Skiing Articles

Britain’s Menna Fitzpatrick and guide Jen Kehoe have won their second gold medal at the Para Alpine Skiing World Championships in Sella Nevea, Italy.

The organisation of this event is so good that the army is waiting to help you with your bags when you reach the hotel, volunteers from the Lions Club are there to help you find food in the restaurant  and them your assigned guide helps you through the finding skis and boots out onto the slopes, well undulations as this is cross-country skiing and you are powering yourself up as well as guiding yourself down the terrain.

I signed myself up for the 2017 Ridderrennet week in November 2016, not knowing what I’d really gotten myself into having never cross country skied before. Ridderrennet is an annual international disabled cross country ski competition held in Beitostølen supported by student volunteers from Sports Science degree courses and the King’s guards from the army. With cross country skiing there are two tracks in the snow that skis fit into, which aid vision impaired people to follow the tracks whilst skiing.

Ridderrennet, for the non-initiated, is a week of disabled cross-country skiing put on by the Norwegians, featuring the King’s guards from the army, students from the Sports Science degree course and a wealth of volunteers from across Norway. Cross country skiing is ideal for us vision impaired as the two tracks that skis fit into help guide us up and down the variable Beitostelen terrain. Well, that’s the theory.

One of our members, Janice, flew out on Friday 3rd February, and the ski week finished on Sunday 13th February 2017. If you are wanting to learn to Cross Country Ski and improve your technique, Janice recommends Ski For Light is the place to go. We were at 7-8 thousand feet, so it does make you a bit breathless, so it is a help if you can arrive there with some fitness. You are expected to ski every day while you are there, and the guides I have found to be mostly excellent.