- Untitled
- The season begins
- Jan 2010
- Feb 2010
- March 2010
- April 2010
- May 2010
- Ski Pictures 2010
- June 2010
- July 2010
- August 2010
- September 2010
- October 2010
- Late October
- November
- December 2010
- January 2011
- February
- The European Youth Olympic Festival
- March 2011
- The season ends
- May and June 2011
- End of June
- July
- August in Yorkshire
- September 2011
- 28 October 2011
- November/December 2011
- Season 2012
- February 2012
- March and April
- June
- 'Summer' 2012
After two hundred yards turn left, you have reached your
destination', my newly purchased Tomtom tells us confidently. 'Oh yeah' says
Tim, vindicated again. All the way round the new Prague ring Road it had tried
to direct us into a field, and now, it appeared, we had arrived at a building
site. ‘Hold on’ I am Mrs Optimistic, ‘up there, behind the portacabins, that
could be the Olympic village?
Sam’s accommodation for the week was slightly reminiscent of a seventies university campus, though as this is Czech it is probably a current university campus. No it wasn’t quite what we had expected, but actually I was quite pleased that an existing resource was being utilised, and once we reached the centre, it was buzzing.
‘Athletes only in here’ Sam tells us pompously when we arrived at the door of his block. ‘Okay we’ll take you for a beer and a fag in that bar down there’, Tim replied. Sam turned puce, ‘Dad that’s the coaches getting into that car.’ They turn and smile and one of them gives us a thumbs up.
Over his mineral water Sam waxes effusively about his new kit, and gives us a run down on the opening ceremony, but is far from buzzing about the ski-ing side of things. The training pistes he says were seriously icy, hardly anyone finished a run. We don’t push him to divulge his success rate. He is edgy and anxious to go to prep his skis, I scald my mouth to finish my green tea so we can be on our way.
Not that we are in a rush to go anywhere. Earlier in the day we had driven past our hotel twice thinking it was a multi-storey car park. Though someone had made an effort to revamp the interior dormitory bedrooms with a bright blue and orange colour scheme, and mural of a palm beach on one wall was a welcome, if somewhat incongruous alternative, to the view of the actual car park, and rubbish tip from the window.
We decide to take a wander. Tim likes Czech because it has a similar mix of tatty, quaint and ultra modern and incongruous that one finds in China. I think it is rather cold and drab, though concede some trappings of former glory. A bistro style bar catches our eye and we go in for a beer only to find that the back room is a portacabin. Nevertheless we end up staying to eat because it is warm and bright, only to realise half way through the evening, when a guy comes round with roses, that it is Valentine’s day!
The big day
My orange and blue board bed is as uncomfortable as it looks and I am awake to take the distress call from Sam at the crack of dawn. ‘I went over on my ankle last night: it’s swollen and I can’t flex my boot!’ I take a deep breath and tell myself it doesn’t matter a bit that we have re-organised our whole lives at great expense and inconvenience around Sam’s training programme and that this trip is the culmination of years of effort, no it doesn’t matter at all, of course he doesn’t have to race if he is not in tip-top form. Then I ring him back and tell him to go to the doctor, get some pain-killers and get to the start.
His bib number is 63, according to his FIS points, which are on the high side because he is in the younger age band of the two year age span, and has only half a season of competition at this level behind him. There are a couple of gates on the lower part of the course that are catching out a lot of skiers. Some fall, others get too low so lose time. His fellow, more experienced, GB competitors both have trouble and don’t perform as well as they might have hoped. There are more than thirty competitors between Sam and them. After the top thirty the ski-ing becomes less interesting; I am desperately looking for a distraction. I am obviously not alone a mother asks me why I am wearing odd boots! I must have been more stressed than I realised by that phone call as I have paired up one black snow boot with a furry black ‘not for the snow’ leather boot which is rapidly acquiring a water line!
The boot diversion comes at the right time and before I know it Sam is on course. I tell myself that if he can ski it the least I can do is watch. After all it is only another race; he’s just ski-ing down a slope, something he does every day. It looks smooth and the line looks okay. Then he is through the finish in 32nd position, an amazing jump from bib number 63, the biggest jump of any competitor that day. He looks in some pain, but he did it, and now all he has to do is one more run.
