Back on skis - sore shins and recollections
To a non-skier or snowboarder there must be a level of bewilderment in purchasing what can be a fairly expensive holiday with the guarantee of cold and short days. To have days of frustration, intermittent discomfort, to stand in queues for part of the day and to have your abilities exposed by local 5 year olds. Well after squeezing into ‘performance fit’ ski boots for the first time since June and remembering enough after 4 months to get on and off the gondola I took a few cautious metres of getting used to 2 the planks before letting them run a little. The acceleration of skis always surprises me after not being on them for a few months. On the Rettenbach glacier where I was to cover the FIS opening race weekend the wide slopes are perfect for getting some pace. I got to the media zone on the course and all I could think about was the speed and thrill I just had. Didier Cuche was metres away and his experience of speed that day would be very different to mine. Just as I watched a few years ago my ski group mimicking the schuss positions whist maintaining the snow plough, their thrill was no different to ours - their engines were revving, they were at their max. But for all the quick bursts of speed (on very forgiving terrain and snow) there was one highlight of the weekend that pulled it all together, that reminded me why millions of people make a winter sports holiday an irreplaceable part of their year. It wasn’t the immaculate accommodation I was staying in, the superb hospitality that we were shown by Solden tourism or the staggering spectacle of men and women throwing themselves down steep and icy terrain. It was on one of the gondola rides to get back to the media centre. When carrying my skis out off the lift station, I looked toward the horizon and saw the most staggering view but crucially no different than any other that I had seen over the thousands of times I had been on top of a mountain. I walked a few metres away from the lift station, not far but enough to isolate myself from the activity behind me and I just stared for several minutes at the beauty all across the horizon. The day was no different than any other with decent visibility at 3200m in the Austrian Alps and yet it still stopped me in my tracks. The minutes I spent there were the highlight of the weekend and there was some fierce competition – Didier Cuche, fantastic food, superb Otztal hospitality and a great place to rest my aching legs. The economy is hardly great and the euro worse, but stand on an Austrian glacier in the coming months and you will know exactly why you are there.
The call of the wild, Solden 25th Oct 09 - image © www.skiingaustria.co.uk
I aswell, after a break of a year and a half - will be squeezing into my boots - but nice comfy ones - non of this “high peformance” rubbish. I will take a breathtaking gondola ride up my local ski hill and then put on the same skies I have have had for 6 years - how I love them!! Then, so as not to have “frustration, intermittent discomfort and stand in queues” I will ski about 200m to the nearest austrian hut and buy myself a Mulled wine, hire a deckchair, and sit there in the sun until matthew has finished pretending to be Franz Klammer!
Actually the days of my mimicking the Kaiser are long gone I am afraid. I think you were referring to me in my early(er) years with an Austrian ski helmet and poles practising the tuck position on my bed – ah those were the days. They were also the days before stalking was an understood evil. Had the Kaiser seen my press cutting and picture collages of the Kaiser he might never have stepped out in public again. I did corner the great one some years ago though in Innsbruck – I bellowed ‘zeas der Kaiser’ across the shopping mall and cut him off en-route to the dignitaries that I assumed he had tired of chatting to. Somewhere I have a picture of a shocked looking Franz holding my autographed ski instructors license and myself. He didn’t hang around for a chat sadly.
Wait a minute Matt. I remember March 2004 at the Axamer Lizum when I had just fractured my shinbone head and was still following you through the trees. You were absolutely pretending to be the Kaiser then. By the way it seems that the Kaiser hasn’t had any appearances in shopping malls since your encounter with him.
Yes there are times when I think the ambush of the Kaiser was unfortunate, I think of all those suburban stores than now have to turn to lesser mortals as the Kaiser no longer does these types of engagements. Kaiser if you ever read this then in an appropriate setting maybe we could come face to face again and you could read me a victim statement, maybe that would begin to heal the wounds. Talking of wounds I am now pretty much free of pain, my knees did a great deal of work over the weekend, maybe as much as the racers in carrying me and a ton of camera gear around the Rettenbach and Tiefenbach glaciers. The summer months are not kind to me and I am not kind to my knees. A month of glacier skiing and I will be like Atlas man though.