School sport: Strathallan trio steal the show on slopes

Strathallan's director of sport has praised the hard work of three pupils after the girls' ski team dominated at the British Schoolgirls Races in Flaine, France.

The team of Hope Whitelaw and sisters Charlie and Katie Guest won an impressive five trophies, 13 gold medals and four silver medals in finishing as the best British team, while Charlie was the overall Junior 2 section winner.

All of this is quite some feat given that 54 teams were present representing schools from all over Britain, including many of the top English sporting schools.

Audrey Sime, who is director of sport at the Perthshire school, said: "This is a fantastic achievement for the girls not least because it is recognition at British level. We are extremely proud of their success and will continue to support them in every way we can.

"They headed out to France in determined mood, but for them to finish as top British team was simply amazing and it is a credit to their hard work and dedication that they managed to perform so consistently in a tough event and show that they have real talent."

The recent success is the best the school have had in the ten years since the ski team was set up and a lot of it is down to ski coach Fabienne Thompson, who was born and brought up in the French Alps from an early age before moving to Scotland 15 years ago.

She was unable to make the recent trip to Flaine in her home country due to other commitments, but the team were accompanied by Hope's father.

He was "over the moon" when he watched from the sidelines as the girls kept posting positive results and they will all hope to now make further strides in terms of national selection over the coming months.

And Sime believes the trio's success will help the continued growth of skiing at the school.

"We have a number of ski tasters throughout the year when the younger pupils can try out skiing for the first time and these are continuing to prove popular. It gives those from the ages of nine to 13 a chance to learn the basics for a couple of days and we will continue to keep these going. We believe it is important to offer the pupils the chance to try as many sports as possible and skiing is just one of the ones that we invest a lot of time into."

With the team of Hope, Charlie and Katie skiing competitively often it means, like many young sporting talents who are still at school, they have to juggle training and their studies.

Sime explained: "It is always a balancing act and we try and help these girls as well as we can. They work with myself and other members of staff to set out a timetable that fits for them and they have specific strength and conditioning programmes that they work on even when they are in school and cannot get away to the slopes."