LSERSA Race at Brentwood Park 20/06/09

Another large contingent of Aldershot racers circumnavigated the M25 to the gentle slopes of Brentwood. Unfortunately the course set for the timed event was more like a navigation exercise than a test of skiing skills which is not really very good for a regional race. The only good thing to come from it was watching one of the faster racers, who had arrogantly not bothered with course inspection, ski out on the second gate of the first run when he got lost! Just goes to prove that course inspection is important no matter how good you are and that course inspection skills are to be learned and developed just like skiing technique!

By the second run all of our racers had the measure of the course and along with the usual haul of medals we resumed our place at the top of the club team competition. In the individual results there were medals at both ends of the age groups. Starting in 1F, Sarah Woodward won the bronze medal and in the boy's equivalent Harry Deighton won the silver medal. Onto 2F where Phoebe Long won her first gold medal and Lucy Woodward equalled her sisters achievement by winning the bronze. The 3F group was once again dominated by Aldershot with 5 of our racers in the top 6. Hannah Bozier again won the gold medal with Boo pickup winning the silver medal and Jenny Davies the bronze. In the next girls group (4F) Ellen Hathway won the silver medal and finally in the 9M group Graham Nayler held it all together on the last run to claim a well deserved gold medal.

In the scratch team races Adam Baker's team won the bronze medal while Toby Deighton's team won the gold medal. Then came the club team races.......

Once again the Aldershot power team were the victims of an awful decision from the officials which soured the event for many of us. We ran two teams in the team race with the A team being Peter Davies, Ellen Hathway, Hannah Bozier, Will Wheeler and Charley Lewis and the B team being Boo Pickup, Chelsea Hardaway, Jenny Davies, Oliver Deighton and Graham Nayler. For some reason the LSERSA team races have changed to a knockout format for the last couple of races and the B team were unfortunate to be drawn against Chatham in the first round and did not progress. Meanwhile the A team easily progressed to the semi final where they comfortably beat a stunned Bromley A team to make it to the final where they faced the strong Chatham team. Unfortunately they were then the victims of firstly a gate that did not want to stay in place followed by an overzealous marshall who thought he could replace it before Charley reached him. Given that he was only three gates from the start this was optimistic to say the least and Charley quite rightly refused to start with someone standing in the course. This was not the way the "referee" saw it who relied on the rules about a pole being displaced to instantly award the win to Chatham, thereby disregarding the bit in the rules about the racer having the right of protest if they are obstructed on the course!. On a positive note the team did win the silver medal and are clearly now seen as a serious threat to the previously dominant club teams in both SRSA and LSERSA.

LSERSA Race at Aldershot 14/06/09

Race Report to Follow

SRSA Race at Bromley 13/06/09

Race Report to Follow

Inter-Region Race at Welwyn 07/06/09

Hannah Bozier, Peter Davies, Ellen Hathway and Will Wheeler were missing from the monthly race because they were instead racing at the Inter-Regional event at Welwyn having been selected to race for the SRSA team. This is one of the premier events on the race calendar where the best racers from across the country race for their regions in a series of dual parallel slalom races. The Aldershot four were joined by Sam Fairbairn and Frances Bryon from Southampton and Giacomo Ghislanzoni from SASA to make the team of seven. In all there were 14 teams at the event and every Snowsport England was represented except for Yorkshire. The teams were split into two leagues of 7 with the first 4 teams from each league to qualify for the quarter finals. Thankfully the torrential rain that greeted us when we arrived in Welwyn had abated by the time the racing started and the teams first race was a baptism of fire against the LSERSA A team. After losing this race the team won the next two races but unfortunately the next two races were very close but a couple of straddles left the team with two wins going into the last race. This last race was a must win race which the team duly did to qualify for the knockout stages. They they were then pitted against the very strong Eastern Region A team and despite a brave effort they lost the race. Eastern Region A then went on to win the event overall against North West A.

ASRC June Monthly Race

I missed the June monthly race so can only report on the results. Having skiied out twice Mark Weller nipped in to win the boys race ahead of Chris Evans while in the girls race it was Ella Slater who put in a great last run to take the win. Fastest newcomer was Oliver Deighton and the most improved racers will be revealed at the next training session. At the information session after the race Chris Evans won the racer of the month on the strength of his improved performance over the past few months.

Wycombe Club National at Welwyn 06/06/09

With the inter-regional race being held the next day the field in the Welwyn Club National was the stiffest faced by our racers in Club Nationals this year. In addition the course was certainly set at the hard end of the spectrum for Club Nationals so it was great experience for the Aldershot racers. The Aldershot medal winners were thinner on the ground than in recent races but well done to Toby Deighton who won the silver medal in the boys minis race, Bella Hathway who won the bronze medal in children 1 girlsand William Wheeler who also won bronze in the children 1 boys.

SASA Club National at Southampton 31/05/09

The following day was the first of the two Club Nationals to be held at Southampton this year and it has to be said that it was one of the most pleasant races we have had at Southampton for a long time. For once there was a sensible approach to health and safety which made the whole day seem much more relaxed. The course went down the increasingly bumpy middle slope and with a very straight section from the big left hand turn there were some very fast times recorded. Starting with the minis and in the boys groupHarry Deighton won the bronze medal. Starting with the females race, in the Children 1 age group Bella Hathway won the silver medal while in the children 2 group, Hannah Bozier won the gold medal, Chelsea Hardaway the silver medal and Boo Pickup the bronze medal. Hannah also finished third in the overall race. In the males race, William Wheeler won the gold medal in children 1, Peter Davies the bronze medal in Junior 1, Brian Davies the gold medal in the masters with Graham Nayler winning the bronze medal in the same race.

