New Training Kit Designs

Today we received the designs for our new catsuits, training jackets and shorts. It was great to se our designs on the new kit just ahead of our trip over to Ireland for their Champs this weekend.

We think they look great. They're now available to order so contact us if you're interested. We will be organising an evening at Hemel to try sizing.

Catsuit back

Catsuit front

Softshell Front

Softshell Back

Looking Forward to the Irish Champs Weekend

This weekend is the last big race of the artificial slope season at Kilternan, Ireland.

We're joint sponsors of the event with The Great Outdoors who have been sponsoring the event since forever! We're giving away 2 training bursaries to Irish racers. This is a continuation of the long association we have with Irish racing, in fact, this will be the 17th year that Phil has attended the event!

T shirts for all competitors

Good luck to all of our racers in Ireland this weekend and those racing at the Ersa Champs at Hemel.

Congratulations to our Bursary winners!

This weekend was the All England Championships, held at Norfolk ski club.
Aosta Race Academy Sponsored the event, giving away four bursaries as prizes.

It was a great day with a really good turnout making for some great racing. The first course was set by Sally Bartlett which saw quite a few of the field have problems. The second course was set by Impulse and ARA head coach, Phil Brown. This course initially looked easier than the first but proved to be as tricky for several athletes.

The ARA bursaries were presented after the main prize giving. Phil presented the main awards followed by these. The prizes were drawn from start numbers. We think this gives the racers an equal chance of winning and opens the chance up to more athletes.
Our winners were:
Mini Girls - Megan Skipper from Norfolk
Mini Boys - Thomas Reidy from Norfolk
Ch and Jnr Girls - Ella Ward from Chill Factore
Ch and Jnr Boys - Simon Wilkins from Telford

The above athletes can look forward to a weeks training out at our base in Aosta this season!

Phil Presenting the main prizes

L-R: Ella Ward, Megan Skipper with their award, Phil Brown

A nice touch! The ARA logo on all of the trophies in recognition of our sponsorship

Landgraaf day 2

Today we got into some gates, albeit stubbies. I've not seen so many teams here at one time before. There were six lanes in use for most of the day with a new start ramp servicing one of the lanes. This was above the snow start ramp that is there for the rest of the summer.

So, we had a tech session first thing followed by a couple of hours in the stubby course on the medium injected part of the hill. This was great training after the tech sessions we've been running over the last day and a bit with some interesting changes to the trainees skiing from previously.

We finished with a short tech session to build on what we'd seen in the gates.
Tomorrow will see a a get session in the morning, a short tech session then we'll be on our way back to the UK.
We've got another Landgraaf camp next month for a couple of days and there are a few places left on it.

Back Into The Big Freezer

Today was the first day of our Bank Holiday camp at Landgraaf. It's our second trip here this season but there are no races this time.
There are a shed load of teams here though, including the Savoie girls team and the Swiss EC mens team - great to watch for our guys.

Loads of team vans and extra containers for ski tuning!

So, we worked on about 5.5 hours of tech over the day with some good improvements for all athletes. Tomorrow sees a short tech session to build on this, followed by a gate session with stubbies to take the improvements into the course.

All in all, a good day today and we're looking forward to tomorrow to see how the guys fare in the stubbies. The training side of the hill looks good with 2 rollers now set on it to give the guys a little extra challenge. Should be great fun!

Aosta Academy Trainee Picks Up Awards!

Impulse and ARA trainee Finlay Davies has just picked up a place on the Gifted and Talented programme at his regions Multi Skills Academy.

Fin was selected by his school, along with around 250 children from his region to attend 2 assessment mornings where he was selected, along with only 16 others to go forward in the programme.

Fin believes all the work he has put in for his skiing was a major factor in this achievement.

From here, Fin will attend further sessions later in the year where he’ll  perform tasks such as those featured on the MSA website here.

It’s a great milestone for Fin as he moves up to secondary school and gets ready for the season ahead. His preparation has been has gone well with skills and drills on the indoor yielding some great results (see below).

Finlay with His Trophies

The final round of the British Indoor Grand Prix Series finished at Castleford (Leeds) recently with Fin entering the race on the same points in the series as his nearest competitor going into the last race of the series.

 The pressure was on and there were also some other racers in the mix who could turn the results up side down (Ryan McCann over from Austria) and British Team member Scott Buchan. However,  due to the points, the fight for the title was between Nathan and Fin.

 Fin only had to beat Breeze to claim the series title but put on in immense push and ended up winning on the Saturday.

Results here

The next day the pressure was off - the championship title was in the bag (and the cheque for £100!).
With this in mind whatever happen in Sundays race, which was for the British Indoor Championship title, was a bonus.

Fin again put in 2 blinding runs beating his competition by two tenths overall to win the title.


ARA programme director Phil Brown said 'This reinforces what our athletes can achieve with the continuity of our program and the hard work that they perform in order to achieve their goals. We expect to see more of our athletes moving in this direction as we become established at our new base over the coming season'.


For more information on Fin or the other athletes from Aosta Race Academy, visit www.aostaraceacademy.co.uk

Roundup On The Irish Summer Camp

The camp finished on Saturday but we've not been able to get this final blog uploaded until now.
What can we say, another really great camp this summer with a great group of trainees who were really engaged with what they were doing.

The camp ran with mainly technical training, only introducing stubby gates on the penultimate day of the four day camp and full gates on the final day. We used a reference task with video on day one and then re did this on the last day. When we combined the video from day one and the final day, the results were really obvious for the athletes to see and there were some great improvements.

The final afternoon saw us running a dual slalom to give the group a little competition and fun to finish the camp on.

All in all, it was a great camp to work on and thanks to The Ski Club of Ireland for organising it, Brian Byrne for coaching, Head skis and Bartletts for supplying some test skis for the trainees.

Next for us is a camp in Landgraaf this coming bank holiday weekend.