Zoe Gillings-Brier, The Isle of Man's Olympic snowboard cross athlete finished on the podium in an impressive 3rd place at the Cortina D'Ampezzio European Cup snowboard cross competition in Italy yesterday.
She has spent the last 11 months off snow following her 9th place finish at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Games and only returned to the Alps a few weeks ago. Even though Zoe has just returned, at present it is simply to focus on training freestyle snowboard techniques that will help her go for gold in snowboard cross at the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics in 2018.
With a strong field of competition, Zoe qualified into the heats in 5th place. Zoe then won both her quarter final and semi final heats. With no lane choice in the final due to her qualification time, despite being 4th into the first berm and racing head to head against an Italian athlete who just beat Zoe into the final of the Sochi 2014 Olympics by a matter of centimetres, Zoe managed to pass into 3rd place where she stayed for the remainder of the race.
"I'm really happy with today's result, it was a real shock. It was a strong field and despite not being on snow for just under a year and not doing any snowboard cross training whatsoever, I was really happy with my performance. I'd like to say a huge huge thank you to Celtic Associates in the Isle of Man. They are my sole support from the Isle of Man and without them I wouldn't have been able to podium." commented Zoe after the race.
Zoe now heads back to Aosta, Italy to continue her freestyle training with "Why Aint you Jibbin" owners Steve Addicott and Olympian/friend Kate Foster before returning back 100% to snowboard cross in June 2015.
