Page 76 - The Royal Lancers Chapka 2018

74 REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN)
bined RAC and AAC championships and Trooper Collins being awarded ‘Best Novice’.
Next stop Les Contamines France, for Exercise PIPEDOWN – one of two divisional championships for both Alpine and Nordic skiing. Following a short yet devastating period of post-Verbier blues and a brief catch-up with our ‘heroic’ Nordic brethren, the team were soon back on the race piste. Here, the combination of heavy snow fall, soft pistes, and a larger, more skilled field made for much more difficult racing conditions; courses deteriorated quickly with ruts and trenches forming around every gate. De- spite this, there was no shortage of strong individual and team performances, Lieutenant Cave’s impressive form continued, taking top 10s in both slalom and giant slalom, and the Royal Lancers’ A team taking eighth in the team slalom and ninth in the team downhill, finally finishing an impressive sixth in the overall competition out of 23 teams. Despite these valiant perfor- mances, The Royal Lancers narrowly missed out on qualifying
a full team for the Army championships, with Lieutenant Cave and Lance Corporal Hitchcock going forward as individuals.
The Divisional Championships were now over and the field had again stepped up and been whittled down to the top 120 skiers in the Army. Not to mention the race courses were longer, on more difficult pistes and more technically difficult. Neverthe- less, our erstwhile skiing heroes put their shoulders to the wheel and came away with some good results and experience for next season. The season ended with Lieutenant Cave securing top 15 finishes in five out of six races, narrowly missing out on selection for the Army team but finishing tenth overall and Lance Corpo- ral Hitchcock finishing in the top 100 in all events and ending up 96th overall. Both members of the Regiment competed not only wearing the motto but also for the Royal Armoured Corp team who finished in fourth overall against stiff competition.
1December 2018 saw the Royal Lancers Nordic ski team de- ploying from Catterick to Norway. With the two Ford Rangers packed, we left on the three-day journey via Folkstone, France,
Belgium, the Netherlands to catch a 30-hour ferry from Kiel, Germany. Well rested, the team arrived in a cold, grey and rainy Norwegian capital. Another two hours driving on the increasing- ly snowy and icy roads, we arrived in Sjusjøen via Lillehammer. The Lancers’ cabin was just as we had left it last year. Troopers Nicholson and Abbs (A Squadron), best mates from Army Foun- dation College Harrogate and Royal Armoured Corps Training Regiment in Bovington, set about making the house a home. With the vehicles unpacked they claimed their rooms and set about finding a suitable Norwegian Spruce for Christmas. Lance Corporal Potter and Trooper Philips (D Squadron), who had been in the same platoon in Cyprus, got the fire lit whilst Lieu- tenant Parker (A Squadron) set about making supper (or tea).
On day one of training, only Lieutenant Parker and Lance Cor- poral Potter had skied before. Lance Corporal Potter had been on an Alpine Adventure Training trip and was now being in- troduced to the uphill variant of the skiing. Lieutenant Parker
had been part of the effective Royal Lancers team in 2017/2018, which had made it to the Army Championship. The other three had never seen this amount of snow (let alone know how to ski on it). However, conditions were far from perfect. The Lille- hammer region had not seen much snow, limiting much of the initial training to artificial snow at the Birkebeiner stadium and Skikampen (both world-class tracks). That being said, as ever the wonderful Silje Knox set about using her magic. Silje has been training the Regiment since the amalgamation and both 9/12th Lancers and Queens Royal Lancers before 2015. She has spent fourteen years with Lancers and anticipates training the Regiment for many years to come. This year Silje was supported by Karoline Conradi (a world cup Skijoring champion) and Ole Andreas (a retired Norwegian Junior Biathlete and now shoot- ing coach).
The team were initially struck by their lack of balance and the difficulty to breath in minus 12°C (the coldest the team would train in this year was minus 25°C). Within a week though there was a noticeable improvement in all of the team members, with Trooper Abbs picking up the skate technique well, Trooper Ni-
Nordic Skiing
JSR