Welcome back to the 4^th edition of six weeks of sport, where I, your reporter Josh Dyke, keep you up to date on all the latest sporting events. However, this edition might have a little twist! This year, there aren’t many winter sports events until the 9^th of December -after my deadline- but there are an awful lot of sports to try in the upcoming, colder months (if the cabin fever gets too much!)

First up, Plymouth Winter wonderland, ice skating centre, in Central Park. If you have never ice skated like me, this could be a great thing to try over the winter as for the next two months, the rink is open to all abilities and all ages for reasonable prices to! A fun day out to try a new sport you maybe never thought of! (And don’t worry, there are skating aids if you need them!)

Second up is snowboarding. The alpine snowboarding season started just days ago in Beijing at the famous Shougang park -the first permanent ‘big air’ course-  which lays between the eerie cooling towers and abandoned steel works sites. A possible new edition to your winter watching could be the incredible tricks and feats the athletes achieve! You never know, maybe you could go to the Plymouth Ski Centre and get an idea of how difficult it is to stand on a snowboard, let alone do backflips! Or you can just let the instructors spin you down the newly refurbished slopes in a snow tube!

Finally skiing, another sport you could try this winter! On the professional side, for the first time in 40 years, the Canadian course Mont Tremblant opened to competition for the skiing World Cup! To start the World Cup was the women’s course, where we had a display on fine margins from Frederica Brignone of Italy. She won the Slalom event with an overall time of 2:14.95 -2^nd place being just 0.21 seconds behind- which made her the oldest competitor to ever win this event at 33 years old. An incredible feat in such a demanding sport.