News

Fabrizio Ghislanzoni,  Monica Paluch and Pete Todorov provided the coaching for 44 racers at  SASA’s training day on Sunday 7 May at the Alpine Centre in Southampton.

All the racers started the day with a run and off slope warm up before embarking on a day of on and off slope drills,  timed runs and team head-to-heads.

The pictures should tell the story,  but for old racing hands,  they were very pleased to see the the return of Fabrizio and excited to be getting top notch coaching from Monica and Pete,  some having been coached by one or both of them at ESSKIA and Pamporovo over the winter.

For skiers new to racing,  there was lots of enthusiastic feedback and we hope that you are inspired to come back and try some more racing.  Check out the website for the details of the training sessions and upcoming races!

Well done to Lucas Collyer-Todd and India Dusanjh-Auty as fastest male and female of the day and congratulations to Lucas,  Grant Messinger, Genevieve Cassidy and Sophie Trowbridge for winning the team head-to-head.

Thank you to the volunteers who worked behind the scenes to put the training day together,  to the coaches who, as ever,  provided great feedback to all the racers and thank you to the parents for supporting the event.

We aim to hold another training day in September and we also hope to repeat our secondhand kit sale – watch out for more details on the website.

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Adam and Laura Harrison-Smith and Daniel Hutchings raced at the Artemis Interschools Race in Pila this week, representing St Mary’s Independent School in Southampton. Dan had already had a packed week of training with ESSKiA, so was excited to be putting what he’d learnt into practice, (but a also little tired)!  Fabrizio Ghislanzoni joined us from Verbier as team coach so the team were able to apply some of the drills that they had learnt on the dry slope to the alpine environment.

There were two days of racing – on the first day, Giant Slalom, with Adam and Dan racing first in the U12 boys race. Laura was racing later in the day and she got the raw deal as hot weather and the usual racing delays meant that she was racing on a very tracked out course.   The field was enormous, with about 200 children competing from Switzerland, France and Italy as well as the UK and standards were very high.   Laura came 12^th in the U10 girls, Adam 28^th and Dan 63rd, so all three came at least middle of the field.

On the second day, it was the boys turn to race second. Laura skied a blinding first run, showing the importance of planning her race with Fabrizio and skiing that plan, skiing a good line and beating very good skiers who didn’t have the benefit of Fabrizio’s expertise! That performance got her third place on the podium.

By the time the boys came to race, there had already been about 150 runs through the soft course and by the time 80+ U12s had charged down it, it resembled more of a skier cross course than a slalom one. For both boys, getting down in one piece was dominating their thoughts, so we were all very proud to see Adam get 24^th and Dan 46^th. Again, with Fabrizio to guide them, they were able to plan their races, though it was clear to see that both of them were being bounced around so much that it was very hard to keep their intended lines.

We all had a great time in Pila, which had good race pistes and was very welcoming to a huge number of racers. It was a fantastic opportunity for the skiers to race against some very accomplished skiers and to experience racing in spring snow. We’d like to thank Fabrizio for being a great coach, channelling Laura’s emotions to get her that great result!   We’d also like to thank him for finding us good food and sorting out Mike’s tyre!!!!!

Roll on Pila 2018!

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Harvey Stanley was one of a number of SASA racers competing at the English Alpine Championships in Bormio over February half term.  Harvey was competing in U12s and got a very respectable 17th out of 33 finishers in the Combined Slalom and GS and 21st out of 34 finishers in the GS.

If any SASA members have any photos from Bormio that they would like to share on the website,  please send them to secretary@skisasa.co.uk and I’ll add them to this montage.

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Thank you to all the volunteers for running today’s race.    We had some first time volunteers today,  so we hope that you enjoyed your morning and hope to see you again!

Great racing by over 70 racers today.  You can check out the results on the Winter  Race 3 Race page

SASA are looking to put on a race camp at Piani di Bobbio in the Italian Alps during the 2018 February half term (12-16 February 2018).  This will be an amazing opportunity race train on snow with some amazing coaches in a fabulous location.  This is where Fabrizio Ghislanzoni,  one of our SASA coaches works during the winter season.

At this stage,  we are trying to determine how many people would be interested.  We don’t have detailed costings yet,  but we would expect it to cost about £500 per trainee for Monday to Friday.  This would include board,  lodging and training,  but not travel.

If are interested,  please register your interest.  This won’t commit you to anything,  but it does give us an idea of numbers.

If you have any questions about the race camp,  please contact chair@skisasa.co.uk