Sunday Oct 2 saw the culmination of the London and Southern Regional Ski Association (LSERSA) summer race series with the finals at Wycombe. Team Natives were well represented with 8 competitors, and in the senior ladies competition both Lucy Newman and Sarah Thornton were pushing for top positions.

On a shortened Wycombe course Marc Telling, the series leader, laid down the fastest run with the top female, Franki Simonds, almost 2 seconds behind. Team Natives sneaked inside the top 30, not bad considering a record 192 racers had entered!

Crash landings
The second run only counts if it is quicker than the first, so with caution thrown to the wind a high crash rate was inevitable. Team Natives two fastest skiers got overexcited and both crashed out on the second run, whilst in tbe overalls Lloyd Papantoniou showed liitle respect for his coach Marc Telling by matching his time to the nearest hundredth of a second.

Third run, (which must count to give an overall time) saw familar faces in the top positions. By now the racers were getting the measure of the course and subsequently some significant improvements were seen in the race times, the greatest being from Team Natives Stav Sachinis who cut an amazing 2.27 second off his fist run time. Lloyd Papantoniou continued his run of form to take the overall time by just 0.04 of a second from Marc Telling, and Franki Simonds cruised through to take the ladies overall. Wycombe racers ended up taking the top 5 places overall, it's not only footballers who have a home advantage..

And the ladies have it
In the ladies senior competition, Natives took a clean sweep, with Lucy Newman, Katy Lamb and Sarah Thornton taking first, second and third positions respectively. That was enough to see Sarah Thornton take the overall senior series title with Lucy Newman in second place, and Katy Lamb just outside the series medals in fourth.