Training in Lillehammer for the past few months has been really good, we’ve improved on our snow skills and gained lots of race experience which has improved us as skiers. One of our focuses has been learning and practicing lots of technical skills, such as ski testing and waxing/servicing our kit, which are really valuable skills helping us towards becoming self-sufficient and less reliant on our coach Alex for advice. Overall, we’ve moved much closer to being able to live and train out here independently which is really encouraging for future seasons.

It’s been great to be able to train with some of the Junior skiers from Lillehammer Ski Club and encouraging to have been able to keep up with them on their hard sessions! It is impressive to see just how many skiers they have, and also the standard of their best skiers, with the club coming 2nd in the relay at the Norwegian championships. Race results have been mixed with standout performances from Cameron Cruickshank, who managed to come 49nd in the Swedish cup in Ostersund, and from James Slimon, who represented Team GB at the Youth Olympic Games and secured a 63rd place in the Sprint Event. In local races our best performances has been Oliver Newman coming 2nd in the Hamar bysprinten.

We have been really lucky this year with British Ski and Snowboard National Foundation supporting our program by helping us fund our house out here in Lillehammer. The house is close to the Olympic tracks which is really convenient, and we are just a few hundred meters from tracks which pass right by the house to get to the stadium.

We are looking forward to the next Norwegian Cup Races in a couple of weeks where we will be getting to race at Holmenkollen, the home of Cross Country Skiing in Oslo, and hopefully we will be able to climb further up the field and keep progressing!