This website, http://www.snoasisconcern.com/, is not one I have looked at before. SnOasis is definitely getting closer now but this site was originally put together to oppose the building of the centre.

Alain Baxter will be visiting Ipswich ski centre on 15th March, details can be found here, http://www.teamipswich.com/events/winter_olympics_breakfast.

Last Monday evening Mike Barker spent some over at the Ipswich club with the Vikings team during a training session. He was there to see how things are done at Ipswich, talk to the coaches, racers and parents. This also included something to eat and drink afterwards.

I’ve been involved with ERSA for a number of years now and helping out at the races and this continues through to the national races. In 2008 I stepped back a bit from the scene as I became somewhat disillusioned with various aspects of the sport. Like any sport skiing certainly has it’s own set of unique characters, personalities and politics. How much you become involved is entirely up to yourself but in a sport that has been crying out for helpers all over the place it can be very disheartening at times.

The minutes of the ASC meeting that took place in November have been published on the Snowsport England website here.

Worth a read if you want to get a picture of what is happening this coming year, although does raise a few questions.

The last set of minutes for the SSE ROTP (Race Organising Technical Panel) have been published on the SSE Website (unfortunately not able to put a link in here) to find them,

1. http://www.snowsportengland.org.uk/key_committee_minutes-841.html

2. Scroll to the bottom of that page and the ROTP section

3. Click on the November 2009 option

It’s the same in any sport but a common site, parents pushing their kids to do more and more when they don’t really want to. Parents living their dream through their children and sometimes it can also just be simple childcare (albeit expensive childcare at times).

These took place up in Sunderland last weekend. So a wonderful trip up on Friday afternoon on the sloooooow A1 which took nearly 6 hours to get to the TravelInn. It was a bit of a pain as I had a conference call to listen in on as well.

Most of the competitors were there Friday evening for the open practice which went well. Saturday was a wonderfully bright day and two excellent courses were set. For the day I was finish ref which was quite straight forward even though I was kept busy at times.

Had a few issues with racers saying or doing the wrong thing, but a quick quiet word with them should hopefully get the message across. Over the season there have been times when some racers have pushed the limit on sportsmanship behaviour. On Saturday one racer went too far and received a reprimand from the TD.