Yet again the Ambition Racing races hit the mark in a Covid dominated moment in time. With lockdowns, potential lockdowns and travel restrictions, Ambition stepped up to the plate and set up, organised and ran a programme that gave not only British racers early season opportunity to race but also international opposition. With so many British run races being affected by the pandemic, the will to set up and run an ambitious programme is to be commended.
With everything apart from a downhill on the programme, Santa Caterina deliver in terms of piste provision. 14 races over five days resulted in race wins for Jessica Anderson (2 Super G's, Alpine Combined & 2 Giant Slaloms; Elliott Bennett in Alpine Combined (NJR), Rob Holmes in Slalom (NJR) and Toby Case also in Slalom (NJR).
Case is focussing on Slalom at the moment and has already bettered his points from last season in scoring a 41 just prior to the Santa Caterina races. The lower the points, the harder it gets and Case is building on his performances from last year.
Rob Holmes won the first of the two slalom races and this gave him a career best FIS point result across all disciplines of 51 points as well as a third FIS race win.
Jess Anderson has already been to the World Championships (2019 in Are) in her career and is proving to be a great role model and training partner, With five wins in seven starts in Santa Caterina, she scored two low 40 point results in the process.
There were also podium places for Sarah Woodward, Isla Ward and Ted Slade. Woodward will score better results in terms of FIS points this season. Here she was one of the seeds that would help the rest of the field and this made it harder for her to score points towards her own career.
For Ward, this was a first FIS race podium as well as a career best result in FIS points. She also scored a 75 result that would have gone towards her FIS points until she scored her podium result that saw her score a 62 point result.
Sophie Foster and Charlotte Holmes also put in some great results; Foster scoring three sub 67 point results with a best of 63 in the Giant Slalom. Holmes meanwhile scored a best of 84 in the second Slalom race.
Daisi Daniels put in some strong Giant Slalom results in scoring two results of 53 and then a 54 as she starts to benefit from training with the strong group of racers at Ambition.
With lots of British racers taking advantage of British organised race meaning all British entries could race, many of the first year FIS racers were making really positive results including Luca Carrick-Smith who posted the fastest time in the NJR Men's Alpine Combined Slalom section, just edging out race winner Elliott Bennett.
It is not always the racers that score the podiums that attract the attention. The standard of British racing is definitely on the rise and the regularity of the younger racers scoring in the 70 FIS point region is real benefit of these times.
Aiden Urquhart, Kaylan Huisman-Muro, Diaco Abrishami among others all scored results that are heading in the right direction. Luca Carrick-Smith, in his first year of racing, scored a 61point result in finishing 6th in the second of the two Giant Slalom races.
Ted Slade was another to start challenging the FIS points from last year in being at the business end of races in placing third (in slalom) and fourth twice (Slalom and Giant Slalom) and in the process scored some sub sixty point results.
All the racers have one thing in common, they have worked hard to get these results. The hard work put in by coaches, the parents and the athletes has made these results possible. It may only be Christmas time, but the excitement around British racing is not just limited to the World Cup athletes