Member Article

Top Talent at Scottish Alpine Dryslope Championships

The historically successful Scottish Alpine Dryslope Championships returned to Midlothian Snowsports Centre this weekend, showcasing a host of highly skilled talent on the technically challenging Slalom and Giant Slalom runs.

The competition – hosted by Scottish National Governing Body, Snowsport Scotland - proved as popular as ever with 113 competitors in total across the two day event with the majority taking part in both competitions on the Hillend Ski Slope. With the main slope being replaced over the summer, the racers were on top form showcasing their speed and agility through the two disciplines of Slalom and Giant Slalom.

Euan Kick from Glasgow Ski Racing dominated the male category winning both the Under 21 and the overall category in both disciplines and Nicole Ritchie, also Glasgow Ski Racing, replicating his success in the female category. Commenting on her performance Nicole said, “It’s been great to come back and ski like I know I can. A lot of the competitors here are those that I train with every Thursday which made me push myself that little bit more and it paid off. I always enjoy coming to Hillend and noticed a lot of young and upcoming competitors standing out this year”.

Top Scottish Alpine Athlete, Paul Henderson, who attended the event, said “Every single year the event gets better and better and you can see emerging talent really standing out. For me this talent has to include the Wards sisters and Alasdair Sandland - it will be interesting to see how they take on the older athlete’s as the years progress. I think as competitors get older they naturally tend to race on snow the majority of the time but I think taking part in the Dryslope competitions, especially national events like this one, are important to keep consistently training all year round”.

In addition to the main competition action, the first day’s events came to a close with an entertaining and informal ‘Team Dual Slalom’ where teams of four competed in a knockout style race with prizes for the winning team. It was a hotly contested event with 15 teams taking part altogether with the aptly named ‘2 Fast 2 Furious’ taking the winning spot, again, from Glasgow Ski Racing.

The Scottish Alpine Dryslope Championships provides participants with a great opportunity to compete with other top skiers from across the country and showcase their outstanding talent. The event also had some great support from some key sponsors including Rossignol, Dynastar, Lange, Ski Racing Supplies, Blues The Ski Shop, Store (Argyll Ltd), Bawbags, Dynastar, Pilates with Sabrina, and Ski Bartlett who supported the event with discounts, vouchers and product giveaways.

Charlie Guest, top Scottish female Europa Cup Alpine athlete, also showed her support at the event providing commentary and presenting the winning prizes, “It was great to come back to Hillend and see so many racers still here giving it everything. Such an amazing atmosphere for everyone to be part of”, she commented.

Jane Campbell Morrison, CEO of event organiser, Snowsport Scotland, was extremely pleased with the success of the event “We’d like to pay a special thanks to Midlothian Council for helping us to organise such a spectacular event and also to our amazing sponsors and volunteers who helped make sure the day was entertaining and ran as smoothly as possible for everyone – we couldn’t have done it without them. All in all it was a fantastic weekend, the athletes and parents proved that you can still have a lot of fun whilst competing at such a high level and we look forward to hosting this event again in 2016.”

As the National Governing Body for snowsports in Scotland, Snowsport Scotland work hard to facilitate and encourage participation in snowsports, develop and nurture athletes as well as provide competition opportunities for athletes at all levels. Upcoming events include The Scottish Dryslope Slopestyle Championships on 7th November and Alpine races taking place in Reiteralm in Austria, January 2016.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Snowsport Scotland .