Bright sun, blue sky and 6 inches of fresh snow greeted us on the first day of the inaugural British Freeskiing Camp 2002 in Tignes last week. That, along with the prospect of getting stuck into one of the largest summer terrain parks in Europe, gave rise to a buzz of anticipation amongst us all as we yomped over to the Funival to hitch a lift to the top of Europe's highest lift-accessed glacier skiing.

25 or so of us had gathered in Tignes to take part in the UK's first new school/freeride training camp. The idea was to bring together a number of the UK's top riders, both to offer coaching to aspiring jibbers and freeskiers and to showcase the home-grown talent out there.

The camp was also open to skiers at a recreational level looking to get into the snowparks and improve there all mountain freeskiing. Equally importantly, it gave us all in the UK Freeski world the chance to review the sport: where it currently is, where it is going and what we can all do to maximise the potential of this new wave of skiing.

The weather did us proud, as did the snow and the event was a huge success. Freeski instruction and video analysis first thing gave way to coaching in the terrain park and half-pipe mid-morning and that was followed by sessions on the water ramps or trampolines in the afternoon. Throw on top of that stretching and physiological analysis sessions with Alex Drummond and gait and foot alignment workshops with Hamish Wolfenden, two of the UK's leading Bio-mechanics experts and you have a full-on, exhausting but exhilarating programme that left us all almost too tired to tackle Tignes summer night-life - I stress 'almost'!

Warren Smith headed up the coaching team along with Pat Sharples, Jason Schutt and Sandy Trust, all top UK freeskiers. It was the first of a number of scheduled freeski camps that will take place both winter and summer across Europe.

It also introduced Freeski Britain, the organisation conceived Warren Smith and developed with Chris Fecher and Sandy Trust to act as a governing body for the sport of freeskiing in the UK.

Everybody there just loved being back on the skis mid-summer and there seemed to be a week long outbreak of 'perma-grin'. As the flips and spins grew bigger, so did the smiles and the reactions suggest that the 'British Freeskiing Camps' are going to be a big thing. The consensus was you can keep your Torrelominos: we'll have Tignes.

[Phil Martin - Ski Journalist]

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