SNOWBOARDING star Gillian Finnerty has landed a place in a top British squad.

The Former Easingwold student, who took up the sport five years ago when starting at Sheffield University, is now dominating the university circuit and has claimed a number of titles - including the British Indoor Boardercross Championships and the British University Dry Slope Championships.

The 23-year-old has now been selected for the elite British Snowboard Cross (SBX) Senior Squad after clocking the second fastest time at a recent snowboarding talent event, just behind Olympian Zoe Gillings.

She has suspended a PhD in Bioenergy at the University of Leeds for two months in order to travel to Austria and train and compete for her country.

The squad members compete in regular Europa CUP and FIS races in order to accumulate enough FIS points to try and qualify for the World Cup Circuit.

Finnerty is aiming to represent Great Britain in the World University Olympics in 2017 and may, in the future, have the potential to compete in the 2022 Winter Olympics.

She said: "Snowboard cross essentially means racing very fast down a slope containing multiple technical features, mainly consisting of rollers, big jumps and banked turns. It’s basically like a snowboard rollercoaster, which is great fun, providing you don’t crash.

"It’s really adrenaline fuelled. Anything can happen at any time. You have to be extremely focused. But it’s also really exhilarating when you’re going really fast down a mountain.”

Finnerty added: "A big thank you goes out to my parents for supporting me and helping with the costs. Plus I’d love to thank Easingwold School and Mr Betts who organised my first school ski trip which is when it all began. I’d also like to give a shout out to my snowboarding sponsors Raven Snowboards, Volt Snow Co, Misguided Fools, minus-nine, NUCO and Pathron.”