The only occasion I got up, close and personal to a genuine
snow-covered run was on an August summer holiday to Austria in 1982. Our guide
explained that the Tiefenbachjoch was hosting amongst others the USA team on
their summer training. Interesting, but still I wasn’t tempted. No, my sole
source of winter sports entertainment was the BBC’s weekly slice of Ski Sunday.
Coverage of the 1972 and 1976 Winter Olympics had whetted
the public’s attitude so that in 1978 the Beeb launched what was to become a
great sporting institution, albeit tucked away off piste on BBC2 at Sunday
teatime, its precise schedule changing week to week. I became hooked on Ski Sunday for well over a decade and even now I occasionally discover it and slip back in
like a pair of furry slippers.
Graham Bell and Ed Leigh have dragged the venerable show
kicking and screaming into the twenty-first century with their enthusiasm and
much-appreciated competitive experience of alpine skiing and snowboarding. The ‘magazine’
element is OK but I particularly like Bell’s handheld video skier’s perspective
of the actual downhill courses. However, I find their commentaries irritatingly
over-excitable, as if delivered from a chalet bar after several glasses of
Gluhwein. That’s when I hanker
for the sober tones and chunky-framed specs of David Vine, to a background
soundtrack of ‘Whoop, whoop!”s from rosy-cheeked Middle-Europeans and lower-register
“chungle-chungle” of giant Swiss cow bells. Then, of course, there is the
orchestral theme tune “Pop Looks Bach”, irrevocably associated with the sport.
It wasn’t only the uplifting images of mountain peaks
beneath (often) cobalt skies which brightened so many dreary Essex evenings.
The ski competitions were a rare opportunity to applaud participants from
nations such as Austria, Switzerland, Norway, Slovenia, even Lichtenstein,
especially if they beat the Americans. It was also heartening on occasions to
cheer on a homegrown skier, usually endeavouring not so much to reach the
podium but to avoid coming a cropper somewhere on the slopes. Brothers Martin
and Graham Bell were usually on show in the Eighties, albeit featured only as
an afterthought as they trundled home in 36th place. One week, they
both lost skis within seconds of leaving the start gate. Oops! When in December
1981 Konrad Bartelski came from nowhere to
achieve second place at Val Gardena, it generated national celebrations.
Watching Ski Sunday
was a feast for the senses. It wasn’t just the riot of colour, provided by the
fluttering flags, fur-lined anoraks, advertising boards and the racers’ garish
skintight costumes - I particularly loved the Swiss red-and-gold ensemble in, I
think the late Eighties. While the in-race coverage gave little impression of
the gradients, every now and again you’d glimpse a camera angle showing just
how frighteningly steep some of those piste sections are. Gulp! Then there was
the hiss and swish of the turns, the metallic slap-slap-slap of skis trying to
maintain purchase skittering on shiny ice, and those cowbells again.
So far, so exciting. But the problem with traditional ski
racing is that it’s all against the clock. Two-mile, two-minute downhill races
are decided by hundredths of a second so, unless someone makes an obvious
clanger, the TV spectator and commentator alike are heavily dependent on the
electronic clock ticking away to gauge relative speed. I would sit, eyes glued
to the rapidly moving numbers anticipating the all-important split times. Would
they be red or, if taking the lead, green? Without such technical details, I
would have to rely for entertainment on those crazy crashes. As with showjumping, a
dramatic acrobatic clanger was TV gold, but I always wanted to see them get up
afterwards. I’m not a total sadist!
From watching the Winter Olympics, I developed a preference
for the Giant Slalom discipline. There was something soothing about the
rhythmic swaying of the racer sashaying between the red and blue ‘gates’. The
Super G, introduced in 1985 to give the speed merchants a better chance of
success in the Overall classification, was also worth watching, which brings me
to another problem with Ski Sunday.
With its focus on weekend events, it normally only showed the Men’s Downhill
and whatever Slalom was taking place. The GS and Super G were completely
ignored.
But I’m nit-picking. Whilst the two-legged Slalom races were
often absorbing, with a constant prospect of even the stars falling over or
missing a gate, the blue riband event was always the Downhill. The highlights
took place, weather permitting, on successive Sundays in January. The first
was, and still is, at picture-postcard Wengen, where the 2¾-mile Lauberhorn course
boasts dramatic drops, thrilling jumps, a railway bridge and a treacherous,
knee-wrenching S-bend near the finish.
This was followed by the grand-daddy of them all, the
hair-raising Hahnenkamm in the Austrian Tirol. It’s the one everyone wants to
win, but two minutes on the notorious streif
often led to a few heart-stopping spills as well as thrills. Here’s how to conquer
Kitzbuhel in style.
Since I started watching skiing back in the late Seventies,
there have been notable changes. Climate change has reduced the likelihood of
natural snow falling, so courses are increasingly covered in the artificial
variety, and floodlit slalom competitions are becoming de rigeur. Slalom technique has been transformed so that it’s not
so much a case of weaving around the
poles as pushing them out of the way. Consequently, racers now have to be
swaddled in helmets and pole-swiping mittens. They’ve even introduced dual slalom now. For the speed events, I’m
not convinced by the apparently camera-friendly blue lines which indicate the
piste boundary and don’t get me started on the advertising logos which adorn
every square centimetre of skisuits.
I don’t know whether I’ll be watching Ski Sunday this winter but it’s comforting to know there’s always a
channel waiting to lure me into that bewitching sunny wonderland of snowy peaks,
Atomic, Head, Rossignol and cacophonous cowbells.
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