Fresh from her double Crystal Globe winning season, we sat down with Telemark sensation, Jaz Taylor, to get her insight into a history-making year
Britain loves an underdog story. British sport, in particular, loves an underdog story. There’s something about the idea of an athlete triumphing against the odds that seems particularly well-suited to the British psyche.
That being the case, it’s no surprise that Jaz Taylor is currently surfing a wave of love from the British snowsport community. After all, Britain surely isn’t supposed to produce double Crystal Globe winning skiers, particularly given Telemark skiing doesn’t qualify for public funding due to its omission from the Olympic Winter Games programme.
And yet, here we are.
For those who’ve met her, probably one of the first things that comes to mind when talking about Taylor is a humility that seems at odds with the scale of her achievement. So, how does it feel to be the centre of attention?
“I think people have recognised what this means to me, and that’s been really nice,” she says. “I guess, with Telemark not being an Olympic discipline, we never really expect to get that sort of profile, so to have people realising what this means and that others are enjoying it, like my coaching team and beyond, it really means a lot.”
And those celebrations are more than justified, with Taylor securing both the Sprint and the Overall Crystal Globes for the 2023/24 Telemark season, the first in a career that’s seen her finish runner up in Overall, Sprint, Classic, and Parallel Sprint standings over the past decade. It’s a weight of pressure that she openly acknowledges got into her head at various points of the season.
“Going into those final races, I was definitely stressed,” she laughs. “I really, really wanted it [the Overall Globe]. I’d put myself in a good position after the Livigno races, but I wasn’t safe, so it wasn’t easy to sleep, wasn’t easy to eat. You’re trying so hard to stay focused, but of course it ends up in your mind, and your brain’s just going through all of these circumstances, and the more you try to push it away, the more those thoughts come.”
Finding the resolve to get past it took some close support, and a fairytale ending.
“My family actually came out for the last races,” Taylor says, “so in the end it was kind of a fairytale because my mum and dad, my partner, my grandma were all there, and they provided a really good, positive distraction. Just at that time, I was so happy to see them and have them there with me, and that just gave me the positive distraction I needed to get out of my head a little bit.”
Taylor secured the Sprint Globe the week before after the penultimate round of races in Italy, but needed a result in the very last race of the season, the Parallel Sprint, to secure her place at the top of the Overall standings.
“It all came down to the final Parallel Sprint,” she explains, “and I’m very hit-and-miss with Parallel. Sometimes I’ll do really well, sometimes I won’t, and I was just thinking ‘oh my god, everything’s resting on this race’.
“I know it’s more my perception than anything, but with Parallel I always feel like I can’t control the outcome as much as I can in other events, and before qualification we’d worked out that I had to finish sixth if Goril [Strom Eriksen, who was sitting second in the Overall standings] won, and Parallel’s her strongest event. I didn’t want to leave anything to chance, so to put myself in a really good position I knew I needed to win or come second in qualifiers.”
It was a situation that created an almost impossible level of stress for Taylor and her team.
“I was with my teammates before the start, and it was almost funny because there was so much pressure there. It almost became a bit of a joke, because in that moment something just lifted in my mind, and I remember thinking to myself ‘this is daft, you can’t take this as seriously as all that’.”
Whatever mental adjustments she was able to make worked, because Taylor flew through qualification and left herself needing only to finish the first round of the Parallel Finals to secure victory.
“I passed the finish line ahead and won the first heat, and that was the moment I knew I’d secured the Overall Globe. I was on the lift going back up, and my coach Seb was on the side in coach’s corner, and I said to him ‘Seb, I think I’ve done it’, and he’s like, ‘yep, yep, you’ve done it’. I just said to him, ‘so what do I do now?’ and he looked at me and said, ‘Jaz, I don’t care!’. It ended up being probably the strangest race of my life, because I just felt like everything fell into place for me. I was totally relaxed, skiing, and having fun with my teammates.”
It ended up giving Taylor her only Parallel Sprint victory of the season, alongside four Sprint discipline World Cup victories, and a further six World Cup podiums.
The seeds for the Overall crown were sown in the first weeks of the season, where Taylor rattled off a scarcely believable four consecutive Sprint victories to pull away from the field in the season’s first four World Cup races. For Taylor, though, it was the prelude to a real struggle.
“At the start of the season I was quite relaxed, I think, but going into the Norwegian and Swiss races, things started to unravel for me a bit,” she recalls.
“We had some racing in Switzerland, and I had a big crash in qualification in the Parallel, and ended up not putting a single point on the board that day. I think that’s the moment I realised that the stress was getting to me, because my first thought wasn’t for my health, but for the points, and it just hammered home for me how much I wanted the Overall title this year.”
