Sport: Skiing
Year Group: 8

The British School Boys Races were held recently at Meiringen Switzerland. Cowbridge School entered an A and B team for this annual event. Entries for the teams were paid for by the parents for this 5 day event.

The boys travelled with their parents to the resort to compete on the Sunday in the dual slalom event. This is a knockout event with 4 boys competing in each team. Competing in B Team were Harri Hitchcock, Matthew Goodlad, Jamie Griffiths and Jack Phillips. They were drawn against No. 1 seeds Reeds of Surrey. They did very well against the British Squad members but were knocked out in round I.

A Team consisted of Scott Sanger, Sam Stephens, George Spill & William Tinkler. They drew against St. Pauls of London in round 1 and won comfortably. In round 2 V Bedford College, a fall by one of the Cowbridge quartet left too much for the anchor man Sam Stephens to catch up and were knocked out in round 2.

The following day it was the Giant Slalom course with 44 gates. New member of the team Jack Phillips experienced his first G S race and performed well to record an excellent time of 1m 10.43 secs. Matthew Goodlad and Harri Hitchcock were in the Children 2 age group both recording 1m 10.80 secs and 1m 12.32 secs in race 2, a top 50 finish.

All racers had two races over the day with a finishing list of 176 racers.

All other members of the team competed at Junior 1 and Junior 2 age groups. Scott Sanger, William Tinkler and Jamie Griffiths finished in the top 30 finishers. Sam Stephens and George Spill had 2 excellent races to finish overall 5th and 7th respectively.

For the team event, racers had to complete all 4 races over the 2 days in 2 disciplines, an achievement in itself.

Day 3 was the slalom course set over 38 gates in very poor conditions with low cloud, snow and extremely cold. Sam Stephens led off with an outstanding run in Race 1 finishing in 38.66 secs in silver medal position. This was followed closely by Scott Sanger in 13th place 47.15 secs. Jack Phillips had an exceptional race finishing in a strong 47.49 secs.

Many skiers on the slalom course took tumbles and climbed back up to go through gates or misgates by mistake and were disqualified. The team had to finish 3 out of 4 races in all races to compete for the team event. With this in mind George Spill completed his race on course 1 with a slower time but kept the team in the competition.

In course two, Sam Stephens kept up the pressure with another fantastic time of 45.50 seconds to finish in joint 2nd overall in the slalom competitions. With the help of the dependable Scott Sanger and William Tinkler the team completed the course to score points in the team event.

It was now time to wait for the presentation evening to see if the school had done enough to reach the podium.

Up against all the other public schools, Cowbridge had held their own and were announced in Bronze Medal Team position behind Millfield and winners Reads of Surrey who specialise in skiing.

What a fantastic set of results with Individual Silver Medal by Sam Stephens, 4th place Age Group Scott Sanger and Bronze by the team out of 48 starting teams.

A very big thank you go to parents of the boys whose support financially and on the slopes would make the organisation of the Schoolboy races an impossibility. Also to the school for allowing the time off during their studies. Let’s hope that the future of skiing teams in school will continue to flourish.