Speed Skiing World Cup Day 1

With a raging hangover I made it to Heathrow with lots of ski gear and hopped on a flight to Geneva. Something I was told the night before at Fanner’s wedding by a professional skier was still going round my head; “Speed Skiers don’t break bones, they shatter them”. I’ll bear that in mind then.

On arrival in Verbier I met Marc Poncin, the GBR team captain. He’s currently in second place in the world cup standings, having won it last year. He’s very good. The second member of the team is Tom Horn, one of the few people ever to break the 200 km/h barrier on normal downhill skis. He’s also very good. The third team member is a bloke going to break his own personal speed record by a good 25% in training, let alone the proper race. He has a pair of downhill skis bought on eBay, has second hand poles & catsuit and has never competed in any speed skiing competition before, let alone the World Cup. That’ll be me then.

Marc chastised me early on the state of my skis – rusty, damaged and with no wax. I had no ski preparation equipment as I hadn’t really planned very far ahead. I now know that Speed Skiers spend 2+ hours a day preparing their skis for 30 seconds of racing. Some quick negotiations and I had bought wax / borrowed other kit and was getting a very basic lesson in waxing and edging from Marc. I have to admit that slow skis would have suited me absolutely fine, but he was adamant I needed to go as fast as possible...

I don’t mind admitting I didn’t sleep so well last night. Until I arrived last night I was fairly nonchalant about the Speed Skiing World Cup, but as I drove up the hill, it all became a lot more real. I guess the lack of sleep was a blend of excitement, anticipation and nervousness. Apparently there was a slower PoP KL race on Saturday and Sunday which would have been a nice 130 - 150 km/h intro, but I was otherwise disposed at the wedding, so I’m jumping in at the deep end at 160 km/h. Yes, that’s 100mph.

I woke up after a couple hours of decent kip and grabbed my kit. A bit of a trek to the course, but when we arrived the weather was good and we headed up for an 11.30 start. Getting to the start is hard enough as you have to ski normal skis carrying your race skis over your shoulder. To make it worse, you have to do this across the top of a very steep black mogul field. Not a good place to fall.

Strip down to lycra speed suit and time to get the big skis on. I was drawn fairly high up the start list in about 25 place, but it was taking an age to get people down the course as cloud was starting to cover the course, dangerously reducing visability. To add to this, the temperature was dropping and although I was freezing, my adrenaline was really pumping and I was ready to point down the hill. We slowly edged to the start and as number 23 wet down, two people in front of me, the visibility gave out completely.

"Racing cancelled today" came the voice over the radio. Shit.

Tomorrow, here I come...wonder how I'll sleep tonight?