Before Saturday I could not remember a wet race at Christchurch but I can now! The rain fell in varying degrees for nearly all the individual slalom runs and for a fair amount of the head to heads. The timed course was set to take account of the extra speed caused by the rain and as a result it was very straight and some very quick times were recorded. Aldershot had a slightly smaller attendance than normal for a Snowsport South race but nevertheless we had some great results including 7 gold medals. The first of these came in the girls 7 to 8 group which was won by Sarah Woodward. In the boys equivalent Toby Case won the bronze medal as did Katie Standen in the girls 9 to 10 group. The boys 9 to 10 group gold medal was won by Toby Deighton and in the girls 11 to 12 group Bella Hathway won the silver medal. We had a lot of success in the 13 to 14 age groups where in the girls race Chelsea Hardaway won the gold medal and Jenny Davies the silver medal while in the boys race Chris Evans won the silver medal and James Sieber the bronze. Up to the next age group and the success continued with Ellen Hathway winning the girls race and Peter Davies winning the boys race with Will Reader winning the bronze medal. In her first race back on plastic Ella Slater won the girls 17 to 19 group and in the boys equivalent Mark Weller won the bronze medal. The successes continued through the older age groups with Nicola Cunningham winning the silver medal in the 21 to 30 ladies group, as did Avelline Deighton in the 31 to 49 ladies. In the final age group Graham Nayler not only won the gold medal but also managed to maintain his reputation by smashing a pole with his head and drawing blood.
On to the team races and for the first time all three teams made the final of the competition. The 11 and under team of Harry Deighton, Craig Speed and Toby Deighton were unlucky to end up in the blue course where the finish flag had a bit of a lag on it and despite increasing levels of anticipation of the flag dropping were narrowly beaten. The same fate befell the open team. This race was tight right to the end but again the team of Chelsea Hardaway, Will Reader, Graham Nayler and Mark Weller were just pipped at the line. The 16 and under team race was just as tight but in this case the team of Peter Davies, Chris Evans, Ellen Hathway and James Sieber held on to take the win. The fun team competition was won by the team including Graham Nayler and Will Reader.
