Freestyle Athlete Through To BBC Regional Finals
15th November 2006

Ellie Koyander. After picking up the local accolades of Derbyshire Dales Young Sports Woman of the year and recognised with an Award at the Derbyshire School Sports Association Awards, Ellie has been selected as a finalist in the BBC (East Midlands) Sports Awards 2006 .

Despite literally hundreds of entries she is one of three elite level female athletes to be put forward in the prestigious 'BBC Young Sportswoman of the Year' category. Ellie was delighted to have been nominated and shortlisted to the final three. The winner is due to be announced later this month at the BBC Sports Awards Ceremony to be held in Derby.

Ellie's sport is moguls skiing which is an Olympic discipline and she is Great Britains no1 female. She is set to compete at FIS Europa Cup level this coming season racing against athletes honing their race skills with a similar ambition of qualifying for the 2010 winter Olympics. Her trawl of titles is unprecedented in British skiing including French National Moguls Champion ( under 16) and Australian National Moguls Champion ( under 16). This is significant because both nations have a strong Olympic development programme where young talent is nurtured from a very young age. The Australians took Olympic Gold in Turin this year and the French a Bronze in the females event.

Ellie is on course with her Olympic programme and trains extensively on the real snow moguls at Xscape in Castleford, and could not have succeeded this year without the support and sponsorship by Scott and Jet2.com. Ellie puts a lot of her success down to Sharks Ski Club at Sheffield Ski Village where she learned to ski at the tender age of 3. She first became a slalom racer training with Sharks and started to ski moguls a the age of 12 and has never looked back!.

The BBC Awards will be broadcast at 9.00pm on November 27th via live television web cast on www.bbc.co.uk/eastmidlandstoday and can be seen anywhere in the world. They will also be broadcast live on BBC Radio's Derby, Leicester and Nottingham. Anyone interested in finding out more about Ellie or her unique sposorship opportunites should make contact via e-mail to bumpscoach@hotmail.com