And he does, finishing 33rd in the competition and 4th in his year of birth: a fantastic first attempt, with nerves and injury to contend with. And he still has a slalom race, which he will enter in a much stronger frame of mind and state of body.
Which he did, and he was flying, then he crossed his skis and fell. He was not alone, it was a difficult course, but some were on form and negotiated it on that day, and others did not. After the initial disappointment he (we!) took it pretty well. ‘Triumph and disaster' and all that.
Sam’s accommodation for the week was slightly reminiscent of a seventies university campus, though as this is Czech it is probably a current university campus. No it wasn’t quite what we had expected, but actually I was quite pleased that an existing resource was being utilised, and once we reached the centre, it was buzzing.
‘Athletes only in here’ Sam tells us pompously when we arrived at the door of his block. ‘Okay we’ll take you for a beer and a fag in that bar down there’, Tim replied. Sam turned puce, ‘Dad that’s the coaches getting into that car.’ They turn and smile and one of them gives us a thumbs up.
Over his mineral water Sam waxes effusively about his new kit, and gives us a run down on the opening ceremony, but is far from buzzing about the ski-ing side of things. The training pistes he says were seriously icy, hardly anyone finished a run. We don’t push him to divulge his success rate. He is edgy and anxious to go to prep his skis, I scald my mouth to finish my green tea so we can be on our way.
Not that we are in a rush to go anywhere. Earlier in the day we had driven past our hotel twice thinking it was a multi-storey car park. Though someone had made an effort to revamp the interior dormitory bedrooms with a bright blue and orange colour scheme, and mural of a palm beach on one wall was a welcome, if somewhat incongruous alternative, to the view of the actual car park, and rubbish tip from the window.
We decide to take a wander. Tim likes Czech because it has a similar mix of tatty, quaint and ultra modern and incongruous that one finds in China. I think it is rather cold and drab, though concede some trappings of former glory. A bistro style bar catches our eye and we go in for a beer only to find that the back room is a portacabin. Nevertheless we end up staying to eat because it is warm and bright, only to realise half way through the evening, when a guy comes round with roses, that it is Valentine’s day!
The big day
My orange and blue board bed is as uncomfortable as it looks and I am awake to take the distress call from Sam at the crack of dawn. ‘I went over on my ankle last night: it’s swollen and I can’t flex my boot!’ I take a deep breath and tell myself it doesn’t matter a bit that we have re-organised our whole lives at great expense and inconvenience around Sam’s training programme and that this trip is the culmination of years of effort, no it doesn’t matter at all, of course he doesn’t have to race if he is not in tip-top form. Then I ring him back and tell him to go to the doctor, get some pain-killers and get to the start.
His bib number is 63, according to his FIS points, which are on the high side because he is in the younger age band of the two year age span, and has only half a season of competition at this level behind him. There are a couple of gates on the lower part of the course that are catching out a lot of skiers. Some fall, others get too low so lose time. His fellow, more experienced, GB competitors both have trouble and don’t perform as well as they might have hoped. There are more than thirty competitors between Sam and them. After the top thirty the ski-ing becomes less interesting; I am desperately looking for a distraction. I am obviously not alone a mother asks me why I am wearing odd boots! I must have been more stressed than I realised by that phone call as I have paired up one black snow boot with a furry black ‘not for the snow’ leather boot which is rapidly acquiring a water line!
The boot diversion comes at the right time and before I know it Sam is on course. I tell myself that if he can ski it the least I can do is watch. After all it is only another race; he’s just ski-ing down a slope, something he does every day. It looks smooth and the line looks okay. Then he is through the finish in 32nd position, an amazing jump from bib number 63, the biggest jump of any competitor that day. He looks in some pain, but he did it, and now all he has to do is one more run.
And he does, finishing 33rd in the competition and 4th in his year of birth: a fantastic first attempt, with nerves and injury to contend with. And he still has a slalom race, which he will enter in a much stronger frame of mind and state of body.
Which he did, and he was flying, then he crossed his skis and fell. He was not alone, it was a difficult course, but some were on form and negotiated it on that day, and others did not. After the initial disappointment he (we!) took it pretty well. ‘Triumph and disaster' and all that.