Last night saw the closing ceremony for the 2023 USPE Championships, where the hosts provided a fantastic night for everyone involved in the event.
Earlier in the day, our team participated in the Parallel Slalom, where Andy Waller fought his way through to the quarter final, Andy crashed heavily in his first round race, but managed to compose himself sufficiently to carry on with the event; unfortunately Andy lost to an extremely fast German.
The closing ceremony itself was a celebration of the weeks successes, of which there had been many for the countries involved, Austria, Germany and Switzerland proving to be the victors across the three disciplines, GS, Slalom and Parallel Slalom…. There is a however…. The USPE Committee also provide special awards to celebrate the commitment given to previous USPE events.
On behalf of team UK, I submitted 4 nominations, from which Neal Nightingale received a ‘Medal of Honour’ by the USPE Committee, for his long standing commitment to snowsports, having competed in USPE events since 1989.
Our team was also awarded, by the USPE Committee, the team award; the criteria being the best presented team, the best turned out team, the best team that acted as a team, our general deportment and manner in which we’d conducted ourself during the week.
Our presence was notable at all times due to our team shirts, jackets both of which had PSUK logos there on, and by the wearing of our Union Jack hats, scarfs and gloves…. By the time the ‘trading’ of kit was completed during the course of the evening, throughout the room there was either PSUK ties / scarfs etc or union jack memorabilia… Job done.
In summary, everyone gave their all at each of their events, the support team provided the athletes the support and organisation required so that on race days they only had to worry about the racing.
All of this couldn’t have been achieved without the support of our individual sport sections, PSUK Snowsports and PSUK themselves, Ian, secretary PSUK, provided the help, advice and funding, which made life easy for myself as organiser / team captain.
Thanks again,
Graeme Monteith
Secretary PSUK Snowsports Section