Pulling out of the spiral was a real battle.
“After Norway, my lead in the Overall was 23 points, so as far as I was concerned I might as well have lost the lead. It was as good as being back at the start of the season again, and I was just thinking ‘I’ve blown it’.”
In the end, a reset with her coach provided the impetus to make the final charge for the title.
“I had a week off, just really took some time for myself, and then got back into training and I’d be there questioning everything, like ‘am I skiing well, am I jumping well, is my skating good?’, and Seb helped me to just try to forget about controlling every single part, and focus on the intention. Get from gate to gate. Move down the hill. Forget about everything else, and focus on the approach.”
The approach paid dividends, as a set of dominant performances in Livigno (yielding two podiums in Sprint and a further in Classic) were followed by those final two podiums in Pra Loup, confirming the Sprint and Overall Globes would end the season in Taylor’s hands, sparking huge celebrations around Taylor and further afield.
“The reaction has just been so lovely,” she says. “My family and my coach cried, and seeing all the responses from people on social media and just everywhere around you. All the restaurant workers, the people working the lifts all saying ‘well done’ or being out at the GB Alpine Championships [where Taylor foreran the GS race] and having all these people I’d not seen for maybe 10, 15 years saying congratulations, then you’re like ‘ah wow, okay, this means something to people’. That’s really what leaves me with a good feeling now.”
Jaz and the GB Telemark team are running a crowdfunder to support the team’s on-going plans and the future of BRitish telemark. Find out more here
Telemark star seals first globes of career with 11th podium of the season
Jaz Taylor secured the Telemark Overall and Sprint Crystal Globes with a series of stunning performances at World Cup Finals in Pra Loup.
Second place in the Sprint and first in Parallel Sprint gave Taylor unassailable leads in both rankings in a season that has delivered a remarkable eleven World Cup podiums, including five victories.
Taylor, who has previously taken second place in the Overall, Classic, Sprint, and Parallel Sprint standings has been in dominant form since the beginning of the season, winning four consecutive World Cup races from the beginning of the season to establish an unassailable position in the rankings.
Second place in Livigno Sprint World Cup keeps skier at top of Telemark standings
Jaz Taylor added her seventh World Cup podium of a remarkable season with second place at the Livigno Telemark Sprint World Cup this afternoon.
Having recorded four victories in Italy in the opening months of the season, Taylor once again demonstrated her mastery of the Sprint discipline in a superb race that placed her second in the standings between the French pair of Angeline Tan Bouquet in first and Camille Bourbon in third.
The result keeps Taylor in top spot in the overall season standings with 754 points, 53 ahead of Norway’s Goril Strom Eriksen, and a full 185 points clear in the Sprint standings, with Eriksen again in second position.
With three races to complete at the Livigno World Cup, the Telemark season then moves quickly to World Cup Finals in Pra Loup between 17-22 March.
Zoe Atkin and Jaz Taylor take podiums; Cross-Country Team seal dual top-10s
Atkin takes dual podiums at Calgary Snow Rodeo
Zoe Atkin made it a perfect podium season at the Calgary Snow Rodeo double header World Cup, with Silver and Bronze medal performances on the Women’s Freeski Halfpipe.
Coming into the 2023/24 season with three World Cup podiums under her belt, Atkin showed astonishing form across the 2023/24 season to more than double her career World Cup podium count, taking three third place finishes before rounding out with second place in the final of the season’s Halfpipe World Cup contests. With a second place from X Games Aspen already under her belt, the performances have marked out Atkin as one of Britain’s most consistently exciting performers.
The results left the 21-year-old third in the overall standings and with a growing reputation as one to watch as the clock ticks inexorably towards Milan-Cortina 2026.
Cross-Country Squad take top-10s in Minneapolis
The Minneapolis Cross-Country World Cup saw a season’s best performance from James Clugnet with eighth spot in the Sprint Free race. In his first solo top-10 since December 2022, Clugnet looked in excellent form coming through just outside of qualification for the Final, with a Semi-Final time of 2:56.63.
The 10km Free saw Andrew Musgrave take his seventh top-10 spot of the season with a ninth place finish, hot off the back of seventh place at the previous weekend’s Canmore World Cup in the 20km C Mass Start. Also in the 10km F, Joe Davies grabbed a first top-20 career World Cup placing with 16th spot, making him the youngest finisher inside the top-20.
