The “Kleiner Weltmeisterschaft” should have taken place at Klingental in Germany earlier in the year but was postponed and relocated because of lack of snow. Also a casualty of the poor European snow this winter was our British Skibike Team training/selection and the British National Skibike Championships itself. These were planned to be run concurrently with the World Cup event at Nesselwang 27 feb to 3 mar but it was cancelled at the last moment (after the team had left the UK!!). Luckily both events were replaced by the World Championships for school children, juniors and seniors at Fieberbrunn in Austria and in the end we had an excellent race meeting on the nearby Pillerseetal where 90 racers aged between 8 and 75 from 7 different countries took part.
The snow was not bad to start with, following a heavy fall a couple of days before, but a rapid thaw even made the planned evening floodlit GS impossible. The course was too low and not steep enough for the snow conditions, however, we managed to pack in an extra race higher up during the last day. Lt Col Platt was the only official competitor representing GB but the organisers kindly allowed the 5 members of the Elite (20-30 year old) British Skibike Team to race in a guest class as valuable race training for their own competition the following week. Lt Col Platt came a steady 8th place in each of the races out of 11 entrants in his old man’s class of AK3. We really missed the senior members of Army team who would have been racing with the “youngsters” of AK1 but unfortunately there were too many operational and training commitments for them to be released .
The whole British Skibike Team joined with the French team for a hard days training under the watchful eye of the Austrian and many times World Champion; Erwin Egger, who kindly offered to set out some courses and coach us through them. We all made huge progress and set off to the Czech Republic in good spirits.
|
NAME |
CLASS |
SUPER GS |
GS |
SL |
COMBINATION |
|
|
|
2000m long 300mdrop 25 gates |
1300m long 200m drop 28 gates |
800 long 100m drop 26 gates |
Amongst the Brit team |
|
RICHARD PLATT |
AK3 |
8th in AK3 |
2 |
1 & 2 =2 |
2 |
|
NIC PLATT |
GUEST |
Not at start |
1 |
2 & 1=1 |
1 |
|
HARRY DEARDEN |
GUEST |
Not at start |
3 |
3 & 4=4 |
3 |
|
TIM PLATT |
GUEST |
Not at start |
5 |
4 & 2=3 |
5 |
|
NIC JONES |
GUEST |
Not at start |
4 |
5 & 5=5 |
4 |
|
ALISTAIR PLATT |
GUEST |
Not at start |
6 |
6 & 6=6 |
6 |
The whole British skibike team and supporters were accommodated in an enormous hotel that was built for the communist party faithful 35 years ago, long before the skiing was exploited in the area. There was the usual parade through the village with a band and National Flags waving , but this time we were led by a troop of drum majorettes who had great difficulty doing their marching routines in their high heels in the snow! The competition was well supported with at least 20 sponsors, which shows the strength of the sport of Skibobbing in the CzechRepublic
The snow was excellent for the first day, the Super G, but a warm front, rain and high winds made it too dangerous for the Downhill training and Non Stop timed runs. So after a day visiting a Bohemian Glass factory we abandoned plans for the Downhill and moved to a different piste for the GS and Slalom which were run without incident on a hard icy base. The British Team results amongst a field of 39 men from 14 different nations were as follows:
|
NAME |
NOTES |
SUPER GS |
GS |
SL |
COMBINATION |
|
|
LENGTH |
1935m |
1070m |
750m |
|
|
DROP |
485m |
330m |
172m |
||
|
GATES |
32 |
35 |
46 |
||
|
NIC PLATT |
|
27 |
29 |
18 |
18 |
|
TIM PLATT |
|
29 |
31 |
DNF |
NIL |
|
HARRY DEARDEN |
|
30 |
30 |
22 |
20 |
|
RICHARD PLATT |
|
31 |
32 |
19 |
19 |
|
NIC JONES |
|
32 |
35 |
21 |
22 |
|
ALISTAIR PLATT |
|
34 |
DNF |
24 |
NIL |
Nic Platt wins the SAGB Championship Trophy for the best British mens result at the World Championships for the second year running.
Of greater interest to all of us was the result of the non-alpine the “B Nations” competition, which we were able to dominate again although we missed the competition from Luxembourg team this year.
|
B NATIONS RESULTS (9 NATIONS) |
||||
|
NAME |
|
|
||
|
|
SUPER GS |
GS |
SL |
COMBINATION |
|
|
||||
|
NIC PLATT |
1 |
1 |
1 |
1st and B Nations’ Champion 2002 |
|
TIM PLATT |
2 |
3 |
DNF |
NIL |
|
HARRY DEARDEN |
3 |
2 |
5 |
3 |
|
RICHARD PLATT |
4 |
4 |
2 |
2 |
|
NIC JONES |
5 |
7 |
4 |
5 |
|
ALISTAIR PLATT |
7 |
DNF |
7 |
NIL |
THE BRITISH NATIONAL SKIBIKE CHAMPIONSHIPS
The British National Skibike Championships should have been held at the world Cup event at Nesselwang the previous week but was cancelled through lack of snow (see above). At the AGM of the BSRC it was decided that we would be able to assemble the most British racers at Spindlemuhle so we decided to take the results of the last race ( a GS ) at the World Championships there as the British National Skibike Championships for 2002. The results were as follows:
|
BRITISH NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIPS 2002 |
||||
|
NAME |
COUNTRY |
Giant Slalom |
POSITIONS |
|
|
|
LENGTH 1070 m DROP 330 m GATES 35 |
|||
|
NIC PLATT |
ENG |
1:14.65 |
1st |
SAGB British National Champion trophy |
|
HARRY DEARDEN |
WALES |
1:15.99 |
2ND |
|
|
TIM PLATT |
ENG |
1:18.74 |
3RD |
|
|
RICHARD PLATT |
ENG |
1:19.16 |
4TH |
|
|
NIC JONES |
WALES |
1:24.50 |
5TH |
MARSH Trophy for best novice racer |
|
ALISTAIR PLATT |
ENG |
DNF |
||
Finally the team went to the World Cup Final at Graechen in Switzerland where we were high enough to have hard and fast pistes despite being at the end of the season. We were joined by SAGB committee members Brendan West and Paul Burns who wanted to see the British skibike team in action; and action it was from the 1.5 m jump in the very first race to the last dance at the World Cup Final “end of season” party. I think that they will confirm that the sport of Skibobbing is alive and well amongst the youth of Europe. The team ‘s results were as follows:
|
WORLD CUP FINAL GRAECHEN SWITZERLAND 4-6 APR 2002 |
|||||
|
|
|
||||
|
NAME |
CLASS |
NOTES |
SUPER GS |
GS |
PL SL |
|
|
|||||