Chill Factor, Manchester
Sunday 25th April, 2010
With snow hardly having time to defrost from ski boots, plenty of goggle marked faces on show and stories of Meribel triumphs still very much to the fore the British ski circus snapped closed its boot buckles, clicked into its bindings and headed to Manchester for the first big event of a new summer season.
With Chill Factore - Britain’s biggest and best indoor slope - hosting the event, the snow in prime racing condition and ski legs still full of Alpine training there was never going to be any need for excuses. The first championship shoot out of 2010 was upon us. Indeed with race full signs posted and a number of home nation selected athletes in attendance the eventual winners could be sure that they’d prevailed in a race loaded with both quality and depth.
The male race proved to be a two way shoot out between home racer Brad Morgan and Hemel’s Matt Thompson. Following the completion of run 1 only 0.02s separated the two England selected athletes and everything was still to fight for down Mark Vinter’s afternoon challenge. Indeed with the then fourth placed Andy Roose cranking up the pressure with an absolute beauty of a second run it was going to be interesting to see who of the two leaders would crack. In the end neither flinched, as first Thompson proved there was still room to manoeuvre with Roose’s time, posting 0.25s inside the mark and then watched as Morgan unleashed every ounce of strength out of the start gate and stretched every inch of his frame around Vinter’s course to shave Thompson’s mark by 0.2 seconds. A quite remarkable effort that truly deserved to claim victory.
In the ladies race a similar battle raged as England’s Jo Ryding and Scotland’s Alex Tilley squared up and battled it out. Leading the rest of the field by half a second after run one but only separated by 0.08s the two ladies locked horns at the business end of run 2. Tilley’s time of 13.40 – a full second quicker than any of the other ladies – looked like it might just be enough but Ryding reacted and in undercutting Tilley’s time by 0.43s Ryding retained the title she claimed 12 months earlier.
In the categories, Kerry Turnock, Caroline Powell, Florence Bell and Megan Jenkins joined Ryding and Tilley as respective winners amongst the ladies. Whilst Andrew Hjort, Eliya Beelaert-Rubin, Ashley Breese and Zak Vinter joined Morgan and Roose as winners of the males categories.
The day belonged to Brad Morgan and Jo Ryding however. Following team mate David Ryding’s Vancouver appearance in February these two Pendle trained races proved yet again the impressive depth of talent that has emerged from the North West club in recent times. With Ryding & Morgan collecting indoor National Championships we’ve witnessed another impressive chapter for a club with a proud and impressive pedigree of producing racers of the very highest quality.
If the rest of this summer lives up to the quality of this race then we’re all in for a bit of a treat.
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