Taylor secures seventh podium of season in Al
Jaz Taylor took a seventh World Cup podium of a remarkable season with third place in the Parallel Sprint World Cup in Al, Norway. In a weekend with a mammoth four World Cup competitions, Taylor’s run of fourth, third, seventh, and eighth made it a scarcely believable ten top-10 finishes in eleven World Cup races, leaving her atop the standings in the overall Telemark World Cup rankings, ahead of Norway’s Goril Strom Eriksen and France’s Laly Chaucheprat.
BCST do country proud in 2024 International Races
The British Children’s Ski Team delivered some outstanding results across the 2024 International Race calendar, delivering five podiums and a further eight top-10s amid a series of remarkable performances.
At the Trofeu Borrufa Races in Andorra, Brooke Baxter (U16 W) and Harrison Adkins (U16 M) both took a pair of Slalom podiums, with Baxter finishing second and third as well as fifth in GS, with Adkins third twice.
Louisa McIntosh (U16 W) finished just behind Baxter in the second of the U16 W Slalom races, coming in fourth position, Lucas Cross (U14 M) secured an excellent top-10 in GS, while Audrey Curtis (U14 W) was in the top-10 twice with seventh in Slalom and sixth in GS.
The Skiinterkirterium races in Czechia delivered a podium for Isabella Sullivan (U16 W) in Slalom, while Edward Lloyd (U14 M – tenth, GS), Jessica Freear (U14 W – eighth GS, seventh SL), Sam Kingsley (U16 M – tenth SL), Alexander Thomas (U14 M – eighth SL), Amelia Pietrzak (U16 W – fifth SL), Alice Bond (U16 W – seventh SL) and Gracie Duncan (U14 W – sixth SL) all secured superb top-10 placings.
Finally, at the highly contested Alpecimbra races in Folgaria, Italy, British athletes secured five top-20 finishes through Sebastien Anthony (U14 M – 15th GS), Lily Flitton (U14 W – 19th GS, 13th SL), and Hamish Blyth (U16 M – 11th SL, 15th GS).
Huge congratulations to every member of the BCST for some exceptional performances, representing the future of British Alpine Skiing in the best possible light.
Mia Brookes and Zoe Atkin brought their A Games to X Games 2024, while there were Para Alpine podiums to celebrate in Veysonnaz
Brookes and Atkin take Gold and Silver in Aspen
Mia Brookes and Zoe Atkin continued Britain’s proud record at X Games with medals in Freestyle Snowboard Slopestyle and Freeski Superpipe at the 2024 edition of the contest.
Brookes, the second youngest athlete at the invitational event, got the Games off to a stunning start with victory in the Women’s Freestyle competition. Such was Brookes’ dominance of the event that any of her three runs would have scored highly enough to take victory, with flawless rail sections, a Cab 12 on her highest scoring run, and a Cab 14 on her final run.
In the Women’s Freeski Superpipe, Zoe Atkin delivered a super clean display of Halfpipe skiing that included the highest amplitude recorded on the night to take Silver behind Eileen Gu, and back up the Gold medal that she won at X Games 2023.
British interest rounded out with a solid fourth place finish for Brookes in the Freestyle Snowboard Big Air competition.
Fitzpatrick and Guest take Para Alpine Podiums in Veysonnaz
Menna Fitzpatrick and Katie Guest added two more World Cup podiums and two FIS podium to their season tally in a busy week of competition in Veysonnaz. Bronze medals in World Cup Giant Slalom and Super G races were followed with Gold and Silver in FIS Super G competitions to round out a successful week of racing in the Swiss resort.
In the Women’s Seated classification, Shona Brownlee was also in action with a pair of fifth place finishes.
Taylor adds fifth podium of season in Melchsee-Frutt
Jaz Taylor’s remarkable Telemark World Cup campaign continued with a fifth podium of the season in the Melchsee-Frutt Classic World Cup. With third place in the first of the weekend’s competition, Taylor secured her first Classic podium since March 2022, further consolidating top spot in the Telemark overall rankings, where she sits 135 points clear of France’s Lily Chaucheprat. In the Men’s competition, Timote Gough was also in action, with 14th place in the Classic the pick of his results.
And the rest…
In Ski Cross, Ollie Davies made it through to the 1/8 Finals stages at the St. Moritz World Cup to take 20th spot while Scott Johns, on World Cup debut, finished in 58th place. The St. Moritz Snowboard Cross World Cup saw Charlotte Bankes finish just outside the top-10 with an 11th place finish, while Huw Nightingale took 55th spot.
In Moguls, Makayla Gerken Schofield continued their comeback from a knee injury with 22nd place in the Waterville World Cup, while Mateo Jeannesson finished 24th in the Dual Moguls event.
