Britain’s number one Olympic Snow Sports athlete Zoe Gillings, finished the most successful season of her career on Friday when she ended the 2011/12 season finishing on the podium in third place at the World Cup Snowboard Cross Finals in Valmalenco, Italy.
In the last six months, Zoe has competed in all seven World Cup competitions and the prestigious X Games in Colorado, she has reached the semi final in every one of the eight competitions and reached the final in five of them, including the X Games.
Following Fridays podium, Zoe has now finished the 2011/12 season ranked sixth in the World and has now recorded seven World Cup podiums in her career to date – the most of any British snow board athlete ever.
What has made this season even more extraordinary is that since Zoe’s entire Olympic program funding was cancelled at the end of last season, Zoe turned entrepreneur in order to fund her Olympic program.
Eleven months ago, Zoe launched www.IsleofDeals.com, a major discount daily deals website in the Isle of Man. This has since become the Islands largest website of its kind.
Zoe is now heading into territory no other British Olympic snowboard athlete has been before, with less than two years to go before the next Winter Olympics in Sochi and at only 26 years of age, Zoe is now in a perfect position to have a realistic chance at bringing home the Olympic Gold medal, and she is doing this while running a successful business career.
Two weeks ago UK Sport announced a funding award to Zoe’s governing body, British Ski and snowboard which is a massive boost to winter sports in the UK and will assist British snow sports athletes towards Sochi.
Zoe said, “The investment by UK Sport is absolutely awesome, a great deal of work has been done between UK Sport and British Ski and Snowboard which will help snow sports in the UK greatly, thank you so much.”
Lizzie Flint, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine
