Exercise Frosted Blade 37

The 2nd Battalion, The Royal Anglian Regiment sent a team of 8 to compete at the infantry skiing championships in Val-d’Isere. A young team of mostly novices, only one member of the team had raced before, took part in an intensive 3 weeks of ski training followed by race week in the first week of January. Over the training period the novices were taken from zero to hero, starting off on the nursery slopes but eventually making it onto Black slopes, such as the one they would eventually race on.

The team of 8 was split down into a Primary Hill and a Development Hill. The Primary Hill took part in 5 events: Slalom, Giant Slalom, Super Giant Slalom, Downhill and Super-Combined (SuperG and Slalom), and the Development Hill took part in just the Slalom and Giant Slalom. All events were competed as an individual, to give your overall ranking on the exercise, and as a team to give a team score against the other Battalions on the hill.

The Primary hill scored its best result in the Downhill event finishing 23rd of 34 teams who took part in the Downhill, clearly showing that what the novices may lack in skill they more than made up for in their bravery on the speed event, reaching speeds of 95Km/h.

Overall, Frosted Blade was a testing and enjoyable training event, firmly taking much of the team way outside of their comfort zones. Hopefully, a few of the novices will be able to take the experience they had on to next year and get a good finish for the Poachers team. This would not have been achieved without the funding offered from the Battalion and the Regiment, enabling the purchase of essential racing personal protective equipment.

The team with their final seed on their respective hills:

Primary Hill – Lieutenant Edward Ashwell (66), Lance Corporal Reece Going (112), Private Kieran Blaxill (114), Private Logan Johnson (145)

Development Hill – Lieutenant Jack Rice (78), Private Connor Maloney (89), Private Samuel Leek (108), Private Kieran Evans (110)

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