In Cross-Country, James Clugnet sealed his best World Cup result of the season with 20th place in the Sprint F World Cup in Goms and 26th in the 20km F Mass Start, with Andrew Musgrave finishing 12th in the latter.
British Alpine history was made on the slopes of Kitzbuehel and Gangwon on a superb weekend of British snowsport action
Kitzbuehel sees three in top-20
All three members of the Men’s Slalom team finished inside the top-20 at the Kitzbuehel Slalom, marking the first time in modern history that Britain has delivered three top-20 finishes at an Alpine World Cup.
Billy Major roared out of the first run to finish in joint-10th spot alongside teammate Dave Ryding at the end of the first run, while Laurie Taylor showed superb grit to see out tricky conditions and qualify for the second run in 29th spot.
From there, with five skiers failing to finish the second run, Dave Ryding delivered his now typical second run brilliance with the second fastest second run of the day to catapult himself to the top of the standings, before being overhauled in the latter stages of the race for an eventual fifth place finish. Taylor landed the seventh best second run of the day to bring himself a 19th place finish and a person best, while Major also secured a World Cup personal best with 13th spot, less than 0.3s outside of the top-10.
Elsewhere on the Alpine World Cup circuit, Charlie Guest finished just outside of the top-30 at the Jasna Slalom World Cup, missing out on the second run by hundredths of a second.
Carrick-Smith takes Gold in Gangwon
Zak Carrick-Smith delivered a sensational performance in Team GB colours at the Youth Olympic Games in Gangwon to take Britain’s first ever Alpine gold medal in an Olympic competition, with victory in the Alpine Combined.
Find out more about Carrick-Smith’s history-making victory here.
Taylor goes four-from-four in stunning Telemark SPrint run
Jaz Taylor’s sensational World Cup season rolled on with back-to-back victories in the Carezza Dolomites Telemark Sprint World Cup, leaving her with four victories from four World Cup races this season, and a firm grasp on top spot in the overall rankings.
The wins, the 10th and 11th of Taylor’s career, mean she has now equalled the best season of her career which saw her take four victories across the 2017/18 season, just four races into the season.
Makayla Gerken Schofield, Maisie Hill, and Katie Ormerod make injury comebacks
Moguls skier Makayla Gerken Schofield, and Freestyle Snowboarders Maisie Hill and Katie Ormerod all made their World Cup comebacks this week after significant injury lay-offs. Hill and Ormerod were both back in action at the Laax Freestyle Snowboard Slopestyle World Cup finishing in 15th and 12th spots respectively, while Gerken Schofield marked their return with a 19th place finish at the Val St. Come Moguls World Cup.
Elsewhere in Laax, Mia Brookes cruised through to Finals in the Freestyle Snowboard Slopestyle competition before finishing eighth, while Matty Cox marked his first World Cup in British colours with a 36th place finish in the Men’s Freestyle Snowboard Slopestyle contest. Siddhartha Ullah’s sixth World Cup appearance finished with a 38th place in the Men’s Halfpipe.
In Freeski, Ash Clayton was the pick of the bunch taking tenth place in the Women’s Freeski Slopestyle in only their second World Cup appearance.
In Moguls, Mateo Jeannesson came 33rd in Moguls and 17th in Dual Moguls in the first World Cup of 2024, with the latter marking the best Dual Moguls result of his World Cup career to date.
Davies takes 16th in Nakisaka
Ollie Davies’ World Cup season took off with an excellent 16th place finish in the Nakisaka Ski Cross World Cup. In a difficult season, Davies showed serious grit and application to make it through to the Quarter Final stage, and the best result of his season to date.
Andrew Musgrave returns from illness in Oberhot
Andrew Musgrave returned from the bout of illness that put paid to his Tour de Ski endeavours, finishing just outside the Top-20 at the Oberhof 20km C Mass Start World Cup. A 21st place finish there along with a run out in the Sprint C event marked his first appearance of the year, having had to drop out of the 2023/24 Tour de Ski after the 10km C on 31 December.
Jaz Taylor recorded her third World Cup of the season at this afternoon’s Telemark Sprint World Cup
Jaz Taylor made it three World Cup Gold medals from three races this season with a stunning victory in the Carezza Dolomites Sprint World Cup this afternoon.
Coming into the race with back-to-back World Cup wins in Pinzolo already under her belt, Taylor put in another dominant performance to win by a margin of 3.84s from the Norwegian pair of Ella Strom Eriksen and Kaja Bjoernstad Konow.
Speaking afterwards, Jaz said: “I’m really pleased with my performance today! I’m doing my best to stay focused on the task at hand. The season is still all ahead of us. Thank you to everyone for all the support.”
