Sporting Life: Winter Olympics. Thoughts From A Novice

Everybody is talking about the winter games in Vancouver. I cannot avoid this evangelical event. In fact I dare not criticise it for fear of terrible retribution. Even if I prefer the real ”Summer” games I dare not say so. Even if I know next to nothing about the real ins and the outs of winter sports I would be a fool to admit it in public. One must keep face and integrity you know.

I do know that the first Winter Games were held in Chamonix and in the year 1924. So let's begin there. My first and last ski trip down the Alpine slopes of Chamonix was in 1970. The climbing weather was closing in and looking bad so I joined a few mountaineering guys to do some alpine skiing. I remember looking down the first part of the slope and thinking to myself that it was very steep. Inwardly I wondered to myself if it might not have been better to take some professional lessons first or at least to have had some practice on some easier slopes. It looked awfully steep to me and the people that skied down went so damned fast.

As I hesitated at the top one of the mountaineering guys noticed and came up to me saying: ”Everbody has to learn sometime, come on, just follow me”. I felt no sense of calmness from that chat although I did feel that I needed to keep face. I could not take the cowardly way out. So down I went. My ”guide” turned to the right. I thought that was rather unfair of him and almost cheating. I had not yet learnt to turn so I just carried on down in a straight line.

Then some local French skier, very well dressed and with an immaculate style, made a very silly move. He cut across my path as he zig-zagged along in a style that would have been better in some ballet performance. Anyway his nice style was quickly destroyed as we met and ended up all over the place. I was not to blame. I did not know how to stop unless it was in a fall down or sit down. Anyway a Frenchman should know better than to get in the way of an Englishman who speeds down a ski slope. Yet he seemed to consider me both an idiot and a menace. I thought him rather ungrateful. I had deliberately sat down before I hit him. I did not just blast through him. In the circumstances I was rather polite. But the French are always difficult to please as we all know.

So when I heard about the health and safety ( read insurance contract) officials in Vancouver trying to stop some of the adventure-type snow boarders and head-bangers doing some wild jumps I felt like saying to them all: ”Come on everybody has to learn sometime”.

Some ten years later I began a course of self-instruction in the art of cross country skiing. Skinny ski and all that. As I was living in Lapland I really needed to keep face. I could not be shamed by my zero ski skills. So I bought a book and made my do-it-yourself programme over many weeks. I quickly learnt to snow plough and slow myself. That helped me. But the turning remained a problem especially on the steep slopes that I loved so much. But I had a technique. I would ski down in a straight line aiming at the nearest tree. By grabbing that tree, as you might grab a lady on the dance floor, I managed to stop and turn. Then onwards and downwards until the bottom of the slope was reached.

I do feel that my technique has not received the status that it deserved. The Olympic officials refuse to allow this kind of skinny-ski event with the trees. It would make grand TV. What a missed opportunity I say. It would be a mixture between a ”Come Dancing” and a ”Fear Factor”. What more do people want today I ask.

As for ice hockey I have never really found any affinity there at all. Some years ago I won a bet with a Finn. He denied that Britain had won a gold medal at this event. He lost the bet. I fact the UK used to be quite an ice hockey place before the Second World War. My grandfather was said to have played when he lived in Oxford. But let me keep to the storyline here.

After winning that bet I was ”invited” (it was impossible to refuse unless I lost face) to show my skills on the ice hockey rink. There were only youngsters playing, maybe between the ages of 10 ad 14, so I was told that I could relax. I had not said anything about my own skills. In fact the only skating I had done before that was roller skating on a Saturday morning and that was only because the best looking girls used to go there. But I accepted the challenge.

I went onto the rink and all Finnish eyes were on me. All I had within myself were those memories of cross country skiing and rollar skating so I planned to join those skills together on the ice and with a stick to hit that puck. Of course I could not turn and could not stop. So my do-it-yourself techniques were used again. Before too long I was sent to the sin bin in disgrace. I was labelled an animal, a dirty player. But I kept face because to be labelled as an animal in ice hockey is not all that bad. In fact I gained a few kudos I think.

Perhaps next week I should write about sports that I know something about.

Steve Bowles