A boarder who initially learned her skills and then spent most of her formative years on dry slopes has won the annual Crystal Globe from the International Ski Federation having finished the 2019-20 World Cup season well ahead in the women’s snowboard slopestyle competition.

Katie Ormerod from Brighouse in Yorkshire, England, is the first British woman and the first British snowboarder to win a Crystal Globe.  The only other British Crystal Globe winner, James ’Woodsy’ Woods also learned to ski on dry slopes and is also from Yorkshire.

22-year-old Ormerod first began snowboarding at Halifax Dry Slope aged five.

In May 2014, then aged 16, Ormerod became the first female snowboarder to land a double cork 1080, one of the most complex manoeuvers in snowboarding, which involves three rotations and two inverted flips.

“My mum and dad were very keen snowboarders and they went there,” says Ormerod, speaking a few days before she won the World Cup.  ! think they wanted to go on a snowboarding holiday so they started learning there, and I went with them, and got really into it. After going on the holiday, my mum and dad really loved it, so we just kept going to the dry slope,” she told a local newspaper, “I went there every week, as much as I could after school, I loved every minute of it.”

At the 2017 FIS Freeski and Snowboard Big Air World Cup, she took home gold in Moscow and silver in Milan, positioning her second in the 2017 Overall Big Air World Cup rankings.

Britain’s leading Alpine skier, Dave Ryding, who has had more podium results than any other British Alpine skier, including a silver in the Hahnenkamm slalom at Kitzbuhel, also learned to ski on dry slopes.