Zoe Gillings: Bad Korea Move For Me As World Cup Event Cancelled

ZOE GILLINGS BLOG: Bad Korea move for me as World Cup event cancelled following 30-hour journey
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Updated: 10:03 AEDT, 13 February 2011






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I've just returned to my base in France from the latest competition in Korea, where we were supposed to have a World Cup Snowboard Cross competition. Unfortunately, having travelled 30 hours to the other side of the world, through six countries by several modes of transport, costing nearly £3000 the competition was cancelled!
Snow but no competition: Zoe Gillings went a long way for nothing

It was so frustrating.

Myself and the rest of the athletes turned up on day one of the competition to the course, but we were told there was a 30 minute delay while they finished the course off.


This isn't unusual, but after an hour or so had gone by, the coaches were called to a meeting at the bottom of the course.



After a consultation with the race directors, the race was officially cancelled due to the course being unsafe.

I have experienced competitions being cancelled previously, but not after we had turned up to the event.

Usually, competitions are cancelled due to lack of snow, not due to a badly built course.

The problem here was simply how and where the course was built. It became apparent quite quickly that the mountain selected to run the race on wasn't adequate.

It was too thin and steep, so the bank turns had to be very tight meaning there wasn't enough space in the corners for more than one person.


It probably would have been OK for one person to ride at a time, but when you have four people on the course racing it would have been very dangerous, especially if the person in the lead fell, because the others behind would have nowhere to go. 

World Cup Snowboard Cross competitions have suffered fatalities in the past and after seeing this course, I think this was the right decision. It is unlikely that we will be able to re-claim our expenses back, but I am going to have a go in any case. 

Due to the financial problems mentioned in previous blogs I had to choose to enter either the Korean or the Canadian World Cup.

I did not have the finances to enter both.


After weighing up all the options I decided to go for Korea. Boy am I regretting that now! I have to stay in Europe this coming week, while the rest of the World Cup athletes compete in Canada.
It doesn't feel great.

Pyeongchang has put a bid in to host the 2018 Winter Olympics. Right now it would be easy for me to complain about the venue after this week and say they shouldn't be allowed to host the Olympics.

Relaxing times: Zoe Gillings on a rare moment of peace

However, it is unclear at the moment whether the fault lies with FIS (Federation Internationale de Ski) or the resort itself, as both play a major role in building the course.



From my point of view the venue would be fine to host the Olympics, but there obviously needs to be a lot of work done in the back ground to ensure something like this never happens again.


Wherever the fault lies, it's not great for the athletes when you spend over £3000 on a competition that gets cancelled.

Despite all the problems, I made the best I could of my time in Korea.

The people there continued to be some of the most kind and generous I have ever met.


Looks fishy: Zoe Gillings admires the sights in Korea
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I managed to get two days on snow training in which brings my total number of days training with my coach since the Olympics to five!

I tried some more local specialities such as noodle filled spring rolls, lettuce that tastes like fish and cold grape flavoured soy milk which smelt like hot chocolate, but didn't taste like it. 

One thing that provided a bit of amusement was the toilets.




They are designed to make toilet paper obsolete. Not easy to explain, but they are all electric, even the seats and they shoot jets of water everywhere followed by a heated fan. It's very weird!

As promised last week I have found out why the mountain was open and still busy all through the night.



It's because the number of places in Korea where you can ski and snowboard, relative to the number of people who want to do it, is so small, weareliferuiner.com that they keep the mountains open for as much time as they can to allow people to go at quieter times of the day.

Like 1am.

I've got four weeks till my next race now, so it is back to training and working on my business idea.



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