23rd December 2011 at 08:47PM

We thought, instead of daily updates during our week at the races, one big post at the end with all our news from the week would be better! It’s 8:15am here on our last day of racing, and having been down to the lift to discover that it won’t be opening for at least an hour and a half due to wind, what better an opportunity to blog whilst the kids are waiting anxiously back at the hotel for Day 2 of the BARSC GS.

All in all, we’ve had a pretty good week in here in Champoluc. We’ve had plenty of good skiing from the guys and even a few medals to top it off too. With the season having been extremely slow to kick off this year, the week’s training back in Austria prior to coming here was a tough one for the kids. With no lower resorts allowing any race teams (other than World Cup) to ski gates, it meant we were back on the Kitzsteinhorn glacier for another week which meant three things: very early mornings, long days and some unbelievably cold weather!

The guys all trained really hard though with a mix of slalom and even some super G training thanks to an invite from the Salzburg ski club, where 1997 and 1998 Y.O.Bs had the chance to run a full length Super G course on the glacier for 3 days with a super combined race at the end. Opportunities like that don’t come around often and having been invited, it was something we certainly couldn’t turn down! The kids all absolutely loved it and, more to the point, gained a lot of valuable experience from it.

Back to this week, though, and whilst not everybody may have had consistently good runs all week, all of our guys have done the business one run here or there. Particular mentions to Ella Ward who, having been disappointed with her slalom runs, stepped it up in the GS to finish 5^th in her age group, along with Will Wheeler who made up for a scrappy first run in the slalom (from 4^th place by 0.7s) to finish 3^rd in his age group, what a second run that was! Notable mentions also go to Phoebe Long and Ben Smith who, having improved tremendously over the past few months, this week showed what they’re now capable of, and both myself and Aaron couldn’t be more happy with their performances. Sarah Glasgow also laid one down in the minis GS race yesterday to finish up 3^rd, fingers crossed she can go even better today!

But a special mention undoubtedly has to go to Anna Henderson who has been on form all week. Anna lead the slalom on Tuesday after a brilliant first run, but unfortunately just skied a little too conservatively and ended up 3^rd, something which was still not a bad result at all! Anna laid it down again in the first run of the GS, and with the second run being cancelled due to the first run taking abnormally long, she secured her first ever victory. Anna’s been skiing extremely well these last few months, and it was only a matter of time before the results started flooding in. Well done to Anna, Will, Sarah and all the rest of the guys!

On to the final day of racing, and fingers crossed we get another race!

Benn