World Cup Pre-Race

It's Friday. I blew off work and went skiing. I arrived early at Lake Louise buthad forgotten that this weekend would be the first Men's Alpine World Cup race of the international circuit. They've been working on the course now since early November. Thousands of man-hours and tremendous resources go into preparing the course for the World Cup. Hundreds of volunteers show up dailey. Now the course is ready... basically a river of solid ice all the way down the mountain with a little bit of hard crust on top where the fastest skiers in the world hurl themselves down a 2500' fall line in under two minutes.

Today was the pre-race. It's like a dressed rehearsal of the real thing. Everyone checks out their systems and perfects their particular aspect of the event. It brings some interesting people to the hill. My first ride up the chair this morning was with a CBC sports commentator. I didn't ask him his name but I probably would have recognized it. He travels around the world, winter and summer, doing television commentary of world-class sports events: Olympics, Grand Pre and Downhill race circuit.

Nice life.

The next time up I rode with a guy who painted the blue lines on the race course so the skiers can see the undulations of the track at mach speed in flat light. He wore a plastic backpack full of sloshing, blue dye and carried a wand powered by a small, portable compressor. He was covered with blue dye from head to foot. His goggles were blue. His skis were blue.

"I get it everywhere', he said, "but it washes off". Next time I rode with a goggle salesman from California. This guy was as dumb as bologna on white bread. He didn't even know where he was. But he knew everything about goggles. Did you know that parabolic lenses simulate the curve of the eyeball?

As it turned out, today wasn't the best skiing. Sorry, they can't all be Heroic Days. Maybe it was the bad weather. But generally, I don't care what the weather is as long as I'm out in it. Maybe it was the flat light. But visibility is over rated. Maybe I was mourning the retirement of my old rock skis.

Yes, I had to hang the Bandits up. I eventually ripped the edges out on the rocks. Couldn't fix them. I hung them up on the retirement wall with all the other rock skis: The old Head 210s that I learned to ski on... ripped those edges out, too. A pair of locally made laminates called "Snow Savage" with Grateful Dead graphics. I broke one of them in half – toothpicks, now. Some Solomon "Force 9"; great skis in their day. I skied the life out of them - done. A couple of pairs of steel Volant Power Karves. I shredded the bases of one pair. The other pair delaminated - toast. Two years ago I hung up a pair of Solomon Pilots. Great skis! They taught me a lot. But I grew out of them. Everything since the Pilots has been a fat ski. Fat's where it's at.

They all paid their dues. I trashed them all on the rocks in the pursuit of a steep learning curve. And now I shed a tear and lay down the Bandits - my buddies. They were the best skis yet. But these rites-of-passage always lead to better things and the good thing here is that I now have a pair of bindings to mount on my new skis.

I never actually buy new, new skis. Obviously, I'm hard on gear. I go through a lot of it. So I'm always on the lookout for deals. I buy second-hand skis or demos. I go to all the ski swaps and find last year's skis at huge discounts. That's how I found the Head Monster 88s, still in the plastic wrapper and 60% off the floor price. I can't wait to snap those babies on! But I think I will wait until there is another 3 ft. of snow. Like I said, the skiing wasn't the best so I headed down for an early lunch and, lucky me, the pre-race was on! When I say "pre-race", I don't mean the racers lolly-gag down the course fantasizing about a glamorous win. No, it's FULL ON, apocalyptic, nerve grinding, speed! We've all seen it on t.v. but it's nothing like being there. These guys are CRAZY!

I stopped at every bend and drop and hair-pin corner of the course and watched a few racers scream through. And this is the pre-race, so no crowds of spectators. Just coaches and trail crews and photographers. The racers thunder past at 60 – 70 – 80 mph. They push the edge of control. The ground shakes and the world clatters with the sound of their skis pounding the ice. Their legs pump like pistons in a V8. You can hear them puffing and snorting and sucking wind as they rip past. They growl and curse in the curves. Some barely hang on... up on one ski, arms wind-milling. One racer bought it completely.

On a launch where racers huck through space and land eighty feet down the track, this guy's inside ski went straight up in the air like a jib sail caught in a gust. It flipped him over so that he flew, upside-down and backwards at 70 mph down the hill. Somehow he got his skis under him before he hit the safety nets. Three rows of plastic snow fences line the entire course to prevent errant racers like this one from flying into the trees. He took out the first two snow fences in a maelstrom of swirling snow. When the dust settled he lay in a tangle of orange plastic. Stone silence settled over the course. You could hear the train rumbling through the valley bottom, thousands of feet below us. A few tense seconds passed and then the racer raised his arm and waved. He slowly sat up and stared at his feet for a full minute as others came to his aid. Finally he stood and walked away. That was enough for me. I packed up and went home.

Tim Murphy Canmore, Alberta Canada