Wednesday, 27th October 2021
We believe in giving young, local people the opportunity to further their potential in the sporting world by offering them free use of our facilities as a means of assisting with training programmes.
We introduced the Talented Athletes scheme to be able to do just that. We have a number of local young athletes signed up to the scheme who are already benefiting from our facilities. This includes Robert and Charlotte Holmes – both skiiers from Higherford.
They recently got in touch to let us know how they’re getting on with their ski development and progression.
Robert has recently completed his A-Levels and is continuing with ski coaching qualifications and studying German, while Charlotte has started her A-Levels, BTEC Sports Diploma and ski coaching qualifications too.
Of skiing, Robert said: “Domestically, the national ski race scene is still struggling after the protracted setback of the Covid virus and its implications. There have been very few opportunities for us to race - although we did travel to Sunderland to take part in a Club National event in which we both managed to secure age category wins and overall race wins.
“In August, Snowsport England presented me with the trophy for the Zero Point Racer (the highest ranked national racer), an achievement which has only ever been achieved by one other athlete from Pendle Ski Club, GB World Cup Racer & Olympian, Dave Ryding.
“Over the course of the summer, physical fitness has been a major focus with iron man fitness testing sessions having been completed at Loughborough University - the scoring of these tests was benchmarked against the Norwegian alpine athletes! We were both very pleased to see our performances significantly improve over the summer months, narrowing the gap between us and our more mature Scandinavia competitors.
“We would like to thank you for all your help and support and look forward to sharing our achievements with you later in the winter season.”
Despite the setbacks that 2020 presented, we’re thrilled to hear that our Talented Athletes are still working hard towards their goals and pursuing their chosen sports.
We’d like to wish Robert and Charlotte, and all of our Talented Athletes, the very best with their training over the winter months.
If you’d like to find out more about our Talented Athletes scheme, click here. And click here to meet all of the other young athletes on our scheme.