The smiles were there for all to see from Jess Anderson as should stood receiving the trophy for the Howden's Women's Slalom. Anderson overcome the surprise joint lead in the British race of young Daisi Daniels with a storming second run. Daniels held on to take second place in her second British National Championship race with Nicole Ritchie taking her second podium in the slalom in three years. The race was won by Belgium's Marjolelin Decroix with Patricia Miquel and Mirentxu Miquel joining her on the International podium.
With a high percentage of the first run crashing out of the Paul Telling set course, including the expected challenge of Sarah Woodward, the racer was lead by Nuria Pau with Daisi Daniels jointly leading the British charge with Anderson. Daniels had watched the early racers go down and seen where they had been making mistakes so had raced a conservative line but had used her experience beyond her years to match her older and more experienced compatriots. The two sat in joint eighth overall.
With the two Quinn Estates supported athletes not racing, Alex Tilley racing is now focusing on Super G instead of Slalom alongside Giant Slalom, and Charlie Guest injured, the race for the British title was wide open. Another two racers expected to have been challenging for the race win were absent with Victoria Palla having to study and Reece Bell sidelined through injury.
Anderson tore into the second run to post the second fastest time of the run, just six hundredths shy of being fastest. Daniels would follow her down and a mistake on the steep section cost her dearly and she slipped out of the race lead reckoning.
After the race Anderson reflected: “Slalom’s been quite painful in training, but in the race I didn’t really think about it. The first run was a bit sketchy, there was a lot of people coming out so I just took it a bit more cautious than I should have, so I thought I’d send it a bit more in the second run and it paid off.”
The 20-year-old said while it was great to take the gold, it was disappointing that Britain’s number one ranked slalom skier couldn’t make it to Tignes.
“I was really looking forward to Charlie [Guest] being here – she had been skiing so well and she’s been on form. When I was at World Champs with her and training with her it was really nice.”
Both Daniels and Ritchie were delighted to have made the podium for varying different reasons. For Daniels this was her first British National podium, something that she admitted she did not think would happen in her first year of FIS racing. In all, Daniels has podiumed four times this year in FIS races. "I hoped I might be challenging for the U18 podium," Daniels admitted after the race.
For Ritchie, winner of the prize for the best non British team racer, she was last on the podium in the British Championship Slalom three years ago. A change of training set up to Ambition has started to pay dividends for her and she paid compliments to the rest of the girls on the Ambition team for all supporting her and Anderson with their success. "It is a real team effort, we all support each other even when we are not getting the results we each hope for," she explained.
Abi Bruce and Cara Brown rounded out the top five finishers in ninth and tenth overall just ahead of an outstanding performance from one of the more unheralded racers, Shannon Potter. Potter had all her equipment stolen from her team van less than three weeks ago and has had to bed in her equipment rapidly.
Next up on Friday is the Giant Slalom for the Ladies.
Howden's British National Slalom Championship results
Picture is of Jess Anderson on her way to winning the Howden's British National Slalom title. Credit Racer Ready. More action shots are on www.racerready.zenfolio.com