AS Great Britain aim to win their first (legitimate) Olympic skiing medal at a Winter Games, an ambitious £300 million leisure project that could help the nation to produce more world-class skiers is awaiting planning permission.
SnOasis, a 350-acre resort developed by Onslow Suffolk, is set to open in 2008 in the countryside near Ipswich, if it is approved by Mid-Suffolk District Council on April 20. The centrepiece of the privately funded project, which has the support of the British Olympic Association (BOA) and Richard Caborn, the Sports Minister, is a 100-metre-high dome containing a real snow slope half a kilometre in length. It would be the world’s largest all-year indoor winter resort, offering 14 sports, including ice skating and snowboarding.
“We’ve offered the British ski team exclusive use of the slope between 5am and 9.30am every day, all year,” Godfrey Spanner, the managing director of Onslow Suffolk, said. “If we can get this going even for a year before Vancouver in 2010, it would be a great help.” For obvious reasons, British skiers are forced to train abroad, which increases their costs.
The proposal to include 3,500 beds and the resort’s proximity to East London have also raised the prospect of the BOA using SnOasis as a training camp during the 2012 London Games.
The BOA selected six alpine skiers to go to Turin for this month’s Winter Olympics, but Britain’s track record in the sport is poor. Alain Baxter became the first Briton to win a medal when he came third in the slalom in Salt Lake City in 2002 but lost it after he tested positive for a banned substance in a nasal spray.