All White on the Night

Disbelief tends to be a brief affair in that no sooner have you thought, ‘nooooo, that can’t be happening’, whatever was so implausible in the first place has already occurred. Or is occurring, in graphic, hard reality, factually disproving your previous thesis and then comes the pain. Then everything else pales into insignificance.

It was at this point, having dismounted the gondola at Roc d’Orsay and assumed something approaching a jog to give the cheering crowds a semblance of my racing intent, I mounted my skis and began slaloming down the upper reaches of the course, with a certain panache, I like to think. The snow here was more forgiving than the gloopy, wet leg-breaker stuff found lower down. It was then that I became aware of a certain issue. I glanced down to see what was causing the tremulous vibration in my left boot, only to become aware that my leading outside edge was busy furrowing itself into a patch of undetected slosh. My ‘noooo that can’t be happening’ moment was rapidly followed by a, ‘Falllumph!’, an onomatopoeic expression I often come across in children’s books and which is used to illustrate a dramatic, often traumatic, moment when the hero’s ill-judged plans come a spectacular cropper.

Fortunately, some twenty to thirty metres from where I’d lost company with my skis (and dignity), I regained my feet and, like said children’s book character, I discovered myself miraculously unharmed. Spurred on by the 30cl of adrenalin now mainlining through my circulatory system, I began running back up the piste to where the red flags were being waved and a kindly race steward was gathering my skis, thinking that being in the fourth decade of life, perhaps I would be better off sticking to reading bedtime stories, and leaving the silliness that is the BCV 24hr Villars to younger, infinitely more athletic people than me.

On paper, at least, the BCV 24hr Villars non-stop ski/snowboard race is, in itself, a simple proposition. Commencing midday Saturday and ending midday Sunday, the 24 hours of skiing are divided into 3 sessions, two daylights on a faster, more demanding red piste, in which anyone who regularly followed Ski Sunday gets to indulge their fantasies of being a sly exponent of the giant slalom. The more sedate night course which, while floodlit, is actually orienteering from pinpoint of light to pinpoint of light, in pitch darkness, while moving at speed in an uncertain terrain. Extremely demanding it is as well but, if you manage to survive and walk off the mountain without assistance, you do so with an overwhelming sense of achievement and pride. Last year - yes I am that foolish - a blizzard added to the entertainment, to such an extent that conditions, at points, resembled doomed historic expeditions to either Pole. 

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