The rainy land of the leprechauns - Claire

Last year I was studying French law at Strasbourg university and after promising my mum that I would make loads of French speaking friends, the majority of the friends I made were Irish... So after a long summer apart we all decided to meet up in Dublin (it was quicker for my friend to get there from London than it was for another who came from Cork).

Typical to Ireland it rained a lot for the first few days and was very windy but this did not spoil our sight seeing around Dublin and our day trip to Galway. Our last full day in Ireland was however extremely sunny and from some of the pictures it could easily be mistaken for Spain!

We were definitely staying safe!

Howth or Spain?

All in all it was an amazing week and our England reunion will hopefully be taking place in February as long as my month isn't packed with competitions!

New Sponsor!

We are excited to announce that For Skiers By Skiers (FSBS) have welcomed us to their team!!

Keep your eyes peeled on their website and thier facebook page for our posts, pictures and videos!

Thanks FSBS!

Uvex Equipment Arrival

I would be lying if I said that I wasn't pretty excited about our latest parcel through the post: a helmet for me and a selection of goggles and lenses for both of us! It took a lot of will power not to put them on in the house.

My selection of products

We would both like to say a MASSIVE thank you to Uvex for putting us on their Athlete Programme!

THANK YOU!

England Development Squad Selection

So we were both selected for the England Development Squad at the beginning of summer! Of course we both then HAD to buy the England Squad kit which should be arriving in "Autumn"... What classes as Autumn?!

Both of us are pretty excited to say the least, especially Max who has only competed in 3 skiercross races on snow!

Now it is time for fitness....

Paralympics Wheelchair Basketball

After missing out on the olympics we decided that we had to watch a bit of the action for ourselves so we chose to go see the mens wheelchair basketball quarterfinals at the North Greenwich Arena.

We got to see 4 matches:

Columbia v South Africa (12th/11th place games)

Italy v Japan (10th/9th place game)

USA v Germany (Quarter Final 1)

GB v Turkey (Quarter Final 2)

It was a great day out, definitely glad that we got to witness a bit of history. Just wish that we had gotten tickets to some of the other events too!

Our Summer

In order to help pay for our skiing I spent my second summer working at Alexanders International School and Max joined me for his first.

This job is the best job that I have had to date, if you forget the Friday overnights with 3am, 4am, 5:30am departures... We basically work with foreign children aged 10-17 years old who come to AIS to learn/improve their English. So we look after them in their houses (as it is a boarding school) as well as teaching them sport in the afternoon and then doing social activities during the evening.

The first time I got out of the water and stayed up
for longer than 5 seconds!

Sounds pretty good yeh? Well we haven't even mentioned the BEST part... the school is right next to the Deben river, which means that when we have a couple of hours free and the sailors are free we can go wake boarding!! Well that is if you haven't injured your knee.... For those of us who hadn't, we got some pretty good wake boarding mornings in, for Max, he got some fun rides on a power boat filming us!

Here is a little video of it all, I hope that you enjoy my face plant at about 2 minutes more than I did!

Some squash was also played before he was on crutches

Being a cripple meant that he got to spend the afternoon
supervising the kids sailing!

JJC Training Camp Saas Fee - Max

I had never been to Saas Fee before or had proper skier cross coaching so I was looking forward to this camp with the JJC guys! The weather was boiling, so this meant early starts in the morning for skiing on the glacier and then fitness in the afternoons.

We didn't have a skiercross course to train on during the week, but we did have the MASSIVE kickers that were being used for the Saas Fee Ride to have a go on. I spent the whole week with the head GB skiercross team coach Ian Findlay which was a valuable experience to go over the fundamentals again as well as being taught how to prepare, go over and land jumps correctly. These tips seemed to be forgotten on the last day of skiing when I didn't manage to clear the gap between the take off of the jump and the landing, resulting in my hitting the wall of the landing jump. It turns out after a physio appointment at home that I had a slight tear to my muscle in my knee as well as some internal bleeding; however somehow I managed to carry on skiing on it for the rest of the day.

The afternoons included a lot of hiking which was tiring in the heat but the views we got to see a long the way, as well as the tans, were definitely worth it!

Despite the injury, I cannot wait for my next training camp with JJC!

COOP Swiss Cup Hoch Ybrig

So our Verbier experience didn't put us off skiercross. In fact our dad also came with us to Hoch Ybrig as our chef/bank/driver/ski technician/ski carrier/photographer! Which means that we have even more photos for you :)

Thankfully neither of us are in this photo! This isn't to say that we went home crash free...

Hoch Ybrig was two days of open races which meant that we got two races in one weekend. I had been here the year before which definitely helped with getting around the place as it isn't the biggest of resorts.

