A short message from our Chairman

Last month saw the launch or our website. A website which will serve as the main form of communication for British athletes and the wider community of skiers, snowboarders and followers of winter sports in all the disciplines for which we are responsible. We aim to combine news about them with a focus on high performance skiing and snowboarding throughout the country. We will seek to increase our coverage as we roll out detailed information to all the FIS winter sport disciplines for which we are responsible as the only Governing Body in Great Britain and Northern Ireland recognised by FIS, our International Federation and the British Olympic Association who select, lead and manage our teams at Olympic-accredited events.

There are two key components which are critical to the success of the sportsmen and women we represent. The first, on which the BSS is concentrating in the initial phase of its work,  is a state-of-the-art performance pathway for our sportsmen and women. The pathway from the British Children's teams through the Junior ranks to Senior level and Olympic success. Our mission is to provide full support to the best of British athletes, both on and off the mountain. The progress BSS has made in this direction has been remarkable since the demise of Snowsport GB a week before the Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. Earlier this summer we set ourselves a budget of £ 1 million to fund our first year of operations. In under six months we are well over half way towards that goal.

The second component is to ensure that the clubs, academies and home nations deliver development programmes that enable the best of British to progress along the pathway to the British teams which will produce the champions of tomorrow. All of us associated with BSS are determined to achieve these goals and by the end of the season we will enact a constitution which will ensure that the future of BSS is determined by a membership devoid of conflicts of interest and totally focused on delivering services to the athletes we represent.

The Board of Directors has agreed that our registered FIS competitors will be the founder members of BSS at no cost this year. They are there at the start of what we are intending will be developed into a leading governing body of winter sport in the United Kingdom.  This website will be critical to our aim to deliver this objective. On behalf of the Board of Directors, our thanks to Dave, Laura and Kirsty for their hard work on your behalf. Enjoy the website and we hope, over the months and years ahead it will be both informative and a key performance tool to watch and monitor the progress made by our athletes, their coaches and support staff; whilst at the same time energising the hundreds of thousands of people keen to ski  and snowboard to enjoy their sport and have a stake in the future of tomorrow's stars.

Colin Moynihan

Chairman

British Ski & Snowboard.