Team GB has returned un-bloodied but bowed from the Ski Club of International Journalists championships in the Spanish Pyrenees.
"We won no medals against over 200 competitors from 33 other countries but at least we escaped the injuries that beset other nations," said team captain Gill Martin, ex-Fleet Street reporter, feature writer and women’s editor.
"There were as many hospital cases from the dance floor as those from the Giant Slalom and Cross Country events at our sunny week in the snow at the 62nd International meeting of SCIJ at Baqueira-Beret in the Val D’Aran.
"A Dutch woman was carted off with concussion in the downhill race and a Slovenian woman had to abandon her cross-country race with a knee injury.
"Even more spectacular was the wildly exuberant Irish disco dancer accidentally head butting a Turkish competitor and needing three stitches."
Most of the six-strong Team GB – including ex-Times night editor Michael Prowse, Gill Swain former Fleet Street features writer who now edits Palestine News; Jakki Philipps, managing editor of Tatler Hong Kong, Times sub Sam Thomson, and a financial journalist based in Brussels – fell in the cross-country but survived upright on the slalom.
SCIJ's history dates back to the Cold War when a Frenchman founded it in 1955 to bring together journalists from the East and West.
Keen skiing journalists are invited to check out the club website on www.scij.info or contact Martin on gillmartin@tedding.freeserve.co.uk.
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