About Jamie Barrow
My parents moved from the UK to Switzerland in 1988 because of my dads job, they loved it so much they decided to stay. Then, I was born in a small village in the Swiss Jura mountains on 27 April 1992 This is where I was brought up. Growing up with the mountains on my doorstep was a big part of why I am where I am at the moment.
When I was 18 months old, when normally you have not even been walking for long, my parents stuck a pair of skis on me and hoped I would make it down whether I liked it or not. From this point onwards I fell in love with snow. I started getting better and better at skiing. I even skied in my garden when it snowed. I continued it for years and even did some competitions as a mini. After doing it until I was about 8 years old, my interest in skiing started to fade (my brother being better than I was could have had some thing to do with this). So I went looking for more exiting things to try. This is where snowboarding came in. This cool ,relatively new sport was exactly what I wanted. After trying to convince my parents for a while to let me have a go, on the millennium I had my first snowboard lesson. I fell in love with the sport from that point. I went as much as I could, trying new things every time, much to the horror of my family.
Then one summer, when my brother went on a wake boarding camp, my parents (probably wanting a week of peace) decided to send me on a summer snowboard camp in Saas Fee, Switzerland. This was not just a normal camp, this was the trials for the British Team. This camp turned out to be the turning point in my life. After one week of training and trials, I was selected for the British Junior Team. I competed in various freestyle events all over Europe for that season and I loved it. Then the time came again for the summer trials, to be selected again. At the beginning of the week, while training in the park, I saw a track off to the side: it was a boardercross track. This was where the British Senior Boardercross team were training. It looked really exiting, and I really wanted to have a go on the track. My coaches allowed me to go train with them for the day. I was hooked from that point on, and trained with them for the whole week. By the end of the week I started to beat some of the seniors at the age of just 15. Even though I was not old enough to actually compete in boardersross at this point, they asked me to continue training with them over the year. This was an amazing experience. Then at the end of the season there was the British Championships (The Brits). That year I became the British Youth Boardercross Champion.
That next season at the age of 15 (turning 16 that season) I was finally old enough to compete on the FIS tour, which was the senior international tour. There were no age groups, so I was up against some of the best in the world. Over those coming years I competed in many amazing competitions all over the world (FIS, Europa Cup, Junior World Championships, World University Games, etc.). I was also 3 time British Junior Boardercross Champion 2009, 2010, 2011. Those were some of the best years in my life……. so far.
Off the snow, I am involved in extensive grass roots work. Since 2009 I have worked with the sports charity RELAYS, who arrange presentations in schools by elite athletes to inspire children to do sport. I regularly work in schools with Team Bath, the Bath University Sports Village outreach organisation. As a Lloyds TSB Local Hero I give presentations to both school and business audiences. I also participate with JAE days around the university, where kids come in and we help them understand what it takes to be an athlete. I also work with sport Trust as a changingLIVES Athlete Mentor, inspiring young people to do sport. It is very important to me to encourage young kids to carry on doing what they love, this is why are participate within these programs because even if just one of them leaves feeling like it has helped, it was all worth it.
In January 2013 i unfortunately had a bad accident which resulted in a serious back injury which could not be fixed. Due to this i had to drop out of the British team which was devastating to me. Even though i was told i had to stop snowboarding, i did not want to give up just like that and wanting to continue pushing myself, i set myself some new goals. Then on the 18th April 2013 i set the British Snowboard Speed Record of 151.6kph and became Britain’s Fastest Snowboarder. This really got me hooked with speed and since then I also set the World Indoor Speed Record of 69.4kph.
Most recently i set two world records in one day. Firstly i was the first person ever to use electric jet engines to power myself on my snowboard. I did it on a flat frozen lake in St Moritz, Switzerland and reached a speed of 80.6 kph. Following this while the jet engines were charging, i broke the world speed record on a snowboard while being towed by a vehicle with a speed of 111kph.
I am now planning even more records and stunts that no one has ever done before. “The challenge of my life is to find out how far I can take it”
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