A record-breaking weekend saw British skiers and snowboarders take eight World Cup podiums
Brookes takes bronze, secures Crystal Globe
The weekend’s first podium arrived with Mia Brookes taking bronze at the Copper Mountain Big Air World Cup, and securing with it the Freestyle Snowboard Big Air Crystal Globe.
A score of 155.75 was enough to propel Brookes into the podium positions, behind Japan’s Kokomo Murase and Mari Fukada in first and second spot. The result, with Reira Iwabuchi finishing in fifth, was enough to confirm Brookes’ Crystal Globe title with three podiums in four Big Air World Cup competitions this season.
Musgrave’s superb silver
Andrew Musgrave secured his best ever World Cup result and matched Britain’s highest finish in Cross-Country World Cup competition with a breathtaking second place finish at the Trondheim Skiathlon World Cup.
Coming into the weekend’s competitions in a rich vein of form with four top-10s under his belt already, Musgrave delivered a near flawless display of Cross-Country skiing to finish in 43:51.4 just 0.7s behind race winner, Johannes Hoesflot Klaebo. The result gave Musgrave his third World Cup podium, after third place finishes in Toblach in 2017 and Beitostolen in 2022.
Fitzpatrick and Guest strike Gold (and Silver)
Menna Fitzpatrick and Katie Guest ensured the start to the Para Alpine season would be a memorable one, with silver and gold medal finishes in back-to-back Para Alpine Downhill World Cup races in St. Moritz.
After a hugely encouraging showing on day one of competition which yielded an excellent second place, Fitzpatrick and Guest stepped up a gear to take victory on the second day of racing, finishing ahead of South Korea’s Sara Choi and Sanghyun Jung, and Slovakia’s Alexandra Rexova and Hugo Rybar.
Atkin and Muir bank Freeski Bronzes
The Copper Mountain Freeski World Cup saw further bronze medal performances from Kirsty Muir (Freeski Big Air) and Zoe Atkin (Freeski Halfpipe), taking the overall British tally from the competition to three third place finishes.
In her first World Cup of the season, Atkin skied superbly to qualify in first before delivering a highly technical performance to secure the fourth World Cup podium of her career and her second in Copper Mountain.
Muir showed enormous bravery and grit to overcome a nasty looking fall in the second jump of the Freeski Big Air finals to ensure she also secured bronze and a fourth career World Cup podium finish. An overall score of 173.75 was enough to confirm third place, behind France’s Tess Ledeux and Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland.
Double Golds for Jaz Taylor
Telemark sensation Jaz Taylor took the 46th and 47th World Cup podiums of her career, and her first race victories since March 2022, with a brace of stunning Sprint victories in the Pinzolo Telemark World Cup.
The results further cement Taylor’s standing as the pre-eminent Telemark skier of her generation, and as one of the finest British snowsport athletes of all time.
Jeannesson in top-10 again
Mateo Jeanneasson‘s excellent early season form continued in the Alpe d’Huez Moguls World Cup with a ninth place finish giving him a second top-10 of the season. Backing up his stunning sixth place in Ruka with 12th in Idre Fjall, Jeannesson once again made finals with a superb score of 73.58 at the iconic French venue, making him the youngest athlete in the top-10.
Mixed weekend for Snowboard Cross team
Charlotte Bankes and Huw Nightingale endured a mixed weekend at the Cervinia Snowboard Cross World Cup, but nevertheless took a commendable fifth place finish in the Mixed Team event to follow their victory in the previous Team World Cup in Les Deux Alpes.
Individual World Cup races saw Nightingale finish in 31st and Bankes in 21st positions.
Guest takes another Europa Cup top-10
Charlie Guest took her second Slalom Europa Cup top-10 finish in a week with seventh place in the Valle Aurina/Ahrntal EC on Saturday, having finished eighth in Mayrhofen the previous week.
World Cup debuts for Carr, Gledhill, and Holden
Amid the good news from this weekend’s performances, there was more to celebrate with World Cup debuts for Cali Carr (Moguls), Gabriel Gledhill (Cross-Country), and Gidget Holden (Freestyle Snowboard Halfpipe).
Pinzolo yields brace of World Cup wins for Telemark icon
Jaz Taylor’s blistering start to the World Cup season yielded a second World Cup victory in two days, as she replicated yesterday’s Telemark Sprint World Cup victory in Pinzolo with another race win today.
A time of 2:33.63 was enough to see Taylor finish 2.72s ahead of Camille Bourbon in second, with Norway’s Goril Strom Eriksen rounding out the podium.
The result leaves Taylor on nine career World Cup victories dating back to January 2018 and with real hopes of making it ten as the season progresses.