A mountain of changes for snow racing

By Liz Brooker

The summer has seen a mountain of changes for Ruapehu Snow Sports, the organisation that looks after competitive snow sports.

Parent and club president Robin Dixon is excited by opportunity to take over the running of the various high performance programmes.

"It's a big undertaking but it's exciting.

"RAL asked us whether we would like to take on the programmes and run it as a club. We accepted the challenge and they have been extremely supportive in helping us were they can.

"For years I've been fighting the thought that as soon as you become a FIS athlete you have to head south.

"My daughter's 17 and she's trained at Whakapapa since the day she learnt to ski, I want parents to have the option to choose."

Parents and volunteers have been working hard over the summer setting up a new website and hiring coaches and finalising the programmes.

"Now we just have a greater say in how things are run and what we want.

"If we didn't take it over it would have just died off, I wanted to make sure we kept going because if I don't, my daughter wouldn't have anywhere to race in Ruapehu.

"That goes for every other kid who wants to compete seriously."

For the 2011 season the Club's high performance offerings are: a full-time FIS course, 50-day ski programmes at Turoa and Whakapapa, coach Rhys Forsyth is back in charge of the Whakapapa based freestyle ski team and Andrew Manuel has returned to run freestyle boarding at Turoa.

For the younger kids National Park School are running a one-day programme and a ski academy three-day option.

Scheduled to start in July, limited spaces on the various offerings are still available.

More information and enrolment details can be found on the Ruapehu Snow Sports website ruapehusnowsports.webs.com.

Ruapehu Snow Bulletin June 2011