Max Laughland gave notice of his slalom prowess with a 5.69 second winning margin in the Welsh Alpine Children's Championship Slalom. While many of his rivals made mistakes and crashed out, Laughland produced two clean and fast runs to take the win ahead of three racers from ATC: Murdo Watson, Ryrie Hodge and Daniel Leitch in fourth overall. Gibson produced a strong second run to overhaul the lead held by Honor Bartlett after the first to take the race win with Leane Francis taking third overall and fastest Under 14 racer.
The competitiveness between Bartlett and Gibson is seeing the two racers, both at Ambition pushing each other both in training and in the races. Bartlett lead by just 0.02 on the first run and Gibson came back to win the second run by 0.06 seconds, enough to take the race win. If the two Under 16 girls thought that they had the race win easily in their grasp, Leane Francis did her best to win the race overall by taking the fastest second run time but agonisingly for her she finished 0.05 hundredths behind Gibson and one hundredth behind Bartlett. Francis is definitely one to watch out for over the course of the season. Amy Stokoe and Lucy Jackman rounded out the top five finishers overall.
While Francis was mixing it with the best of the older racers times, Megan Jones and Mathilda Watterson joined Francis on the Under 14 girls podium, finishing in 8th and 9th overall.
While the girls race was nip and tuck, Laughland's performance gave the rest of the field a wake up call with the English Championships coming up in February. Ryrie Hodge had lead the field chasing Laughland after the first run but his ATC teammate raised his game on the second run to end up with an advantage of 0.16 seconds at the end of the race. Leitch was much closer on the second run to tuck into fourth overall, overhauling the pace set by Travis Parker in the process.
Again Eli Padoan took the race win in the Under 14 boys race, finishing in ninth overall. Finlay Ferrand and Tom Agutter joined Padoan on the Under 14 podium.
Matthew Ingle took the Master's win in the Male race with Carrie Walsh beating Lisa Williams in the Female race.
Female results
Male results
Action shots from the racing are available on www.racerready.zenfolio.com
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