Trip report - Mary Angland

It was also fantastic to have many of the female skiers from last season participating again and gave Mary an opportunity to catch up and discuss all things skiing.

Our +35 skier Mary Angland travelled to France in June this year to compete in a 3-event tournament at La Plan D’Eau waterski club, having started out the week with two days in Lacanau training with Geraldine Jamin she then travelled to La Plan D’Eau in La Teste-De-Buch to train with Raoul Gabriel. It was a busy few days with many skiers wanting to practice as much as possible.

It was a busy tournament with a total of 48 skiers participating (17 of which were female) across all ages and countries, with all 3 disciplines of trick, slalom and jump being run, it was also a long and busy two days for organiser Raoul Gabriel, the officials and the skiers.

All slalom sets were run on Saturday 29th June starting at 8am and finishing late in the evening, unfortunately the weather was not in their favour and at times the thunder, lightning, wind and rain got so bad, the tournament would be stopped for an hour at a time. Regardless Raoul and the officials made sure that all skiers got equal opportunity to ski and by Saturday evening there were even a few PBs had.

Mary participated in Slalom and achieved a score of 2@14M 55km in her first round and 5@16M 55km in her second round. Which she was very happy with having already equalled her 2023 tournament PB. Within slalom Mary finished 29th out of 43 slalom skiers, of which she was the only Irish competitor.

It was also fantastic to have many of the female skiers from last season participating again and gave Mary an opportunity to catch up and discuss all things skiing.

Mary will be returning to La Plan D’Eau this October to compete in another 3-event tournament, where she will be competing in both slalom and trick and aiming to gain a few buoys on her previous PB.