Day 1 was just as eventful as Verbier to say the least. We both enjoyed our training runs; although everyone had spotted a problem area: the very steep section after the main jump with three tight turns on it. Qualification went okay for both of us as well, Max was within the time percentage that he wanted to be off of the fastest male (as well as the junior olympic champion) and we had both 

qualified for the heats! 

During the heats was the first time that Max had ever used the proper skiercross start as well as racing against other people on snow, so his nerves and lack of experience compared to the other 3 in his heat meant that he didn't qualify for the next round.

The males of the family

For me, the semi-final ended up with me eating a lot of snow... It was going okay until the main jump when the girl in front of me put a speed check in last minute which threw me off guard and in my attempt to stop myself skiing into her I put one in too, but somehow caught an edge, skied into the gate on the top of the jump and did some super man impression. Personally I thought at the time that I had broken a rib, but it turned out that I had just winded myself and hit my head hard on the hard snow. After some help collecting my equipment and putting it back on I made my way down the piste to a very worried dad who has been lying on the floor with his camera ready to take an amazing photo of me coming over the last jump in the finish. A lovely finish official, who is always surprised every year that English people come to do these races gave me a seat and some medical assistance. It is obvious to say that I didn't make the final; however I had the chance to go up and compete in the small final which determines places 5-8. I wanted to do this so that I could go back over the jump and end the day on a positive; however my dad and the medic were both against this idea so I sat and watched one person cross the line in the small final (apparently two others had a crash in the second semi finals after me which resulted in more injuries). I still finished the day with an 8th position which was my best so far.

Day 2 arrived after a very anxious nights sleep as we were not sure of the extent of the injuries to my head from the crash. Apart from that it was pretty much like the day before up until the heats stages of the competition. We had both qualified again for them and Max had a much better start to his heat; however whilst battling for a position he lost the best line and ended up missing a gate. I was having trouble forgetting my crash the day before which showed in my skiing and during my heat I wasn't in a position to qualify to the semi finals until just after THE jump where one girl wiped out another girl ahead of me, giving me the chance to dodge them and the skis following them down the hill to ski into second place and thus gaining a spot in the semis!

In the end, I secured two 8th place finishes which meant that I finished 13th female overall in the series having only done 3 races(!) and Max used the heats to gain loads of experience and confidence. This weekend of competitions also helped Max to decide to make the switch from alpine to skiercross.

COOP Swiss Cup Verbier

We are far too similar

This was my first skiercross race of the season and Max's first one on snow ever. Neither of us had been to Verbier before and thankfully I knew a guy who was teaching out there so we had a floor to sleep in (Max literally slept in his ski bag both nights). The Saturday was an FIS race so we watched that in-between runs trying to get our ski legs back (as neither of us had a FIS licence then) and then the  open race was held on the Sunday.

For both of us it was a competition to forget. Max took a lot of air on a jump and landed past the gate after it on the wrong side on his qualification run so he was disqualified and I just didn't do very well...

We did however meet James and Craig from JJC Training who are the team we are now training with! So it wasn't a waste of a weekend and several hundred pounds!

Army Alpine Divs and Championships January 2012 - Claire

CUOTC Team wearing our team catsuits which Max designed!

My medal for 1st individual slalom

Through my university I am part of the Territorial Army as an Officer Cadet for Cambridge University Officer's Training Corps. As well as other things, this meant that I can compete in the Army Alpine Divs and, if I qualify, Championships. These are 10 days of racing involving an individual slalom, team slalom, individual giant slalom, team giant slalom, individual and team super-g (together), downhill training day and an individual and team downhill (together).

This year was the first year that CUOTC entered a team into the Divs which were held in Le Corbier. Before this I had never tried super-g or downhill and given that I have been focusing on skiercross over the last few years I haven't trained in slalom or giant slalom either so I wasn't expecting anything from these races apart from having fun. As a team (3 guys and me) we didn't do any training before these races (which turned out to be the opposite of everyone else who had spent 1 or 2 months training prior to the Divs). It was brilliant fun though and after a tense battle I even won the individual slalom!

Despite me having to go back to Strasbourg to sit a 10 minute EU Law oral exam (I was on an ERASMUS year abroad studying French Law), that resulted in me missing the individual giant slalom, myself and one of my team mates managed to qualify through to the championships down the road in Serre Chevalier. Neither us, nor our Colonel, thought that we would be able to do so, so it was a last minute panic teaming up with other Officer Cadets from UOTCs across Britain to find accommodation, etc but we managed it in the end.

