Last Wednesday, the British University Indoor Snowsports Championship finals went down at Xscape in Castleford with over 100 competitors hit the slopes for either racing or freestyle categories, or raising money for Ski2Help!
The snowboard slalom events kick-started the day and all competitors were storming to the bottom of the slope. But the trophies were taken by Gareth Vogan at Loughborough Uni and Sophie Miles from Manchester.
The final line up saw Birmingham take home two medals:
Men
Gareth Vogan – Loughborough University
Christian Forster – UWE
Tim Kay – Leeds Met University
Women
Sophie Miles – Manchester University
Aneta Radomska – Birmingham University
Brittany Saville – Birmingham Univeristy
The freestyle kicked off in the evening and saw a massive amount of competitors taking to the course. There were some interesting shapes being thrown over the kickers to say the least….
The judges were checking for style and flow as well as difficulty of the run though, and as they said in the northern rounds, a stylish 180 would score higher than a dodgy back flip.
And it was Rob Stronach from Warwick Uni who took the gold in the lads category, scoring a massive 94 points on his first run. And for the girls, it was Fiona Sweetman who topped the podium in the end. Both winners took home new boards too! Not too bad going….
With the Sochi Olympics gaining so much interest, here’s to hoping some of these riders find inspiration from these competitions to get involved with Team GB in the future. It was awesome to see so many getting involved with the sport back on UK soil.
So the final line up for the freestyle looked like this (ps – Birmgham dominated AGAIN with two medals) :
Men
Rob Stronach – Warwick Uni
Arian Sattarin – Manchester Met Uni
Emyr Hafren – Southampton
Women
Fiona Sweetman – Birmingham Uni
Aneta Radomska – Birmingham Uni
Holly Taylor – Nottingham Uni
British Olympic skier, James Machon was also at the event last week supporting his brother, Rob from Leeds Met, in a skiing event. He said: “The standard of skiing and snowboarding this year was very impressive. It’s been really good to watch and I hope the Olympics has influenced more people to get involved with the sport.”
