It is simply this: offer a
modest inducement to swap clothes with them at the first available
opportunity. This is a useful precaution in the event of any of your friends
spotting you taking a lesson - which, of course, an expert of your
professed standing shouldn’t need. If this should happen, all you need do is
to explain later: ‘Did I forget to mention that I’m a freelance racing
coach? That must have been Serge you saw me with. We were ironing out a few
glitches for his next World Cup race.’
The other vital tip is to ensure that your
instructor takes you to a remote part of the mountainside where nobody is
likely to witness your calamitous efforts to remain vertical. Once there,
work on the most important part of slope-cred technique: how to fall over
safely, how to make it look like it’s someone else’s fault, and how to
swiftly nobble a binding, so that you have a watertight excuse for
doing a passable impression of Bambi on skates.
This strategy has one particular advantage:
all instructors like to believe they are god, but they don’t look too
god-like when you have just up-ended them in a controlled
collision. The disadvantage is that they will almost certainly
want to kill you as a result.
Most instructors view their clients with
ill-concealed disdain, so don’t bank on getting the sort of lesson you want.
You might get lucky, and get a sympathetic type. But don’t count on
it. All snowports instructors are cut from the same weather-resistant cloth.
For example, you will almost certainly hear one of the following
exhortations. Imbecile! Dummkopf! Butthead! (depending on your
co-ordinates on the multilingual ski map). Accept that these are terms, if
not of endearment, then of positive encouragement.
Notwithstanding the fact that there is a
strong element of lottery in what sort of instructor you end up with,
there are certain vital things you need to look out for.
If you are male, and you are planning to have
a joint lesson with your long-suffering partner, ensure that your instructor
has a face like an old potato. With any instructor you can expect to be
abjectly humiliated, but there’s nothing worse than being humiliated
by a bronzed, snake-hipped love-god smirking and winking at your partner.
Some snow users, particularly those of the
female gender, find snowsports instructors unaccountably
