Two in Two?!

 Two posts in two days I hear you cry?! What on earth. Well start as you mean to go on I say, and I do miss waffling on about things so what better place.

I’ve just had a look at Fear of The Park and a brief look at the Burton High Five results from Chill Factore in Manchester. Although it still looks like the Scots are perfectly capable of dominating when they want to, the name that really stands out to me is Katie Ormerod.

Katie (Courtesy of The Huddersfield Daily Examiner)

I first met Katie when she had just turned 11, she and Tyler Harding (another Yorkshire native) allowed me to follow them around with a camera for a few days in order to put together a ‘Day in the Life’ piece for our local news show at university. At the time Katie was very quiet and to be quite honest seemed a bit scared of the crazy 19 year old who was pointing a camera at her all the time and asking boring questions, but it’s great to see that she is getting the respect she deserves.

A few years ago it was clear she had the skill but not the confidence, her dad was out with her on the slope and it was a team effort, not to mention she was also tiny so getting enough speed and momentum to stomp her tricks on an indoor slope was a little harder for her, but it seems she is only getting better as she gets older.

Katie’s big advantage is that she also trains as a gymnast (her afterschool commitments were immense, and she wanted to do it and her parents supported her, not pushed her) and I think the moment she back flipped across her garden, I was completed fascinated, there was no preamble, no look at me, it was just natural.

Of course you have to take into account the fact she is also a part of a very formidable snowboarding family. She is Jamie and Sophie Nicholls’ cousin, and so will of course benefit from that connection. But these snow zones are becoming families in themselves, everyone supports each other, and that seems to be another great aspect to the rapidly developing UK scene.

She’s now a fully fledged member of the Burton team, and I’m sure they will be very pleased to see her top of the podium at their own event. It scares me (and makes me a little jealous) how young all our British talent is, but it’s a great result for the indoor slopes, who are making excellence in snow sport a viable alternative to more ‘traditional’ UK pastimes.

In more general blogging news; I’ve still got one more roll of 120 film to finish before I take them all to be developed with the photos I took over summer with my Diana and Holga camera and then I’m hoping to take the Diana out skiing with me before Christmas and get some more fun photos. As soon as I’ve got those photos developed, if any are decent I’ll post them up, but as it was my first real outing with them, I haven’t got particularly high hopes.

Anyway, back to stuffing my face with Chocolate, Christmas is nearly upon us so I can’t let the side down and start eating rabbit food!

N.B As soon as I get those photos back I've got some from the rail jam Leeds Snowriders did in the Faversham pub in Leeds with Damian Doyle and the Standing Sideways Crew, and I will be sorting out this fugly layout.