Page 44 - 1RHA 2023

1st Regiment Royal Horse Artillery
Snowboarding
Ex SNOWSTORM 6–21 Jan 23 Pte Hendy
Ex Snowstorm is an annual exercise where Royal Artillery regi- ments come together to snowboard in preparation for Army competition. It gives people an opportunity to gain experience
of a new sport which they may pursue throughout their career. The exercise runs over 2 weeks, the first week is training and getting back to basics on a snowboard and the 2nd is competition. The group is split down into three, novice, intermediate and advanced.
I was in the novice group and the initial start was a difficult task as learning to snowboard meant I would spend more time on my backside than actually on the board. This was a recurring part of learning until the fourth day when it finally clicked, and I learned to be more fluent and how to position my body correctly.
The competition in the 2nd week allowed you to take everything you had learned in the first week and implement into competing against people from your ability group. There were three different competitions; slalom, slope style and boardercross.
Slalom is the first event which your skills get tested to get down to the bottom of the track while turning in between the gates. This was my least favourite event as I always ended up going too fast into the turns which ended with me missing turns or falling over. Overall, it was an incredibly fun event where others and I, had a
great laugh and got to enjoy the amazing scenery of the snowy mountains of Flachau, Austria.
Slope Style was the second event and by far my favourite event, as we were scored on your control and creativity of going through a course they set up. The courses are made up of objects to go over for example a box or pipe then jumps. Whilst competing I came sixth overall which was my best finish out of all three events.
Boardercross is an event when you compete head-to-head in a race from point to point this was interesting as it was pure speed and battling the person you came up against. Funnily enough, in my second race I went up against Capt Carter (my boss) and the race started with us both going straight into each other and then struggling to get back to our feet to beat one another, thankfully I won that race to get the bragging rights within the SPS Det.
Overall, my time snowboarding was an amazing experience and would recommend it to anyone in the Regiment; we had a great time experiencing Austria and I would one hundred percent do it again as I got to go somewhere new and meet some new peo- ple from all over the Royal Regiment. Two weeks snowboarding across the best slopes in Austria really showed me what the Brit- ish Army has to offer.
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