Skiing: School is never out for young champion

By Suzanne McFadden

New Zealand champion skier Erika McLeod sat teaching herself seventh form statistics yesterday while a blizzard closed the Mt Hutt skifield.

McLeod could be learning a little Shakespeare today instead of racing the first international series of the season.

The 17-year-old from Helensville has a dilemma ahead of her - whether to carry on skiing this year, or go back to school.

McLeod, the national women's champion, has taken a term out of her seventh-form year at St Cuthberts College for the heavy New Zealand ski season - which starts today with the Mt Hutt FIS series.

She flew to the South Island armed with a suitcase-load of school books.

"I've got all my work for the rest of the term - I'm teaching myself," she said.

"I might not go back for the last term to try to get bursary. I have to see how these races go in New Zealand and whether it's worth going to Australia to ski there."

It will not be an easy decision for McLeod, who so far has no idea which way she will lean.

In the meantime, a day off the mountain is a day in the ski lodge with her nose in a text book - something she would rather not have been doing yesterday.

McLeod has had a limited build-up to this series, which involves teams from Britain, the United States, Japan, Spain and Canada.

Her "home" skifield, Whakapapa, has been closed all season. "I haven't skied there for two years," she said.

It has meant a very expensive two years for her parents, Janet and Graham.

"I've had to come down to the South Island when I wanted to ski, and Mum and Dad have had to pay for most of it," McLeod said.

But there has been help through her place in the Milo New Zealand Academy, which nutures promising teenage ski racers, working towards the world junior championships in 2000.

The academy's goal is for its charges to achieve a top 10 finish at the world juniors, and then a top 30 ranking on the world circuit by 2002.

McLeod has already had a taste of the snow on foreign fields, skiing with the British women's team in North America and Europe for three months over the New Zealand summer.

Two of the British team she travelled with, Chemmy Alcott and Amanda Pirie, will provide her stiffest competition on the mountain in the next three days.

That is if the weather doesn't get the better of them. The forecast was for more blizzard conditions today - 25cm of snow fell yesterday - so it will probably wipe out the first day of racing, the giant slalom.

But Saturday has been set aside as a back-up day in the contingency plan.

New Zealand men's champion Peter Sanford, junior champion Jesse Teat and development team racers Todd Hayward and Euan Howden will compete against the top American skiers.