When people think of skiing it’s generally in a arena of picturesque snow covered mountains out in the alps, warming up your sore feet and cold hands in front of a log burning fire after an eventful day on the slopes… My life as a pro ski is far from that, and this year my winter has kicked off far far away from the snowy mountains I like to call home!

My competition season started on home turf at the LG London Freeze, I was lucky enough to warm up for International Ski event by taking part in Friday’s the ‘Battle of Britain’ under crystal blue skies.

It was a great chance to ski with the British talent I’ve been watching all summer whilst judging on the ‘Snow Tour’ a series of indoor and outdoor contests hosted by some of the many ski centers across the UK… I’ll be honest the UK ski scene is going off right now, everyone is skiing so well and pushing their abilities to another level, so I had my work cut out!

The comp was head-to-head and saw me come up against some tough competition, but I managed to stick my tricks and come out on top winning the chance to ski in the crowd pleasing Style session laster that night.

The world’s best flocked to London for Sunday’s event only to be greeted with true British weather, wind and rain! The shaping crew did an excellent job getting the jump ready for the postponed comp which happened later that night. A good friend of mine, Aussie Russ Henshaw, stole the show picking up 99 points of an insane double cork 1260 double grab poke (quite a mouth full I know) landing him in 1st place!

Next stop was another city comp, this time the Snow Show in Barcelona. More scaffolding was erected in Barcelona’s very own Olympic stadium, it was the best city jump I’ve ever had the pleasure to ski on and needless to say it wasn’t going disappoint to expected 30,000 spectators the show’s organisers where expecting!

We had qualifying behind closed doors at the start of the weekend, with over 2 hours of practice (very unheard of at events like these, we normally get around 45 minutes) everyone was stomping their tricks on this huge kicker with masses of air time! I qualified in 7th which secured a place in the finals on Saturday night with a double cork 10 mute.

The snowboard comp was warming up the crowd when I was putting my boots on backstage, it sounded like a football match the roars I could here or as I was thinking, the sound Gladiators would here before heading out into the colosseum before meeting their doom… needless to say I was shitting myself knowing I had to go out there and compete again the worlds best skiers!

Once again Russ Henshaw found himself holding a novelty sized cheque for 1st! I don’t remember the last time I saw him not landing on his feet!

I then headed back to Innsbruck where it was about time I caught up with my housemates!