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Varsity Races - Tignes 2017
December 5th 2017
This was a rather different ski race to most that I have taken part in during my ski racing career in that I was racing, mostly, for my team rather than for myself as an individual.

The accommodation was the usual dismal, cold and uninviting French apartment that the organisers seem to believe will be acceptable to students and was very disappointing after a long and delayed journey here to Tignes.  However, after a few exceptionally cold days, the sun was shining and the snow was excellent for race day.

We had prepared at Milton Keynes under the coach Glen Greener who Florence and I trained with when we were regulars on the indoor racing circuit and it had been really lovely to see him again (as well as to catch up with Ollie Eaton and Jessica Anderson who were both assisting Glen on our Monday night sessions).  This helped with Slalom but GS is not something we could train for indoors so a couple of days in Tignes before the races was very beneficial to all of us.

Oxford were drawn to go first and I was given bib 2 as the first of the Cambridge Ladies 1st team to go out of the start.  Racing is hard enough as it is without the responsibility of trying to help your team re-gain the titles lost in 2016 and it took me right back to the British Schoolgirl races in Flaine all those years ago!  


If you are team-minded (and I am) you have to temper your own personal ambitions with making sure that you finish for the team.  In the final analysis it was a hands-down win for Cambridge across all teams and both disciplines as well as overall!  Personally, I won the Slalom trophy and podiumed 2nd in both GS and Overall (missing out on the Overall trophy by 0.01 second over 4 runs!!!).


After the races the prize-giving was a bit more wild than I'm used to and the champagne-spraying was certainly not something I had been involved in before - great fun though and the hundreds of other Cambridge students who were on the annual Varsity skiing holiday were particularly enthusiastic about their University bringing home the silverware.


So now we wait to hear if we will be awarded 1/2 or full Cambridge blues!!!