DOWNHILL skiers have reached peak performance after beating the best in Britain on the slopes of the French Alps.
Richmond School and Sixth Form College girls took all the major honours at the British Schoolgirls’ Championships despite being rank outsiders as the only state school in the competition.
The North Yorkshire skiers even defeated competitors from a Swiss girls’ international school despite the obvious training advantages they had with unlimited access to snow.
Richmond School and Sixth Form College entered two teams of three, with two reserves, into the prestigious six-day contest in Flaine, France, that featured 47 teams from 32 schools.
At their fifth attempt, they left with ten trophies including first place in the slalom and parallel slalom, second in the giant slalom and first place overall in school and team categories.
The competition got off to the best start on the first day as the A team, Honor Clissold, 17, Katy Jackson, 16, and Cara Websdale, 17, all of Richmond, won the parallel slalom and came second in the giant slalom, narrowly missing first place by 0.6 seconds.
Day two saw them win the slalom race by a substantial margin of nine seconds, which took them comfortably into the overall lead.
The B team, of Mia Cole, 15, Annabelle Wright, 16, and Isabel Bushell, 13, all of Richmond, were bronze medalists in their category.
Britain’s number one skier and four times Olympian Chemmy Alcott presented the prizes.
Katy said: “Honor skis for Great Britain and really encourages us. Every round we expected to lose but we just kept getting through and ended up in the final, which we won. I think we were all in shock.
“There were some really good teams including skiers from Switzerland who have snow on their doorstep. We were the only state school and the others had never heard of us – in fact they thought we were from Richmond in Surrey.”
Cara added: “We all love skiing and are great friends. As we do it for fun and were the under-dogs, this helped take the pressure off.”
Team manager Lorraine Clissold said: “It was an amazing series of victories and the girls came away with an incredible number of trophies. Skiing at the school continues to grow from strength to strength.”
Richmond School Ski’s Team trains mainly at Silksworth Ski Slope in Sunderland. Their coach Niall Whatmore said: “The girls’ commitment and dedication have paid dividends and you can see where hard work gets you.”
Reserves Hannah Speakman, 13, of Richmond, and Jodie Dangerfield, 14, of Catterick, trained hard in Flaine with a view to competing for the school in the
future.
The school also has a boys team which plans to attend the British Schoolboys’ competition in Switzerland next year.
