2009 - D T Price - the DHO

Racing & Training Report
Ingrid Christophersen
Downhill only Journal 2009
I am writing this in Dubrovnik Croatia, at the FIS calendar conference, part of my biannual swanning around some
beautiful resort, mixing with the high and mighty in international skiing and pretending I am important! I love it.
The FIS will never run a conference in Bradford – having now visited Dubrovnik I can see why.
However, there is a cloud on the horizon – this time I am selffunded
– and 5 star hotels do not come cheap. Our National
Federation, SnowsportGB has frittered away large sums of
money, owing to incompetence at the highest level, and it is a
miracle that it is still operating. Next season sees the Olympics in
Vancouver and we are hanging in there by a thread. I shall make
a bee-line for the local Lotto shop when I return to the UK.
The 2008/09 season was characterised by unusually large amounts
of snow. In some resorts it snowed every day for two months and
the World Cup circuit was able to operate thanks only to the
local army and large numbers of snow-cats. Expensive to say
the least.
The D.H.O too suffered from this abundance of snow. As the first
club to take advantage of the dedicated speed skiing piste in Sella
Nevea, (closed, netted runs and fixed time-keeping), five trainees
decided to attend. The day before the start of the camp it started
to snow, Sella Nevea was buried, as was the electricity supply and
very nearly the Porter family who escaped an Eskimo experience
owing to some hard digging and lots of luck.
The rest of the season ran according to plan and the camps were
well attended. We ran a full D.H.O programme – starting with
summer training (raining), October, Christmas in Austria followed
by the BARSC races, February in Bormio and Easter including the
Scottish and British Championships in Meribel .
I try hard to make these annual articles about the racing and
training sound interesting to the average D.H.O member. Racing
and Training IS interesting, it is full of hard work and sweat, a lot
of adrenalin and fear overcome by courage (downhill and superg
at the British senior championships), lots of fun, occasional
heart ache and some triumph and that is as it should be – we are
producing excellent skier and equally excellent future citizens.
The British Championships in Meribel was the culmination of the
year and we all wanted to do well. British Championships; how
many athletes – whatever their sport – get to compete in their
national Championships?
The Juniors, or some of them, were up at 5 every morning and
they raced a downhill, a super-g, giant-slalom, slalom, supercombi
(which is a speed event, either a downhill or a super-g,
followed by a one-run slalom held on the same day) and a parallel.
And this before they even tackled the Scottish Championships.
The Children had a slightly easier program, trained the first week,
and then raced a super-g, giant-slalom and slalom in the British
Champs 2009 and a giant-slalom and a slalom in the Scottish.
What fun, what adrenalin pumping and thrilling and heart
breaking too, it all is. And what memories to cherish. Heaven is
an eternal race course, on perfect snow, wearing bib no. 1.
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