During February half term this year, I took my first trip abroad to do some warm weather training with Nicholas Le Forestier in South Africa. Nicholas is many times World Trick Champion and set lots of new world records in trick so I was very lucky that he offered to help train me and invited me to stay with him. My target for the week was to do my first flip on my trick ski and work on my wake 540’s and toe back to back tricks.

After training all winter with my coach Nick McGarry at the Waterski Academy in Whitworth, it was nice to be out of my dry suit and back to skiing in shorts for a week. Nicholas’ trick camp was on the Buffelspoort Dam near Pretoria and the weather was hot and sunny all week after water skiing in the snow back at home the week before!

For the first few days I was working on the technique to get my flip and spent a lot of time falling in while I got used to it.

After lots of good tips from Nicholas, I managed to get all the way round and land my flip but I kept dropping my handle.

On the last day of the camp, I finally landed my flip!

Thank you to Nicholas for a brilliant trip and also to my waterskiing friends Maelis and Melitine for a really fun week!

I was lucky to be given a grant from the General Lascelles Memorial Fund which helped to pay for my trip as well as being supported by my great sponsors UK Digital Marketing.