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3 ARMY AIR CORPS

ARMY SNOWBOARD TEAM 2012/13

SSgt (SSI) J Craig RAPTC

After 13 years of Army snowboarding and being the longest The boardercross went well with 8 out of the Army Teams 10

standing member of the Army Snowboard Team I was racing into the top 16. This has always been the Army’s strong
inally selected as Army Team Manager in September 2012.
point and as manager I was relieved to see the team excelling
again. This followed through to the semi inals and inals with the
The irst job was to establish the manager’s job parameters as Army securing 4th place with Capt James Scott KRH, 5th, 7th,

WO2 Andrew Moore RAMC had been doing the job so long 8th, 9th and 10th positions and winning the event. The women did
that the boundaries between manager and team captain had equally as well securing a team win with Sgt Sarah Marriott in 1st
long since dissolved. With manager and team captain’s roles place and then positions 4th, 7th and 9th.
and responsibilities in place and Sgt Sarah Marriott RAMC and

Capt Simon Nicholson accepting female and male captain’s roles The Tuesday brought the slalom qualiiers in the day time and
respectively, I went on with the job of organising the team. Just the dual slalom in the evening under loodlights on the main race
prior to leaving, Capt Simon Nicholson had to pull out of the piste in Meribel. It was vital to do well in the qualiiers so as to
competition but was soon replaced by Maj Simon Gough who get as many Army riders in the top 16 men and top 8 female
took on the role with enthusiasm and vigour.
knockouts; so as to be in a position where we didn’t need to win

the slopestyle to win the combined overall team championship.
The Army Snowboarding Secretary, Maj Mike Lewis, got to work Historically the Navy have dominated the slopestyle and knowing
on the inances and managed to secure funding for a whole new that they had been on snow for four weeks against our one week
team outit, race boards and essential race waxes and equipment. of training, there was no reason to think otherwise. The qualiiers

Armed with secured inances and a magniied desire for both went well with nine out of ten of the Army team securing top 16
male and female teams to win at the Combined Service Champs positions in the knockout. This was a great result and as manager
I set out the administrative tasks and more importantly a training I was ecstatic that the training had clearly been directed in the right
programme for both dry land training and on snow training.
direction. The women were impressive managing to land the top 4

slots of the 8 person knockout with Sgt Sarah Marriott’s qualifying
The most time consuming aspects were the ones that generally time beating nearly all the men’s including my own!
go unnoticed i.e. Team T-shirt design and printing, acquiring the
Team outit at trade prices and then printing, sourcing racing tops, Daylight ended, the temperature dropped and the dual slalom

booking accommodation for 24 personnel in a hugely popular and started. We soon realised that with a questionable rule dictating
over subscribed resort, vehicles, fuel cards, letters for release, which course the highest bib started the two run race in, that the
hiring civilian coaches in all disciplines of the sport, booking race best qualiiers were not at an advantage. This transpired with a
pistes for training, organising discounted lift passes and of course very unpredictable knockout and many of the best riders both
selecting the team. The list seemed endless and of course brought
male and female leaving the competition before their time. This
the usual unforeseen problems.
was clearly shown with the top four positions going to bibs 9, 10,
11 and 13 rather than the fastest in the qualiiers. This was similar
All the months of work lay the foundations for an effective training in the women’s top 4 result seeing the inish order being bib 5, 7,
week in Meribel prior to the competition. Having already booked 1, 6. Across both sexes only one person managed to podium who

the training pistes and booked the lift passes we were able to get qualiied in the top half of the knockouts.
straight on the mountain without wasting time and went straight
into slalom training. This had been absent from training for some As the week progressed towards the slopestyle competition the
years and I believed the foundation to us winning the overall weather closed in and threatened cancellation of the event. The

competition. Over the six days of training we managed to achieve slopestyle course had been built well and it was frustrating to think
four mornings of slalom, a morning of boardercross and three days that we may not get to compete. We practiced on the Thursday
of freestyle training. The trouble with competitive snowboarding is which was originally the day of the competition but could still only
that the three events don’t really compliment each other. Riders see a few meters ahead resulting in the bigger jumps being closed

use different boards, bindings and boots for each event making for safety reasons. The event nearly took place that afternoon
it hard to get used to a particular set up. Freestyle is as much with the worry that Friday being the last day before prize giving,
about bravery as it is agility and an absence of one will restrict the would be even worse. We stuck it out and agreed with the
other. The weather was perfect throughout the training and only Navy and RAF that it would be better to wait till the Friday as
closed in and cancelled one afternoon which came as a welcome
we believed that it couldn’t get worse and there was a chance
break due to the intensity of training. Sadly there was no time for a it could be better. We were proved right, the sun came out and
rest day and training lead straight into competition on the Sunday the day was set to be a good one. All riders had two runs down
starting with the boardercross qualiiers.
the course with the best run counting. There were two boxes of

Sgt Marriott 1st BX-SSI LCpl Pittam PGS-SSI Sgt Mulligan SS-SSI