Cross-Country Skiing Holidays, Tours & Courses
Tel: +44 (0)1969 663388
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Nordic Challenge provides high quality coaching in the challenging and increasingly popular sport of (Nordic) cross-country skiing. Uniquely, we also use this sport as a medium for delivering our own refreshingly original brand of Team Building and Leadership Training for Companies and other organisations .
We are located in North Yorkshire but run all our courses in Norway from January to April.
The Co-Directors of Nordic Challenge are Nick Gaskell and Tony Turnbull. They personally deliver the training on all our courses, assisted by consultants and instructors.
Nick served in the Army for 34 years as an Infantry officer, in national and international appointments in Europe, the Far East and Middle East. His main expertise was in operations, training and development. He taught leadership to potential officers, and to leaders in all three services to a senior level. He has been involved in sport management and coaching both in and outside the Services. He has been a Director of the British Association of Snowsport Instructors, BASI, the national governing body, and is a BASI National Nordic Ski Teacher. He has led expeditions in Norway and Canada and has coached cross-country skiing, including biathlon for 18 years. He is a Member of the Chartered Management Institute (MCMI) and a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (FRGS).
Tony served for 31 years as an officer in The Royal Marines in national and international appointments, which included many winter deployments to Norway, Antarctica and the South Atlantic. He taught leadership to officers and leaders in the Royal Navy and served as the Royal Marines' representative at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. On leaving the Service he graduated from Oxford University with a BA (Hons). He spends the summer teaching English to foreign students. He is a BASI Nordic Ski Teacher and has delivered ski and leadership training in Norway for 20 consecutive years.
All our instructors are carefully selected for their experience, professional background and personal attributes; are British Association of Snowsports (BASI) qualified (or national equivalent) and have been vetted (Enhanced Disclosure) for work with children. Above all, they are passionate about Nordic skiing and teaching snowsports.
Together with the Company Directors, our instructors for 2011 are:
Pat is a BASI Nordic Ski and Telemark Instructor with 8 seasons coaching experience. He is also an International Mountain Leader with a long and impressive track record including Everest and Antarctica. He was the British Schools Explorer’s Society’s Leader in 2007/08 and will assist and advise on our Mountain Ski Touring holidays in 2011.
Nicky has been a BASI Nordic Ski Instructor for 8 years, which has included coaching Army Nordic ski race teams. She also has considerable experience and skill teaching children, and will again be involved in our families’ programmes. She will be instructing on our Nordic Track Skiing Holidays.
She is a REPS Level 3 Advanced Fitness Instructor and a Nordic Walking Trainer.
Polly is the latest addition to our instructor team. She is a BASI Telemark instructor and and ran our very successful 2010 Telemark Course. She is also a Norwegian Ski Instructor (ISIA) and a highly experienced skier, mountaineer and yachtswoman, and was the first Scottish woman to summit Mt Everest. She has been a member of the GB Nordic and biathlon squad. She has telemark skied down Mt McKinlay. She will be running our Telemark Courses in 2011 and assisting with Track Skiing instruction.
Silje is a qualified Norwegian Nordic and Telemark instructor. She was on the Norwegian Under 21 Nordic Skiing squad and was also the Norwegian U21 Dog Sledding champion for 4 years. She has a wealth of experience teaching every level of skier and will be instructing on our Schools’ Courses.
For further information on BASI
www.basi.org.uk (opens
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