I won ski titles with a broken back

AN RAF pilot won a raft of skiing titles, despite training and competing for six months with a broken back.

Flt Lt Nathan Jones, 32, won the RAF and Combined Services championship titles before finding out his sore back, nursed with painkillers and physiotherapy for six months, was actually broken.

Voyager pilot Nathan, now resting up at his home base in Brize Norton, Oxfordshire, was matter of fact about the feat.

“I actually broke my back in work, flying, and did the whole season,” he said.

“I did take a few days off because of my back this season. I just thought I had injured it. It was uncomfortable but it somehow worked out.

“I went to the doctor’s after the season and then went for an MRI scan and found out I had broken it.”

Nathan, who is a former pupil of Rydal School, Colwyn Bay, won’t be back on skis until around November.

Coincidentally the winner of the female Combined Services crown, Sqn Ldr Caitlin Wroe, is originally from Waunfawr.

Caitlin, a doctor at RAF Shorebury near Shrewsbury, is an old friend and training partner of Nathan’s. He revealed they were junior skiers in the British team and trained together.

“My dad Ken was a teacher and skiing teacher at Rydal School,” he said.

“I trained with Caitlin from the age of about eight or nine, and her brother Mike Wroe trained us at Ski Llandudno. He was a British champion at slalom.”

Both young skiers made the choice to pursue a career in the RAF rather than go full-time in the sport – yet it doesn’t seem to have deterred the pair from their chosen event.

Their double triumph was the first time Welsh competitors had won the male and female titles at the championships, held this year in Meribel, France.

It was also the first time the RAF had registered a clean sweep, winning all events including the team titles.

Nathan, who started skiing when he was three years old, has no intention of giving up despite his backbreaking season.

“I’ve got six months off so I won’t be able to go training this summer,” he said.

“I’ll be back around November I think, but I’ll miss the performance training camp in Chile.”