White Planet: A Mad Dash Through Modern Global Ski Culture by Leslie Anthony

Author:Leslie Anthony [Anthony, Leslie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Travel, Essays & Travelogues, Resorts & Spas, TRV000000, Skiing
ISBN: 9781553654797
Publisher: Greystone Books
Published: 2010-09-27T06:33:02+00:00

8 LAST SALAMI ,

LAST PILGRIM

Free the heel and the mind will follow.

POPULAR TELEMARKER’S CREDO

Free the heel and the face will follow.

POPULAR ALPINE SKIER’S REJOINDER

MONTE BIANCO’S frozen facades glistened in the sun like wet ravioli. A tumble of massive ice blocks offset by heart-stopping cliffs and impossibly tall spires loomed constantly in the periphery, never seeming quite real. That ski runs poured over these improbable steeps wherever someone had festooned the rock with a lift seemed even less real. Stranger still, a high-speed Super G (Super Giant Slalom) course spilled some 1,250 feet down Rampa Nera, traveled by speeding figures in body suits and helmets, genuflecting over skinny skis. The course was so icy that gatekeepers wore crampons to keep a grip on the slope. Perhaps most bizarre of all was that I stood, bladder aflutter, listening to a twenty-second countdown in the start gate.

I’d traveled to the 1993 Telemark World Championships in Courmayeur, Italy, as a journalist, returning to the familiar milieu of tele-racing as an observer on assignment. But before even unpacking, I’d run into a couple of Canadian national team members locked in discussion in the hallway of the Hotel Centrale. Another teammate hadn’t shown up.

“How sharp are your skis?” they asked, before we’d even managed hellos.

If the locals hadn’t been aware what was about to descend upon them that spring, there was no mistaking the boisterous horde of competitors from fifteen countries parading through the narrow streets with their horns blaring and songs rattling windows. Fortunately, Italians have a great sense of humor. Even the old ladies leaning in doorways laughed when their heads were almost blown off by cherry bombs thrown by an aged squad of Austrians sporting vast acres of bald scalp. The Japanese bowed, the French blew kisses, and the lone Andorran clutched his banner with mercenary zeal. The Swedes were nattily dressed, the Canucks au sportif, the Brits wore kilts, and the Norwegians were decked head to toe in sweat-inducing woolen tradition. True to form, the earthily attired Yanks surreptitiously sucked on beers as they strolled, waving at maidens hanging from balconies like it was a post-war liberation parade, swiping bottles of wine at the reception in the village square, their hands snaking furtively under tables while the crowd swarmed mounds of cheese, salami, and salt pork. Speeches were made, hands were shaken, and a drunken international cabal played hacky-sack beneath the setting sun.

It all seemed pretty casual, but of course, it wasn’t: in the bowels of the Hotel Centrale, the Norwegian team’s shockingly extensive crew secretly pored over videos, surreptitiously remounted bindings, and continued the never-ending task of tuning a never-ending supply of skis for their never-ending supply of world champions.

THE DROP-KNEE TURNING technique for freeheel equipment was invented and perfected in the nineteenth century in Norway’s Telemark region by ski-master Sondre Norheim, then lost in blustery enthusiasm for the increased security and power of fixed-heel bindings and new turning techniques popularized under the tutelage of titans like Zdarsky and Lunn. But

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