Ski racing is inter national but it also creates friendships that cross borders. What happens when two clubs with a common enjoyment of racing on dendex but also head to a small village in Austria for their on snow enjoyment, meet and do what they do best, race?
Telford, in Shropshire. England, made the trip to Amsterdam, Holland after the friendship had been created in Alpbach, Austria. This is not the first international friendship, the team from Champery in Switzerland came over earlier this summer and had a training camp in Llandudno on the matting and then raced in the Welsh and English Indoor races at Chill Factore (the Snow Centre North). This particular relationship grew out of the Welsh Championships being held for the last 20 years in Champery.
The race team from Hoofddrop welcomed the racers from Telford warmly and after acclimatising to the slope on the Friday night, all the talk was of how to tackle the rather aggressive ridge on the slope. “That is brutal,” explained one racer after just free skiing over it!
Add gates to it and the brain cells were working over drive to work it out.
Hoofddrop is not the longest slope but it will be hosting the Dutch Championships next year. As the Chair of Hoofddrop Race team, Koos von Der Helm, explained “This gives our racers the chance to benefit from home knowledge and also how the slope runs.” Most of the other slopes in Holland do not use Dendex, they use Neveplast.
What Hoofddrop misses in length it makes up for in steepness. You drop out of the start gate and into the course before meeting the first ridge with a second more aggressive ridge not long after before a few gates into the finish.
With areas set aside for beginners and an indoor rolling carpet to further hone skills, this is a multi faceted venue.
With all the racers taking home either a trophy for the podium places or a medal, the smiles of all age groups were what it was all about.
A social media post the night before the race even lured another stalwart of recent summer racing and now a resident of Amsterdam, Adam Lee, out to race as well!
What was fascinating was the way the two race teams approached the race. With the Dutch race season mirroring the alpine winter, this was an out of season race for the hosts. For Telford, this was at the end of their summer race programme. While the Telford team looked great in their long sleeve t-shorts, the Dutch raced in full race suits as if this was a snow race!
Telford took home the combined result but be rest assured the Dutch are already making plans to head to Telford for the return race next year.
From friendship created in Alpbach and an idea that evolved from three friends: Dave Candlin from Alpbach Aktiv (but originally from Telford); then Rutger Tas from Hoofddrop (and a ski teacher with Alpbach Aktiv over the years) and Chair of the Club at Telford, Luke Banks, put the plan into action. Other clubs are now looking to link up with European Clubs to have races.
The European Champs used to be a highlight of the summer dry slope racing calendar but it dropped off the schedule. It would be great to see it back on the diary with racers from mainland Europe taking part as well!