Summer Camp photos 2014

More photos of the Zermatt Camp group, and more to follow of Norwich.
Also see Jordan's excellent report on his Summer training in Les Houches and Zermatt: blog

Summer Camp - Zermatt, Switzerland

 

We had 40 BSA trainees on our 2 week summer glacier camp at Zermatt, Switzerland. The resort was full of world cup ski stars from across the world, there to take advantage of training at the highest skiable area in Europe. There can be no better inspiration for our young racers than training alongside some of the best ski racers in the world and Zermatt provides training opportunities second to none for summer skiing in Europe. Along with the BSA regulars we were delighted to welcome a number of new racers to the programme who integrated very quickly and we look forward to seeing them again this coming season. 

*Great day up on the Glacier 

The coaching team assembled was really exceptional and pulled together to provide some amazing input for the trainees on the camp. We had Ruslan Natchkov and Ali Morton who are heading up the Male and Female FIS teams for the season supporting a number of our current British Junior team athletes at an age when the federation is not providing a programme. Also joining the full time coaching team this season with myself, Dave T and Cammy Gunn we were delighted to have Natalia Pruska join us for her first camp. Natalia brings a wealth of knowledge and experience having coached in Europe, the US and New Zealand.

In addition we were very fortunate to have some great guest coaches join us this summer. Recently retired British Olympic skier Chemmy Alcott was on hand to provide some great coaching and share her experience following the end of her illustrious career. It was also great to have along British Number 1 speed skier Dougy Crawford who joined us for some training in order to keep up to speed while he seeks funding and support for a program this coming season. He provided great influence training with our FIS athletes and was always willing to give encouragement and advice. Finally we had current British Senior Team member Jai Geyer joining us once again as a break in his own race programme allowed him to come and do some coaching with us. Overall we had a coaching team that provided some amazing input and inspiration to the next generation of British racers.

*Jack O’Neil working on his balance in dry land training

 

The first week of training presented some challenging weather conditions causing us to miss some days skiing, but we still got some useful technical foundation work done back on the skis and the trainees really knuckled down to fitness training mixed with much fun and games along the way. This was followed by a week of near perfect summer training conditions with some fresh snow from the previous week and cold temperatures overnight. The great thing with summer camp is it allows us to focus on making big changes and improvements in our trainees skiing without the pressure of imminent races approaching which we have during the season. With such great conditions and an excellent coaching set up it was amazing to see the progress made throughout the camp. At the end everyone was thoroughly exhausted with an incredible amount of hard work having gone into maximising the last 2 weeks.

 *Fraser Buchen training some Pro-SL
 

We are looking forward to our next camps at Norwich dry slope at the end of August and October glacier camp in Deux Alpes.

Scott