Tuesday, April 7, 2009

1st at the Brits 2009


My last competition of the season was the British national championships, AKA the Brits, which were held in Laax, Switzerland. It is odd, Britain is one of the only countries that hold their national snowboarding champs in a country other than their own.


The weather on the competition day was awful, the mist was coming in and out and at times you couldn’t see more than 50m in front of you. There was some doubt as to whether the comp would go ahead but after putting some dye onto the course to make it more visible the competition got underway.


Because of the time delay waiting for the dye we were restricted to only one training run each. That certainly made things interesting, although some people did sneak through to get two. Yes I am talking about you James Foster!


After the short training we had 2 qualification runs where my aim was to beat all the girls and as many of the guys as possible. I did fairly well coming 1st in the girls and 4th in the guys over the two runs.


Because there wasn’t lot of girls in the comp we only had 8 girls qualify through to the finals so we skipped straight to the semi finals. The weather had closed in before my semi final meaning we couldn’t see a thing! I got out in front right away thankfully so I knew I wasn’t going to catch anyone up and have to be able to see where they were in order to pass. I did get a bit worried when I passed one flag around a turn and couldn’t see the next flag through the mist, I had to just remember where it was and steer around what I thought was the correct side of it. I got it right, thankfully, and won the heat.


In the final there was me, Lesley Mckenna, Ivy Taylor and Dani Stone. I got into the lead out of the gate and led all the way down the course to win the gold with Lesley coming in 2nd, Dani 3rd and Ivy 4th.


I was obviously the favourite going into the race after competing at world cup snowboardcross all season so there was definitely some relief to go along with my happiness at winning.


Also competing in the Brits boardercross was another rider from the Isle of Man, where I come from! His name is Jonny Chan and I have been trying to help him out over the last few months with advice and tips as he has just started out competing this season. He had a good race qualifying in 2nd place in his age category only one hundredth of a second behind the winner and after the competition got invited to join the British Junior team, congrats to Jonny!


I am back in the Isle of Man now where I am for one week before heading back to Bath to start my fitness training for the summer.

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