Friday 19th of March

 BeXx was up early heading for the cross chanel ferry at Dover yet again. This time she was travelling with her Mum and Dad to Laax in Switzerland, for the British Snowboard Championships 2010. She was meeting up with  Callum Waller and his family a riding buddy from Milton Keynes and both families were driving across France together. This turned out to be a good decision as Callum's car broke down on the Friday evening, and everyone stayed in a hotel over night. In the morning the stricken car was left at a French garage and swapped for a hire car. The rest of the journey was uneventfull and found everyone safely arrived at the hotel in Laax.

 Sunday and Monday were filled up with practice sessions for the four up coming events. The British Championships or 'Brits' as it is known is made up of four different events for both snowboarding and skiing. Each event was to be held on a different day starting with the Trespass Boarder Cross, followed by Giro Big Air then Sno!zone Halfpipe and finally the Animal Slopestyle. BeXx had entered into all four events, so it would be a busy week ahead.

Tuesday Morning had BeXx and her Dad on the first gondola up the mountain. They were heading up for her to check out and practice for the Trespass Snowboardcross Championship to be held later in the morning. The course was hard to see as a thick cloud was covering the top of the mountain and had blanketed the course in fog. This was to be BeXx's first ever boardercross experience on the mountain and she was very unsure of what to expect. She managed to have a couple of runs on the course to get the feel for the conditions and this was a good thing because the first feature prooved to be a little daunting.

BeXx over estimated her speed and ended up backflipping and landing very heavily on the other side. Having checked that all her bits were still attached and realising that she would not get any extra points for tricks, as boardercross is a race to the finish, she picked herself up and carried on with her practice runs.

With practice and qualification out of the way BeXx found herself at the starting gate with four other girls from her category. Two of the girls live in Chamonix and spend all year on the mountain, one of these was last years Gold medal winner, so BeXx had a tough race ahead. BeXx recieved some last minute advice from Jules Chappel a friend from Snozone in Milton Keynes (seen in the pic above to the left of BeXx). The girls kids category was the first race and with the fairly large crowd at the start gate the excitement and anticipation was growing.

The gates went down and the race was on!

Masie Potter on the right took a slight tumble from the gate and was in last place. Over the first feature the girls flew, BeXx took more air than the other two but this helped as a slight mistake by Natalie Silkstone meant that BeXx took second place. Masie Potter a much older and taller girl had an advatage in speed and this soon began to show down the course. She first over took Natalie and then BeXx and her duelled it out for a couple of bends, but a slight mistake by BeXx enabled her to pass and then over take Ayla. This was a very exciting race from start to finish and crowd loved it cheering for their favourites all the way to the finish line.

The final result was:

1. Masie Potter

2. Ayla Thindlee

3. Becky Menday

Later on in the evening BeXx was very proud and excited to be on her first podium and claiming a bronze medal.