A meeting has been arranged on the 14th March by SSE (ASC and ROTP) and one member from each region invited to attend. No specific agenda has been raised yet but the general aim is to provide ‘discuss any matters/suggestions before the beginning of the forthcoming season’.

Someone from ERSA will be attending the meeting so if you have any matters or suggestions please send them over so that I can collate them for the meeting. I have had much feedback from people over the past few months and will add this feedback.

One of the things that is constantly raised at the club is queries from new parents and racers about where to start, what races exists, what their children should take part in etc. It’s a long list of questions and of course everyone has an opinion. Unfortunately it is incredibly difficult to find anything online and i have yet to come across a parent who has seen this information on the SSE site.

In the current climate it is proving very difficult to gain sponsorship for anything ski related. Last year the club national we were only able to secure one sponsor whereas the first year we were able to secure several who contributed over £2000 to the event.

Have received the following from Lynda Hickey about a fund raising event being organised by Rufus Alcott. Email is as follows.

Good morning,

As you know, Snowsport GB have had major financial difficulties and the team going to compete in the Olympics are left without sufficient funding. I know it's been coming for a long time but it seems so unfair on the athletes who have put so much commitment and dedication to getting to Vancouver.

We are well into the winter season racing now with kids and parents travelling all over the place to take part in races in various countries. But it won’t be be that long before the summer season is upon us once again. As with the past few years the number of races available to people is high and if you wanted you could race virtually every weekend (pity the kids that have to do that what about a break?).

Snowsport GB has been in financial trouble for sometime now but things are definitely coming to a head now. What a disaster on the timing though and obviously raises more questions than it answers.

This article was in the Times yesterday. There’s a lot of work going on in the background to make sure they get to the Olympics in a few weeks time but it doesn’t exactly help with the preparation.

Various updates have taken place over the past few days for various races and information around them.

Can find the latest information on Britski.

The latest list of entries received for the English Alpine Championships can be found here. Closing date is the 1st Feb. Also the Ski Cross has now been cancelled due to lack of entries.

Last week I spent the time in Les Houches, France with Natasha for the Anglo Scottish Cup race. We were there with lots of friends from various clubs who also had children taking part in the races. It was the first snow race for Natasha, not something I was expecting to have to attend with her, but during the year Natasha asked if she could give it a go, what more could I say!

Attached to this page is a newsletter put together for the region with a few bits and pieces in just to keep people up to date with things that have been happening over the past few months. Hopefully a useful thing and we will push more out when the time is right.

This will be sent out on the ERSA email list but I am keen to use whatever ways exist to push out information.

A couple of years ago I created a simple website called SkiZog, www.skizog.co.uk, with the sole purchase of providing a way for people to advertise Ski race gear for sale when they were trying to get rid of it.

There were a couple of sites around already but not very extensive and had their limitations. I wanted something that people could upload items themselves and then I just needed to approve them. So I came up with SkiZog and it proved very popular.