Member Article

Scottish Alpine Athletes Making a Substantial Impact on the Alpine Ranks

Snowsport Scotland – the National Governing Body for all snowsports in Scotland – has significant reason to celebrate recently with Scottish alpine athletes making a substantial impact on the Alpine ranks with victory upon victory.

Due to the large availability of artificial surfaces and mountains, strengthened by a world class coaching structure, Scotland has always had a strong history of high performance Alpine athletes. Results speak volumes lately with the top three females in Great Britain, Alex Tilley, Charlie Guest and Cara Brown - all of Scottish nationality - significantly making their mark on the world stage.

Alex Tilley is ranked 31st in the world and after a strong performance at the world cup race in Solden, Austria - Snowsport Scotland is looking forward to seeing some impressive results from her this season.

Although recently recovering from a broken back at the start of last season, Charlie Guest hasn’t allowed this to stand in the way of her success as she makes her return from New Zealand after winning the slalom event at treble cone scoring the best result of her entire career. Cara Brown also had another great season returning from South America where she celebrated with nine podium finishes in all four disciplines.

Jane Campbell Morrison, CEO of Snowsport Scotland commented “Scotland has always produced high performance athletes due to our world class coaching structure and access to on and off snow facilities, which has resulted in us providing the vast majority of the British Alpine team members consistently for over 20 years. Snowsport Scotland has worked hard to sustain this success by running regular fitness training, on snow training, coach education as well as by building strong relationships with the organisations and individuals who are able to provide top quality training opportunities”.

Scotland also has a strong group of athletes in the pipeline ready to make their mark with Euan Kick, Iain Innes, Zak Vinter and Fraser Middleton all having great seasons, going on to be reselected to GB squads for this upcoming season. Iain, Zak and Fraser will also be battling it out for the one place available on Team GB at the World Youth Olympic Games coming up in February 2016.

“We look forward to seeing Charlie Guest and Alex Tilley on podiums in the coming winter and from that seeing them progress towards the Olympic Winter Games in 2018 and 2022. The athletes coming behind them after that are also eagerly aniticipated with Cara Brown, Zak Vinter, Ian Innes and Paul Henderson performing well in the coming winters and moving towards the OWG in 2022”, continued Jane.

As the National Governing Body for snowsports in Scotland, Edinburgh based Snowsport Scotland work hard to facilitate and encourage participation in snowsports as well as develop and nurture Scottish and GB snowsports athletes. As part of this, the organisation has most recently introduced a new instructor qualification programme to encourage instruction from an early age as well as an equality campaign to encourage that snowsports is for everyone particularly targeting females, lesbian, gay, bisexual and those living with a disability.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Scarab4 .