It has been a great start to the Alpine ski season for 9-year-old Jasper Daniels from Bolton School’s Junior Boys’ School.
Earlier in the week, Jasper raced at Reiteralm in Austria where he competed in the Jan Keller Cup. Jasper put down two brilliant runs (run 1 and run 2) to take first place. He then followed this up, after a long drive to Switzerland, with three more competition wins in Champéry.
Skiing in some horrible conditions, he placed first in the Champéry Cup Slalom, the Anglo-Scottish Cup Slalom and the Les Crosets Cup Pro Slalom. His excellent times also placed him as 3rd, 5th and 3rd in the next age category up, which provides him with a great starting point for next season. Undoubtedly his biggest achievement was putting down a winning time in the Pro Slalom despite hitting the gate and losing a pole part way down – you can watch a video of that here.
Explaining how it feels as he hurtles down the slopes, Jasper said: ‘When I’m going down the slope, training, it feels thrilling going from turn to turn. I like going really fast. When I’m racing and I’m waiting in the start gate I feel nervous and excited. My coach knows I like it to be silent so I can concentrate out of the gate. I say in my head “Jasper, you can win”. When I’m going down, I don’t think about anything around me, the only thing I think about is what is ahead of me.
'When I have a good first run, I feel confident and I blitz my second run. If I’m not happy with my first run, I feel disappointed and frustrated and it makes me hold back on my second run. When I win I feel so happy.
'I love having time to freeski and also ski freestyle and moguls. It's great when there's lots of snow and I get some free time to ski the powder.
'My ambition is to ski in the Olympics.'
And then it was back to Bolton School for the remainder of the week for the Newton-le-Willows pupil!
