6

With a shortened magazine this month because of the time pressures with the trips that we still have to run, here a few notes and observations.

Yes Alain Baxter has done what no British skier before him has done. He has won a medal in an Olympic skiing event. Watching the event it seemed that destiny was on his side as racers either fell, skied out or just got it wrong and had poor times. Let’s hope it puts some much needed money in to the British team. I shall enjoy ribbing my Austrian friends about how many Austrians Alain beat in the slalom.

As the Olympics finish in Utah we are pushing ahead with our plans for Utah. It’s not going to be cheap but right now it looks like we may well be booking our own flights and then booking accommodation direct in Utah. I have some quoted for condominiums already which are held at this year’s prices. It’s likely that we will have to price the travel and car hire in sterling and then the hotels etc in dollars. This is because the dollar part is going to be a large component in the overall price and we can’t take the exchange rate risk on that. We already have several firm takers but please let us know now if you haven’t done so already as we will probably have to look at booking hotels etc by the end of June. Contact John.

Just something I picked up talking to a few of the instructors in Austria. There are some really radical sidecuts out there now but the smaller the radius they carve the greater the pressure on the knees and the risk of ACL (cruciate ligament) accidents. Each instructorr has his favourite ski and not surprisingly many of them ski on Atomic. However not one of them uses anything with a radius below 18 metres. So if you are thinking of getting skis remember the experts don’t go for the really radical ones.