British Moguls Contingent Heads To Junior World Champs

A six-strong team of British moguls skiers is in Duved, Sweden this weekend for the final major event on the FIS calendar for 2017/18, the Junior Freestyle World Championships.

The team is led by the Gerken Schofield trio who have all scored top five finishes at this event in the past.

Leonie Gerken Schofield, 20, first competed at the Junior World Championships in 2013 as a 15-year-old where she finished second in the single moguls. In the past five years she has never finished outside the top 10 in a FIS or Europa Cup event, however a shoulder injury has ruled her out of the entire 2017/18 campaign so far. Her last competitive event was a Europa Cup in Switzerland last February at which she won a dual moguls event.

Leonie’s twin brother Thomas was a two-time runner-up at the Junior Worlds last year, claiming the silver medal in the moguls and dual moguls. He debuted on the World Cup scene this year, and last month scored a pair of podiums at the Europa Cup in Switzerland.

Younger sibling Makayla, 18, also had her first year on the World Cup scene in 2017/18 in which she gained a handful of top 40 finishes. She has six Europa Cup podiums to her credit including a runner-up place in her last start in Switzerland in March, and she finished fourth at last year’s Junior Worlds in the single moguls.

Makayla and Leonie are joined in the ladies’ events by US-based Skyler Nunn who has elected to represent Great Britain on the world stage. The 18-year-old skier has been competing in North America for the past four years and has honed her skills in the senior ranks on the Nor-Am Cup circuit, achieving her best result last month with a dual moguls top 10 in Park City.

In the men’s event, Thomas Gerken Schofield will be competing alongside Will Feneley and James Rose.

Feneley, 18, made his first appearance at World Juniors as a 14-year-old in 2014 and achieved his best result the following year with a pair of 21st-places in the moguls and dual moguls. Feneley scored a trio of Europa Cup top 10s last season before spending the summer competing in Australia and the last four months in North America.

Rose turned 16 in December and is competing at Junior World Champs for the second time, with his best result last year coming in dual moguls (25th). Rose has a host of FIS race top tens from events in Manchester, the Netherlands and Austria over the last three seasons and will be looking for higher finishes in Duved than he managed in 2017.

The Junior World Championships commence on Saturday with the moguls and conclude with dual moguls on Sunday.