standings.
On the opening day of the World Para Alpine Skiing Championships in Italy, 18 year old Millie knight with guide Brett Wild won the Downhill gold medal. Completing the course in a speedy 00:01:13.42 pretty awesome! But she doesn’t stop there, Knight and Wild then went onto win silver in the Super Combined!
In Ski Slopestyle, James Woods unfortunately just missed out on a medal by just 0.34 points, at the Winter X Games Aspen. Still forth is pretty damn good in our opinion! Disappointment didn’t last long though, as Woods went on to win gold in the Ski Big Air event. Katie Summerhayes just missed out on a podium place in the women’s Ski Slopestyle World Cup event in Italy.
Snowboarding
Moving on to Snowboarding, Jamie Nicholls claimed second place at the World Cup Slopestyle. Just 0.40 points behind Belgium’s Seppe Smits, where as Billy Morgan and Rowan Coultas finished a respectable fourth and seventh. In the women’s Slopestyle event Aimee Fuller finished fifth, after a solid run in the Final.
Talent of snowboarding must run in the family as Nicolls’ cousin Katie Ormerod won bronze in the women’s Slopestyle event at the Winter X Games. Ormerod has since gone on to take second place at the Air and Style Big Air event in Innsbruck, Austria. Meanwhile in the men’s competition, Coultas and Morgan placed fifth and sixth.
For a country with a lack of mountains (yes there are some in Scotland…) and so relies on dry slope/indoor snow dome training. We are doing brilliantly well in the world of snowsport! We here at Zephyr are strong believers, that it isn’t the winning that counts, it’s the taking part. But winning certainly helps when getting funding to support the rising talent this country has clearly got. We’re looking forward to seeing how the rest of this season plays out, plus it is the Winter Olympics next year!!
Exciting times indeed!