Ten boys and two girls from Abbey Gate College have just returned with eight medals from the British Schoolboys’ and Schoolgirls’ Ski Championships at Meiringen in Switzerland and Flaine in France.
James Buchanan in Year 8 was one of the star performers and finished runner-up in the plate head-to-head slalom competition.
Conditions for the two runs were tricky due to new snow and he drew on his excellent skiing skills, developed from the college’s weekly trips to the dry slope at Runcorn.
Ben Shaw was the fifth fastest Under 16 racer and Rory Goodridge finished in 11th place. In addition, all the boys posted good times in the giant slalom runs.
A total of 186 boys from 30 schools took part and Abbey Gate College B team won the bronze medal in the unregistered category which was a fantastic achievement. The A team was the third fastest Under 16 team and were also awarded bronze medals, ahead of some big names such as Harrow School, Millfield, St Paul’s and Stowe.
This year Abbey Gate entered one team for the British Schoolgirl races and the team this year was a sibling affair with Ellie and Gabby Parker representing the college.
Ellie and Gabby had early draws for the races so had some of the best conditions for racing with Ellie placing eighth in the under 16 race and Gabby sixth in the under 14 competition. The following day saw Ellie again finishing eighth in her category and Gabby ninth.
In the overall scoring, where results are combined, the girls finished just short of a podium finish – Ellie was seventh (out of 53) and Gabby 10th (out of 23) and as a team they came 20th out of 38 teams – again beating high profile schools such as Millfield, Sherborne and Blundells.
Ski team manager Sarah Campbell-Woodward said: “These results demonstrate the range of talents that pupils throughout the college possess and these successes continue the long line of great results that ski teams from the college have had for many years.”
