Smiles all round in Sunderland

Snowsport England Grand Prix Series
Round 2 - Sunderland
5th June 2011

Sunderland, or on the basis of numerous Grand Prix skiing weekends, perhaps Nosunderland or Winderland might be considered a more appropriate name for one of Britain’s newest cities. Indeed when the clouds congregate and precipitate or the wind, freshly chilled from buffeting the North Sea, decides to roll across the skyline and into the faces of Silksworth’s racers and officials then it can make the slopes of the series sponsor Aosta Valley feel positively Mediterranean. Only Pendle truly rivals Silksworth on a poor weather day.

But what a slope! A quartet of tiered dendix layers equally spaced with acceleration inducing drops and enough room to pose 17 or 18 extremely challenging red and blue questions. Unquestionably there are better all-round facilities than Sunderland, but when the questions asked completely revolve around the 180 metres or so between the start gate & finish bean then England’s most north easterly slope has no rival. This is the Carnoustie of dry slope ski racing.

In the ladies event a new name appeared at the top of the halfway leader board as Alex Bullock delivered what she had been suggesting she was capable of for a while and negotiated a tough first course with near surgical precision. Only Alice Hales mounted any sort of challenge to Bullock’s first time, the two ladies separated by less than 0.1 seconds but having comfortable advantage of more than half a second over the rest of the field.

As the two ladies awaited their 2nd run however a new contender entered the fray as Bullock’s Telford training mate converted an absolutely blistering run to both launch herself into overall contention and add a little extra pressure on the leaders. Indeed with Hales 2nd run leaving her a tenth of a second short of Gould’s combined effort only Bullock could deny a remarkable comeback win. And deny it she did with a cool and reassuringly unspectacular 2nd run that oozed maturity in doing enough to score a maiden overall victory without exposing herself to unnecessary risk.

In the men’s event David Hatcher stamped an immediate authority on the event, impressively dissecting Craig Ruddock’s feet moving challenge in his own inimitable style. Breathlessly and somewhat open eyed the rest of the field watched as Hatcher pushed the boundaries of what was achievable and posed questions that many of the big names were unable to answer.

Indeed as a number of the top ten ranked racers perished chasing impossibly direct lines you did have to wonder if any of them were learning anything from the mistakes of those in front of them. If they did then it clearly didn’t translate down to their boots.

Elsewhere Bromley’s Dan Curtis and Cardiff’s Andrew Davies justified their decisions to cover the length of the country in the early hours of Sunday morning for a smidgen over 27 seconds of racing with impressive challenges to Hatcher. And whilst there was little to split to three racers on run 2, Hatcher’s morning advantage proved decisive, whilst Curtis claimed 2nd and Davies 3rd.

Indeed whilst a number of the established racers had a day to forget one or two of the names from a little further down the field took the opportunity to make hay whilst the wind blew. Not least Telford racer Chris Yates who caught the eye with a blistering run 1 and then closed out an impressive display with a solid 2nd run through Lee Bennett's 18 gate maze to claim his first ever top 5 overall GP finish.

In the categories Vivien Hanson and Rob Hales proved victorious in the masters’ category with Emily Goddard joining David Hatcher in winning the senior category. Charlotte Gould and Andrew Davies collected Junior 2 winner’s prizes.

In Junior 1 Chris Yates joined Alex Bullock as category winners whilst Jordan Fellows and Emma Peters claimed the honours in chi 2, all four racers notably representing the Telford stable. Whilst in the youngest category Declan Huppach and Mille Jackson proved too good for the rest of the children 1 competitors.

The day however belonged to Alex Bullock. She’d been knocking on the door labelled big race win for a while and whilst the obvious frustration of waiting to covert promising challenge into overall victory was yet to show she stayed patient and believed in her ability. With the door ajar and opportunity teasingly inviting the Telford racer in she not only accepted the invitation but smashed the door off its hinges. More race wins will certainly follow but Silksworth’s fantastic rolling matting will always be where Bullock established herself beyond the role of contender.

The series now moves indoors for what will be a trio of hard fought events in the controlled refrigerated atmospheres of Milton Keynes, Manchester and Hemel but they will have to be very good to be as memorable as this one.

Yet again the Snowsport England series sponsored by Ski Solutions, Aosta Valley, Atomic & Ski Bartlett had delivered a wonderfully competitive event and Silksworth’s rolling track has, as it always does, provided us with two very worthy race winners. Who cares about the weather?