Jake Dade has combined his studies this winter with competing at the Youth Olympics and is now looking to add competing at the World Junior Champs in Ski Cross to his programme for the season. Dade finished seventh in the Youth Olympics in Korea in January and then with his fellow Norfolk based racer, Axel Rose Green, they combined to finish sixth in the team event.
With Ski Cross a very junior part of the GB Snowsport’s family, securing exposure is very difficult and yet with the likes of Ollie Davies securing podiums on the World Cup in the last year, the discipline is certainly on the rise.
Combining his time studying at East Norfolk Sixth Form College where he is studying Economics, Environmental Science and Computer Science, Dade did enough in the early part of the season to convince both GB Snowsport and the British Olympic Association that he was good enough to go to the Youth Olympics.
The Youth Olympics are held every four years and qualification is highly prized. The event is run like the main Olympics and for many athletes attending, this is their first experience of a multi sport event. For Britain this year there was a gold rush as Zak Carrick-Smith took two gold medals and a silver in the alpine events.
Dade had competed n the European Youth Olympic Festival last year and he felt that this was a completely different environment.
Dade admitted that “It was a bit of a shock,” to get the selection, “I had been working a lot towards it,” he explained in a break from studying after YOG. “In my eyes I felt that I had earned a place to go but there were still the nerves as to was I going to get selected.”
With notification given just prior to Christmas, Dade was on his way home from competing in a FIS Ski Cross event in Reiteralm when the news came through. Having placed 6th and 13th in the two races, this underlined his belief that he would be going.
Dade is quite a relaxed person and when asked how his nerves were leading up to the event, he admitted that it was only when training started that he felt them kick in. After inspecting the course, Dade admitted it was not quite his style of course but he put that too the side and felt he had to give it his all. “My nerves built gradually through the competition,” he admitted.
Ski Cross is different to alpine in that athletes can ski the course at full speed prior to a timed qualification run and then the knock out stages. “We were given an hour of training to get the feel of the course.” Dade admitted that he would have preferred to have had a set number of training runs rather than the time. The course was long and he felt that the first couple of runs were his best ‘but I was still trying to get the feel of the course.”
Dade found it interesting seeing how some nations racers focussed on the start while others were doing the full course. On race day, the racers were given another period of training and this saw different strategies. Dade just did the one run so as to conserve energy before the qualification run and then the knock out races.
While he felt it was not quite his typeof course, Dade liked the course with its mixture of jumps, table tops, rollers and fast speed turns.
Going to the Youth Olympics was a huge experience and while he was there, he was under the auspices of the BOA. This is where the problems lie in preparing for the World Juniors. The BOA took over things for the Youth Olympics in providing coaches and back up staff. For the World Juniors, because GB Snowsport only look after the elite level athletes, the coach, service man and other support staff need to be arranged by the athletes themselves. For the alpine WJC event, coaches were provided by GB Snowsport, but Ski Cross, being the poor relation, will have to do it themselves.
Dade thoroughly enjoyed his YOG experience and took the opportunity to reach out to other athletes that were competing in different sports to find out more about their sports. “There were loads of people to talk to and you could not get bored if you tried,” he explained.
One of the unique experiences about big events like the YOG, is the trading of pins and “this got you talking,” Dade continued.
Dade battled his was from a start of 28 athletes in the Ski Cross event to finish 7th. Unlike a usual Ski Cross event, which goes from qualification to a knock out, the YOG event went to a round robin style. Racers were seeded according to seed points and then split into two groups with the top four in each those groups going into the semi finals with the top two from each race going to the Big Final and the other two to the Small Final.
Half way through Dade was sitting in second in his group with a race win and a second and felt his consistency was good. With the support of his father in the finish as well as the BOA contingent, Dade was enjoying things.
Nerves are a constant battle when competing but Dade explained that as soon as he got in the start gate, he did not feel nervous. He had been happy just to have qualified for the semi-final but did explained that leading up to the heat he had felt “very nervous.’
While coming seventh was very impressive, Dade thinks carefully about would he have accepted that if somebody had told him before the games that that was where he would finish, would he have shaken their hands for that? At first he says yes but then, you can sense the feeling of how much he wanted to do better. Dade is a fighter. He felt he really could have got into a medal position.
Having been on the cusp of success, he is now more hungry to win medals. “We are really trying hard in GB to get better at this,” he believes.
Dade has confidence and explains that the YOG event has woken him up and shown, at least to himself, that he is very good for his age. “I can achieve big things, I just have to keep training hard, I am on the right path and eventually it will all pay off.”
Can he take this sense of determination all the way to the World Juniors?
All pictures courtesy of British Olympic Association / Sam Mellish