Snoworks GAP skiers

Snoworks GAP Blog Weeks Two and Three: Charlie Fairbanks-Smith

After weeks of anticipation, trepidation (on my part), and excitement – ‘Raceweek’ had arrived.

With the previous week jammed full of the ‘basics’, we were ready to go to fast. I had never raced before and was still trying to crack the carving malarkey, and attempting my mediocre turning into gates was always going to be tricky.

However, that is not to say that everybody else was just as bad as myself! At the start of the week, fellow students, Tom Hetherington and Maya Gordon were looking very promising. They will hate me for saying this, but they’d had some Kandahar race training prior to the course, I only say this as it makes me feel better, but in reality, they were skiing enviably!

The Race Course itself wasn’t what we were all expecting, but the one next to the Vanoise ski lift. This course was definitely slower, to the annoyance of some; however, what it did do was help everybody’s technique. And as Dave, our race coach, said, everybody had significantly improved, and I seemed to be squatting less! Throughout the week, Tom and Maya were looking as slick as ever. The new arrival at the time, Bryony, was looking very sharp also.

Tom Exwood (a.k.a Keen Tom) was taking his edging and waxing of skis very seriously and was also looking better and better on the slope. Even boisterous Ed seemed to be improving, much to my annoyance. However, the person who stuck out for me, apart from myself of course, was Jonny. His line was excellent and improved as the week went on; his edging was getting better as well as his overall positioning.

He was a contender for the title and as the unbearable suspense went on into Friday night, the tension had risen by the fact that the two suspected fastest were roommates! The bronze medal went to Keen Tom, a suspected podium maker. The unnerving suspense was shattered when Tom H came in at second and thus leaving the gold for the taking of Jonny. The suspense was really much better than the actual event.

For the girls, the extremely fast Leah Strutt-Smith took the bronze. The battle between the pocket-god Maya and the dark horse Bryony was on. And then the silver was awarded to Maya! Wow, who was expecting that? The new comer, the dark horse, snatches the gold, a whisper away from Maya. Again, I am making the girls medal award much more dramatic, but the suspense was unreal. What a week.

As Raceweek drew to a close, we had to focus again on the completion of our BASI Level 1 exam. To achieve this, we had to have thirty five hours to clock. This meant shadowing for the next week. So for the next five days, we spent each morning with the Snoworks GAP Trainer, Lee Townend, working on central theme and performance skiing, and the other half shadowing with one of the Snoworks client groups.

Although nobody perhaps said this out loud, we were all thinking we were quite grown up. A sort of half-way house to the dream of being an ‘instructor’. We started to realize that clients asked us questions, related to their skiing, and expected us to answer comprehensively. This was a twofold good thing, it made us work a little harder and listen to Lee’s explanations to our own problems of skiing, which in turn, we could pass on and visualize a client having the same problems that we had had and help them improve. Moreover, it also made us have a sense of responsibility and progression. In general, it improved our personal skills, or officially, our ‘customer service skills’. This helped particularly for the quieter individuals of the group, as it is all part of the job.

For Ed, as he can already talk the hind head off a donkey, it was no problem. As the week went on, we picked up on different styles of teaching and I personally knew which ones by the end, I preferred. All the instructors used different teaching styles, but what they all did, very smoothly, is adapt. Adapt to the ability of the clients, the environment and the four strands of performance skiing with apparent ease. This I know, we were all impressed by.

All in all, week 3 and 4 were excellent weeks. The perfect concoction of a physically exhausting and adrenaline filled week, to the perhaps just as physically exhausting, but focusing more on observing, understanding week and overall, becoming more well-rounded instructors.

About the author: Becoming a ski instructor can be challenging, hard work and fun. Snoworks run a six week GAP ski instructor program to qualify as a BASI level one and two ski instructor, enabling successful candidates to work in several countries including Austria, Switzerland, Italy and Japan. Three pupils from the October to December GAP program in Tignes provide us with their stories from week one to six.


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