The format for these 10 days were the same as the divs; however the courses were harder and longer. In the slalom I came a very close 4th after a mistake at the end of my second run ruined my chances of getting 3rd. The stade where the super-g and downhill were held was a black run which resulted in these two races possibly being the scariest things I have ever had to do before. Our downhill training was cut short (4 racers before me) due to high winds which meant that most of the females didn't get a training run down the course. Therefore, tension and nerves were high with everyone when it came to race day and thanks to words of encouragement and some snow sneakily put down my back from a Swiss coach training the Army Air Force racers, I manage to complete my run. However, exhaustion, relief and holes in my goggles resulted in teary eyes for my photo at the finish - attractive!

Overall in the championships I finished 4th female. This result would have been good enough for me to have made the Army alpine team if I had been full army instead of TA. My results also caught the eyes of several members of the army, as I got asked several times when I was joining the army and what area I was interested in. Interestingly, before these races I wasn't interested in joining the army after university; however now becoming an Army Legal Services Officer is a big possibility.

These 3 weeks helped my skiing and confidence loads and I cannot wait to do it all again next year!

All of the Officer Cadets who qualified for the Championships

Getting to know us

If you haven't guessed already, we are siblings (please don't tell us that we look alike, or that we could be twins, we have had enough of this already this year and I still refuse to believe it), I (Claire) am the eldest and Max is my "little" brother.

We were cute at one point in our lives!

We both started skiing in 1988 on a ski holiday in France with our parents. Max loved it straight away even though he had the biggest snow plough ever and didn't like turning. However I found it more difficult; therefore our parents booked us in for lessons on our local dry slope so that we had practice in-between our annual holiday. 

After these lessons we joined the Saturday morning "Junior Club' which introduced us to slalom racing and we then progressed in to the Norfolk race team. We took part in our first Regional races in 2002 and a year later we started national races on the dry slope as well as national championship races on snow such as the English Alpine Championships and the British Alpine Championships.

As before, Max seemed to do well and really enjoy these; however I decided after my first year of FIS races (2008) that alpine ski racing wasn't for me and I made the decision to focus on my A-levels. This break from competitive skiing didn't last very long and at the end of 2008 I had my first taste of skiercross by taking part in the British Artificial Skiercross Championships where I ended up winning the junior category! After this I didn't look back and in 2009 and 2010 I competed at The Brits (British freestyle championships on snow in Laax) in skiercross where both times I won the junior category. Although, The Brits was the only competition on snow that I competed in for skiercross each year, this was due to skiercross being a new sport so there weren't any British coaches or teams for skiercross other than the British Team. 

This made it difficult to know which competitions 

would be best for me to do as well as the problem of getting out to them.

During these years, Max was still competing in slalom, giant slalom and super-g races on both dry slope and snow. He made several podium appearances including in the British Alpine Racing Ski Clubs championships and Welsh Alpine championships as well as overall podiums in the National and Grand Prix races on dry slope.For the 2010 dry slope season, Max was selected for the England Artificial Squad, which meant that he travelled 
outside of England to Ireland and Wales for their dry slope championships and he was an vital member of the England team for the international dual slalom races at the end of each of these. During the same season on snow, Max also joined the Ambition Team. This is an elite alpine team which required Max to commit to a minimum of 10 weeks on snow with them per season. For Max this was a mixed season, he found it useful training alongside amazing skiers (he was the only non GB Team skier for his age category within Ambition); however he struggled to finish races, particularly within giant slalom as the same ski continued to pre release him for no known reason.After this season he decided to go back to his old coach and to join Impulse Racing which is based in the Aosta Valley, Italy. Max absolutely loved this environment and due to big snow falls some races were cancelled but he managed to get some powder days in. Max sorted out his problem with his skis and started to finish more races as well as finishing on the podium in some.

If Max was free he would often take part in the British Dryslope Skiercross Championships as they were held at our local dry slope. His lack of fear, skill, ability and confidence was obvious within these competitions as he won the Youth category in his first year and then the Junior category the year after which provided the spectators with a tense battle for 1st and 2nd as can be seen in the photographs. 

However, he didn't take skiercross seriously until March of this year where he competed in his first three Swiss Cup races on snow (which you can see in a post to come).

What is ski cross?

Ski cross is a relatively new winter sport, only making it's olympic debut in 2010 at Vancouver. It involves firstly a timed qualification run on your own which is then used to determine which first heat you are put into and which colour bib you will wear during the heats (from fastest qualifier to slowest: red, green, blue and yellow). The heats involve 4 skiers going down a course of jumps, rollers, table top jumps, wu tang jumps and banked turns at the same time, with only the first two progressing to the next round and slight contact being allowed it often results in several crashes, making for a very on the edge and unpredictable sport for both the athletes and the spectators. Although ski cross has a racing element to it, it is technically part of the freestyle family which is clear by the laid back, fun atmosphere at competitions.