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CATCH UP WITH BILLY MAJOR AFTER HIS FIRST EUROPA CUP WIN

After an impressive start to 2021 with his first ever Europa Cup win, we caught up with Billy Major about the past few weeks and his transition to World Cup racing.

What a start to the year for you Billy! Would you have predicted you’d be smashing your way through PBs and onto the Europe Cup podium in the first week of 2021?

I finished off 2020 on a high, racing in my first World Cup slalom races. I was able to go back to my parents in France for the Christmas break which was really nice and is actually Val Cenis, where the Europa Cups took place. I went into the Europa Cups wanting to put down some strong skiing and get some top 15 results, which I would have been happy with considering my bib number, 44. The first day, finishing 7th and scoring my first Europa cup points gave me a lot of confidence for the second day. To go and win in the resort where I learnt to ski was just amazing and “in front of a home crowd”.

What was it like to share the podium in Val Cenis with your teammate Laurie Taylor?

To share the podium with Laurie, was that little cherry on top. Skiing is a very individual sport, with individual results at the end of the day but when teammates do well, it is a great positive spiral that benefits everyone. So to have a British 1 and 2 was great for the whole team and made the day even more special. 

And following your success at the tail end of last year how does it feel to have now competed in your first World Cup races?

Now having competed in 3 World Cup races, it has made me hungry to race in more. I want to be able to show some fast skiing and really enjoy racing at the highest level in ski racing and learning from everyone around me.

The Alpine Men’s Team have named themselves The Queen’s Men – can you tell us a bit about that?

The Queen’s Men is just a little nickname I would say to give the team a bit of an identity and a team feeling. Like any football team or rugby team, they all have a team name on top of their official one. When you see all the other big ski nations like Norway, that have Attacking Vikings everywhere, we thought we could have a little name too.