Indoor ski slope to be world’s highest

A £300 MILLION (€450m) ski leisure resort is to be created in England complete with the world’s highest indoor real-snow slope, it was announced yesterday.

The SnOasis resort, which could be open by 2007, will be built at Great Blakenham, Suffolk.

Helping create 3,000 jobs, and likely to attract two million visitors a year, the resort will be home to a National Winter Sports Academy and is designed for full-time and leisure skiers.

The ski slope will be 100 metres high and 500 metres wide and is the creation of developer Godfrey Spanner, who devised Surrey’s Thorpe Park fun centre.

The slope will be at the heart of a year-round family leisure resort focusing on winter sports.

As well as scope for 2,000 skiers an hour, there will be facilities for 13 other winter sports, including snow boarding, ice hockey, speed skating, ice and dry climbing walls, bobsleigh, luge and cross-country skiing.

SnOasis will also offer a nine-hole golf course, 350 self-catering ski lodges, a four-star 350-bed hotel, a health and fitness centre, 18 restaurants, as well as bars, a night club, an eight-screen cinema and a casino. A new railway station will provide transport.

The project has the backing of the British Olympic Association, the British Ski Academy and the Ski Club of Great Britain.

Konrad Bartelski, Britain’s foremost World Cup downhill ski racer and now a national team selector, said: “This will be a fantastic year-round destination for leisure skiers at all levels and will raise Britain’s game in world class competitive skiing.”

Mr Spanner said: “This will finally bury the Eddie the Eagle days of British skiing. It will extend the scope for ordinary people to ski and for our elite skiers to take on the world.”

Malcolm Erskine, managing director of the British Ski Academy, said: “SnOasis will break down a lot of the elitist barriers associated with the cost of skiing abroad, making it a more prominent sport within the UK.

“Broadening the reach of the sport will increase the chance of future British winter Olympians standing on the winning podium.”

Simon Clegg, chief executive of the British Olympic Association, said: “This resort will offer a unique opportunity for all year round winter sport activity.

“I am sure the winter sports community will see it as an opportunity to develop next generation Olympians in a range of disciplines and, at the same time, raise the profile of and interest in winter sport.”

The resort is to be built on the site of a former cement works and quarry. Mid Suffolk District Council is considering the planning application and construction is scheduled to take two and half years.