Violet Miller and Alice MacAulay receive Top Awards from OCS
British alpine skiers Violet Miller and Alice MacAulay have both received awards from OCS to recognise their outstanding sporting ability.
Violet Miller from Melton Mowbray has received a £1,500 OCS Young Sports Person Award in recognition of her outstanding sporting ability. In the awards scheme, run in partnership with the charity SportsAid, skier Violet beat stiff competition to scoop the prize for the Midlands region.
From December to March, 16 year old Violet lives in Italy as this provides an ideal location for ski training. Spending time with the Ambition Race team at the resort of Bormio, she trains solidly for four hours each day as well as attending school over there. Her specialties include Giant Slalom, which involves skiing between sets of poles and Downhill, an event that requires racers to have considerable strength and high speed technical expertise.
Violet was thrilled to win her award and commented, "I am so grateful to OCS for supporting me. Skiing is an expensive sport and every penny helps. I am concentrating on going to the Winter Olympics in 2014 in Russia, so this money will help me to train to become the best athlete I can be."
Violet will join the winners from nine other UK regions, four national disability category winners and the Young Star category winner at a celebratory event on 24th November in the OCS Stand at the Kia Oval. On the day, OCS will announce one overall winner who will receive a further £8,500 worth of support over three years. Previous OCS Young Sports Person Award winners will attend the event alongside a host of top sporting stars such as Kate Howey MBE, Wayne Otto OBE, Beth Tweddle MBE and Rory Underwood MBE.
Alice MacAulay from Surrey has also received a £500 OCS Young Sports Person Award in recognition of her outstanding sporting ability. Alice beat stiff competition to win one of two regional runner-up prizes for the London M25 region.
Alice MacAulay became hooked on her sport when Olympic skier Chemmy Alcott visited her school, Surbiton High. Chemmy, an ex-pupil of the school, set up a ski club which Alice joined and where she excelled. Now competing in SL (slalom), Downhill, Super G and GS (giant slalom), Alice has travelled the world skiing and has been to the Czech Republic, Norway and Colorado in the USA. She has a bronze medal in the CH2 British Championships GS 2010 and two silvers from the 2010 English CH2 GS. At the English championships 2011 she came 2nd Junior 1 in the SL and 3rd Junior 1 in the GS.
Chris Cracknell, chief executive of OCS said, "The OCS Young Sports Person Awards, now in its 14th year, highlights our commitment to supporting young people who are great role models, not only for their peers, but for many others in business and the community. Their drive and relentless determination to achieve their goals is inspirational. Our grass-roots scheme helps young athletes right at the start of their career when support and funding is needed most. Well done to the athletes who have been rewarded this year and we hope that they will have the same success as many of our past winners, some of whom look set to represent GB in London 2012."
Huge Congratulation to both Violet and Alice!
