I have just got back from competing at the X games (basically the Olympics of action sports).

It’s an invitation only event and had 15 hours of live TV coverage on USA TV.

I had some major problems on the run up to the event because my coach had to resign due to family reasons 4 days before I went. As a last minute thing I organized for James Foster, another British snowboardcross rider to come out with me to act as my coach. It turned out that that worked really well!

I qualified in 3rd so all my fears that it was all going to go wrong because I didn’t have my usual coach there went out the window at that moment.

In the X games there are 6 riders racing instead of the usual 4 which makes it interesting to start with. In my first heat I won the start so I was in the lead for most of the way down, two girls got in front of me when I hit some soft snow but it was okay because I only had to finish in the top 3 to get into the final. I was still in 3rd going over the final jump but then I flew way too far off the jump and crashed on the landing! I knew if I tried to stand up it would use up too much time so I just lifted up my board and let myself slide across the finish line. I didn’t know if I had got over the line in front of the girl behind me or not until I looked up at the score board and saw:

1:Tanya Freaden
2: Sandra Frie
3: Zoe Gillings

I had got through to the final!!

We had to wait for almost half an hour for the final to start because a guy had fallen on the course and they had to rebuild the fencing around one of the corners. I got nervous standing in the start gate I have to admit but as soon as I got out of the gate all my nerves disappeared. Unfortunately my race didn’t last very long because as we went into the first corner a girl just to my left lost control over one of the rollers and crashed straight into me. I ended up 6th in the final so 6th overall in the comp. Considering all the problems I had coming up to this event and the fact that I came 7th last year I was pretty happy!