English Alpine Championships 2009 " Bormio

Thursday 19.2.09 Ski Cross

Another brilliantly sunny day, but with a biting wind, saw the final day of the latest addition to the Alpine Championships, the Ski Cross event. The races took place on the Oga piste, a short drive out of Bormio, which had been prepared specially for the competition.

The piste, which had been used yesterday for training, was hard and in places icy. The course consisted of a series of jumps, rollers and turns before ending in a steep pitch down to the finish. For a Ski Cross race it was a longer than usual course but was ideal to demonstrate the fun and excitement of such a race.

Competition took the form of a series of training runs, followed by a timed run. The times were used to seed the knockout heats where four riders race together with the top two going through to the next round. This made for some falls but exciting skiing.

The female race only had four competitors so all went through to the final. We there saw Charlotte Davies take the win, followed by Jasmine Taylor, Sarah Hughes and Emily Dawes.

The male final was an exciting and close contest which saw Bradley Morgan leading into the final pitch. There he fell and missed the last gate allowing Edward Cozzie to win the race, closely followed by Tristram More-Molyneux. Bradley tried to climb up to round the last gate only to see William Tucker appear to take third place.