Ski whizz! Lewis is an ace boarder

Photo: Darren Robinson

Flying high: snowboarder Lewis Hopkinson.

FREESTYLE snowboarder Lewis Hopkinson is strapping on his bindings and sloping off to find success — at the age of seven!

Talented Lewis, who learned to ski when he was two, took up snowboarding aged five and hasn’t looked back.

The Grasscroft youngster has just been sponsored by Chill Factore, Manchester’s indoor ski and snow board centre - making him the youngest sponsored rider in their history.

Lewis trains there twice a week and regularly travels the country to competitions. He has been the youngest competitor in the British Snowboarding Championships in France and Switzerland for the past two years.

The St Anne’s Lydgate Primary School pupil regularly competes against teenagers nine years older.

Proud mum Helen said: “Lewis was a natural. It was if he was born to snowboard.”

Lewis performs tricks and jumps on the half pipe and takes part in “boardercross”, a head-to-head race with competitors down an obstacle-filled course.

He trains on a specially-installed ramp in the family’s garden.

Helen said: “Lewis is competing against 16-year-olds but that doesn’t faze him, he loves it.”