LSERSA Race at Welwyn 30/05/09

A much smaller Aldershot contingent made the trip up the A1M to Welwyn for the first LSERSA race of the year. For those who have not been before, the slope at Welwyn is very sticky when dry, very fast when wet and has two big bumps which set an interesting challenge when the poles are set out. First of the medals to be awarded was a silver medal for Toby Deighton in the 2M group. The 3f group was won by Hannah Bozier with Jenny Davies finishing third while in the next girls age group (4F) Ellen Hathway won the silver medal. In the boys equivalent Ed Taylor won the bronze medal and finally in the 9M group Brian Davies also won a bronze medal.

On to the team races and the Aldershot team of Hannah Bozier, Ellen Hathway, Graham Nayler, Peter Davies and Charley Lewis battled to an excellent silver medal on a very tricky dual slalom course. In the fun teams competition Chris Reader's team won the gold medal, Bella Hathway and Harry Deighton's team won the silver medal and Euan Chapman's team won the bronze medal.

One highlight that came out after the event was in terms of the club championship. I was unaware that this was taking place in the LSERSA series but apparently a competition is being run along the same lines as the Club National competition (as invented by the Calverts) and the times of the five fastest racers from each of the clubs in various categories are added together to give a time for each club. With Toby Deightons last minute transfer to Aldershot we were able to score points in this competition and in fact are now leading it! The racers whose times were included are Toby Deighton, Ellen Hathway, Hannah Bozier, Peter Davies and Charley Lewis.

SRSA Southampton 23/05/09

The course at Southampton saw a feature not often included in Southern Region race namely a banana gate but the Aldershot racers took this in their stride. As a result we came away with another big haul of medals. In the boys 7 to 8 group Harry Deighton won the gold medal while in the girl's equivalent Katie Standen won her first medal, taking home the bronze. Toby Deighton also won bronze in the boys 9 to 10 group while Phoebe Long won the silver medal in the race for girls of the same age. Moving on to the 11 to 12 group, William Wheeler won the bronze medal while in the girls group it was an Aldershot 1,2,3,4,5 with Hannah Bozier taking the gold medal, Boo Pickup the silver medal and Bella Hathway the bronze medal. Still with the girls, in the 13 to 14 group Ellen Hathway won the gold medal with Chelsea Hardaway winning the silver medal, in the 17 to 19 group Ella Slater won the silver medal and in the 30+ group Janet Long won the gold medal in her first ever race. Last but by no means least John Calvert won the silver medal in the final male group.

In the club team races the Under 11 team fought through to the final where they were narrowly beaten by the home team while the Over 11s team felt robbed of a place in the final by some dubious decisions. In a very close race the final racer on the opposing team false started anyway but to add insult to injury one of the last poles on our course was stuck in the matting and where it would have been reasonable to at least have called a re-run this was not done.

In the scratch team there was a gold medal for the team including Toby Deighton and Annie Usher and a silver medal for the team including Jack Bradford-Smith, Oliver Cassidy and Brian Davies.

Club Communications

I have played around with a few different ways of delivering the newsletter content and last weekend settled on using a blog. This will allow me to provide information almost as soon as it becomes available. The address for the blog is http://asrcnewsletter.blogspot.com. The email newsletter will continue but will just be a cut and paste of the blog entries.

While on the subject it is worth going through the various communications for the club. There are now three web based environments as follows:-

The club website at http://www.aldershotskiraceclub.org which is effectively the "corporate" face of the club hosting key information about the club including photos and videos and providing joining information.

My blog at http://asrcnewsletter.blogspot.com.

The clubs facebook group Aldershot ski race club where you can do the sort of things people do in facebook!

If anyone has other ideas then please let me know. As an example I have managed to come up with a practical use for twitter so if there are users in the club we could use it as one way of providing urgent updates.

Urgent communication is one area of communication I still want to sort out to cover situations like sudden cancellation of training or as last Saturday an accident on the M25 stopping people getting to the race on time. I do have the latest list of mobile phone numbers but unless you have kept it up to date this is not much use. Phoning 50 different people is also time consuming and not necessarily the best method so I would like to compile an urgent contact list which includes the best method of communication for each family. Can you all please let me know the best method for communicating with you urgently whether it be mobile phone, sms, email, IM, twitter, whatever so that I can pull this list together. For the record, my preference is email but on race day the best way to get hold of me is on 07921399368.

Waterproofs and Drinks

A couple of weeks ago we had a massive downpour during training and a large number of racers were caught out either by not having waterproofs out on the slope or worse by not having waterproofs at all. Similarly there are still a large number of racers who do not have a ready supply of water or other fluids in the training area. Please make sure you are always properly equipped for optimum training in whatever weather conditions nature throws at us.

Racer Ready

For those of you who do not know, Racer Ready is a magazine focussed entirely on ski racing and its editor Neil McQuoid attends many of the local dry slope races taking photos of the racers. Neil is a keen supporter of the Southern Region and has circulated the following description of both the photo service and magazine to clubs in the Southern Region.

Racer Ready were at the Southampton SRSA race last weekend and have lots of pictures of all the racers. If you would like to see the pictures all you need to do is email pictures@racer-ready.co.uk and they will send you back the thumbnails. The cost of the pictures start at £7 for email and CD versions (jpg’s) and you can also get printed versions (these vary according to size required).

If you are really interested in ski racing, from the grass roots all the way up to the Olympics, Racer Ready is the only magazine in the UK that focuses entirely on the competitive side of winter sport. Available through subscription only, you can subscribe either through the attached subscription form on online at http://www.racer-ready.co.uk/magazine.htm. Subscriptions start at £20 for 6 issues and the magazine comes out quarterly. The next issue is due out shortly!
If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the editor, Neil McQuoid at the following address neil@racer-ready.co.uk.