Molloy wins home town race: “That was the best race of my life.”

The 36th All England Championships, sponsored by Aosta Race Academy.

Michael Molloy has promised much in the past and on Saturday 3rd September he delivered. Molloy, a product of the well run and enthusiastic Norfolk Ski Club, put in two smooth runs that were clean and tight. Fastest on the first run Molloy put the pressure on the rest of the field and then backed it up with the fastest time on the second run to come home ahead of James Greenwood and Andy Davies joining him on the podium.

The two courses, set by Sally Bartlett and Phil Brown, caused a number of racers to crash out but this does not detract from the way that Molloy attacked the courses to post the fastest time on the first run ahead of Pete Walters and James Greenwood with Andy Davies leading the rest of the field albeit over six tenths behind Molloy. The first run saw 32 racers crash out including four from the top fifteen seeded racers. Andy Watson, the class act of dry slope skiing could not live with the technical nature of the course and was undone midway down.  Watson will be back and be in contention again but this was not to be his day.  Due to his late entry to the race, James Greenwood had started early and had held the lead from the start posting a challenging time that just two of the expected challengers bettered.  Greenwood is now helping out with coaching and it was maybe an indication of the times that very few recognised snow racers were actually on the start list.

So after the first run Molloy was a comfortable quarter of a second ahead of Pete Walters, another coach taking part, who was in turn almost two tenths ahead of Greenwood. Andy Davies was another two tenths back with David Hatcher making it two Welshmen in the top five in the All England heading four racers within twelve hundredths of each other.  Such was the desire to win the race some racers suffered from over doing it and this cost them precious time. 

With the sun shining and the weather meaning that the racers were having to dress up to race, there was a great atmosphere amongst the crowd watching.

As the second run progressed by the time the start list progressed into the top twenty, it was Jordan Fellows who took the lead. Fellows was one of the few recognised snow racers in the field and is part of the GB Children’s team.  Another clean run put Fellows into second overall behind James Mozol from Gloucester who had had a disappointing first run.  The age group prize was Fellows and now it was a case of how far up the Overall field he could go against the older racers. James Gibb, a past winner of the Mini Championships when held in Norwich in 2004 edged ahead of Mozol to place 11th overall but behind a group of Pendle racers that placed in the top ten overall. Jonny Powell posted a much improved second run time to bring him closer to the top racers but was still some way off the top times. Although Powell finished in tenth, he could only manage seventh in the Senior age group.

Chris Corr took ninth overall ahead of his team mate having been down in sixteenth spot after the first run.  Eighth place was another senior, Andrew Du Plessis, who benefited from a solid safe second run and gained places more by others crashing out than posting a fast time. The saying “to come first, first you have to get down” is always true in championship racing. Ben Clark edged further ahead of du Plessis on the second run but just could not challenge further up the leader board, losing a spot to Ross Hammond who had tied with him on the first run.

One of the better and encouraging runs from the first run had come from Nick Miller who had started 25 yet posted the ninth fastest time. Sadly Miller could not follow this up and crashed out in the second run. Next one down was Gerard Flahive who admitted that this was the one race he wanted to challenge for all season coming into the race. After the first run he admitted that maybe he had tried too hard and was slightly despondent that he was down in eighth spot almost a second off the pace.  The second run was to be all or nothing he declared. In the end it was nothing as he struggled to cope with a set of skis he had borrowed from Andy Watson that he hoped would be faster than his own skis.  With seven to go it was still Hammond leading.

Pendle’s third racer in the top ten finishers was Andrew Leeson and he edged further ahead of Hammond to grab the lead. Would he be able to hold on with the faster racers getting ready at the top?

Harry Hornsby was next up and having spent an evening earlier in the week having his wrist looked at following a training crash, anything he achieved would be a bonus according to his coach and father.  Hornsby had four hundredths advantage after the first run yet showed what he was capable of with the fastest run to that point on the second run. Now it was into the top five and the excitement was growing.

David Hatcher’s unique style has carried him to numerous wins in his career but for the All England it was not to be and he crashed out.  Four to go and another chance for a welsh racer to take the most sought after dry slope title of the summer. Andy Davies had won the Grand Prix title earlier in the summer and had expressed a desire to win the All England to back this up.  He attacked and edged out Hornsby. 

James Greenwood was next up and he made light of Davies’s time to take the lead. For many of the racers in the finish watching, this was an example of how to attack a course and combine using power and technique to post a fast time on a plastic slope. Two to go.

Pete Walters is one of the coaches at Bromley Ski Slope and rarely races these days apart from his own club’s Club National and the All England. Yet he still has the guile and touch to post fast times.  This time it was not to be and despite having the second fastest time from the first run, he joined the Did Not Finish list. 

So after 121 racers had started the Men’s race at the All England Championship in 2011, it had come down to two racers: James Greenwood in the finish and leading the race or Michael Molloy in the start. Molloy had an advantage of over four tenths from the first run but in the warm sun with the misting system on, a clean run would still be required to post a better combined time from the two runs. Nineteen year old Michael Molloy took a further quarter of a second out of Greenwood’s time to finish almost a second faster than any other racer on the day. 

In the 36 years that the All England has been running, many great dry slope skiers have won this title. While the lure of dry slope or

racing may not be what it once was, you can only beat who else is in the race.

Congratulations to all the winners but perhaps the biggest winner of the day was the sport of dry ski slope racing: The social side of the sport has always been popular and the fact that the car park was full to over flowing just showed that there is still a demand for this sport but it needs to look where is goes from here!

The age group podiums were as such:

Children 1

  1.  Declan Huppach
  2.  William Feneley
  3.  Thomas Rascagneres

Children 2

  1. Jordan Fellows
  2.  Thomas Richardson
  3.  Will Wheeler

Junior 1

  1. Chris Corr
  2.  James Gibb
  3.  Matthew Martin

Junior 2

  1. Michael Molloy
  2.  Andy Davies
  3.  James Mozol

Senior

  1. James Greenwood
  2.  Harry Hornsby
  3.  Andrew Leeson

Masters

  1. Rob Hales
  2.  Andrew Hjortt
  3.  Paul Bunton

Overall

  1. Michael Molloy
  2.  James Greenwood
  3.  Andy Davies

Full results of the 36th All England Championships

Please send me pictures from the racing (click here)

Women’s report

Mini’s report

Team event

Reflections on The All England

What happened in 2010: Men; Women; Mini; Team

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