As Saturday the 5th September draws to a close BASI’s Great Britain Delegation is now complete with BASI Chairman, Gareth Roberts, Adaptive Delegate, Greig Moffat, and Snowboard Director, Ben Kinnear arriving this evening. There has been a sense of building anticipation throughout the town of Ushuaia today, a large number of teams streamed into town this evening and half the Austrian delegation joined us tonight in the Alto Andino Hotel. The programme suggests they have a delegation of over 80 …. The ski room in the hotel is looking more like the race department at Salomon and the lounge area also now doubles as a ski prep area.
The stage is now set and tomorrow the transport arrives at 8am for the 40 minute transfer to the base station at Cerro Castor resort. For the teams that arrived today there will be a short morning session for them to do some first and final training on the official demo slope. Not easy, as for most it will be the first and only time they get to train on the slope they will have to demo on later in the week. As the demo slope comes down into the final arena area it crosses (by way of a bridge) over the Trans American Highway, the demo slope narrows at the bridge and so for those teams who have been here now for a couple of days (us included) there has been an opportunity to test and adapt the demos a few times over this stretch of variable terrain.
The Opening Ceremony kicks off at 13.30pm local time (we’re 4 hours behind the UK here, and internet access is intermittent at best) and following what the programme describes at the “Authorities Speech. Flag Raising and Cultural Activity” every country’s demo team will be introduced in Alphabetical order from 14.3o. We’ll be taking video and do our best to bring you some highlights as soon as we can!
Opening Ceremony concludes with an Argentinian on slope presentation “Snowsport development. Pioneers until modern skiing”. Then it’s back to Ushuaia at 16.30. The opening lecture begins at 19,00 and is delivered by our hosts, entitled “Equipment Evolution and Injuries related to Existing Ski Techniques” – an unusual topic choice for an opening lecture me thinks ?
Day 1 concludes with a Street Parade for the delegations through the Streets of Ushuaia with Fireworks followed by the Peoples Party.
So, we’re all good to go! We really hope Members and friends will follow us as we bring you all the highlights of the day on the BASI Facebook page and more in depth comment and observations on the BASI Interski Blog page as and when we can.