Max Baggio further emphasised the improvement that he has made this season as he captured his second Senior Title in two days in winning the Delancey British Downhill Title. With the lack of the leading British speed racers this year, this gave some of the younger races the opportunity to make a name for themselves and Ollie Davies, Billy Major and Nick Moynihan all stepped up to the plate as did some of the lesser known racers like Chris Guest. ...
It turned out to be an extremely busy day at the Delancey British Alpine Championships with a training run and then two races to try and beat the weather. It has been a hard Championships for the organisers so far and all the best laid plans have been laid to waste by the weather. After delaying the Super G by one day, eating into the Downhill training days, the original plan had been to run one training run and then the National Championship Downhill. With the poor weather anticipated for the Wednesday, it was decided to bring the National Junior Championship forward as well: 71 racers in all competed in the three runs! A great effort from the coaches, organisers and racers!
Baggio has been on the fringes of winning titles at the Delancey British Championships for a few years now and this year he has made the step up to the top step. With a new coach in the form of Mike Pilarski, Dougie Crawford's old coach, Baggio has continued his rise up the rankings. Baggio feels that Pilarski has been a huge influence on his season so far. The relationship is working and the results are showing. A 51 point result in the National Championship downhill and a 56 point result in the NJC Downhill is testament to the hard work put in as he also placed 13th overall in a field including Johan Clarey, recently a top seed in the Downhill World Cup!
With talk of the overall, Baggio explained after the race "I wanted to win both events and, yeah, have done that but I have not been thinking about the Overall, so to have got those I am definitely happy with that."
Billy Major took second place in the Senior Downhill, a great result considering that he has suffered two dislocated shoulders this season! After the Super G, Major commented, “I've only been skiing and training since the end of February which hasn't helped, so I have to consider that too. I still don't feel 100 per cent.”
Nick Moynihan finished just off the podium in the Senior race, just behind Ollie Davies, but not having raced Downhill for three years, Moynihan explained before the race that he wanted to see how close he could get to the top speed skiers. Moynihan explained that while "it was nice to get some speed but I would rather get some speed in GS or Slalom rather than on the Downhill skis. All in all there is a lot of work if I want to do it again! It was a lot of fun to see what the fast guys do to be best, with some of the best in the world racing it was really interesting!"
Moynihan used the race to learn two things he explained: "There are two things to learn from today, one is the difference in approach between a speed skier and a tech skier. David Poisson and Johan Clarey are some of the best skiers in the world and they are very relaxed in their approach. Bits of their approach can definitely be taken on to the tech disciplines. Especially in British skiing, guys can get caught up in it all and stressed at the top. After all the training there is no need to stress about it all."
Baggio took the Senior title with Billy Major second and Ollie Davies third while in the junior race, the podium was the same with Nick Moynihan taking fourth in both races. Chris Guest took the prize for the best non team racer.
Delancey British Downhill Results
National Junior Championships results Male
Training Times
Picture: Double winner, Max Baggio on his way to winning the National junior Title in Tignes. Copyright Racer Ready - all rights reserved.
All the action shots from Training run, the National Downhill Championship and the junior Downhill Championship races are on line at www.racer-ready.ifp3.com