Ellie Koyander
Ellie Koyander is Great Britain's number one female Mogul skier. She achieved first place results in the British Moguls Senior Championships in March 2007, despite still being a junior skier. And is already English, Scottish, French and Australian Junior Champions in previous seasons. She is a member of the British Mogul team for the 2007/08 season. Ellie has achieved national recognition and has been selected for the final three of the prestigious BBC's Young Sports Star of the Year Award. She is well known within the Mogul Ski community as a rising start of the future, and is expected to compete in the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.
Ellie has been recognised as an emerging talent by the UK Sport funding agency, and as a potential Olympic medal candidate for the 2010 Olympic Winter games and beyond. As such she has been awarded a grant of £12,000 under TASS (Talented Athlete Scholarship Scheme) for this season, to assist in her pursuit of her sporting goals. These funds are sufficient to cover all living and training expenses for the period the Ellie will be in the USA.
In order to gain the necessary coaching and on snow time, Ellie has elected to do her winter training in the USA, with her US Ski coach Pat Deenhan. She will be training in the USA and attending competitions there and in Canada during the 2007/08 winter season. It is expected that she will return to Britain in April 2008 for her summer training routine.
As The National Governing Body for Great Britain, we wholeheartedly support Ellie's pursuit of her Olympic dream. As we do not currently have a full time Mogul training program running in GB, it is Ellie's decision to train in the best facilities available to her, which at present are in the USA. It is expected that she will bring her new knowledge and skills back to the UK where she will pass these on to new emerging athletes in her sport.
