Andrew Mock Reports On His Cross Country Skiing Relapse

Into The Wombat - Part 2

(In deference to the Editor's lack of comfort around culturally insensitive jokes, all humorous references to WWII have been removed from Part 2 of Into the Wombat)

I'm not ashamed to say that I had some difficulty getting pumped up for the Olten OPA Cup city sprint. Not only had my last sprint race (Oberstdorf) been about as successful as Jindabyne's entrant in the most recent National Spelling Bee, but I had become very comfortable in Davos and was looking forward to spending some quality time with a 1kg tub of yoghurt and a particularly tasty looking sausage. Unfortunately the yoghurt and sausage (whom I had named 'Frank') would have to wait. On the morning of Jan. 10 we packed up the Renault, called through Klosters to pick up Chloe McC' and hit the autobahn - destination: Olten.

It would be fair to say that Ronan considers himself fluent in the German language. It would also be fair to say that Ronan is full of schaisser (sic) and that his entire German vocabulary is limited to the single phrase: 'Das is Good'. If, instead of incessantly repeating his annoying catchphrase, Ronan had taken the time to learn the English translations of 'fiery automobile accident' and 'diabolical gridlock', we may not have found ourselves wedged in the mother of all traffic jams somewhere between Zurich and Basel. We soon tired of Nick's game of eye spy with my little eye, something beginning with C, so instead embarked on a detour of rural Switzerland's lesser known roads/footpaths. Through a combination of my expert navigation, Nick's fearless driving and Ronan's cheerleading ('Das is Good! Das is Good!'), we eventually made it to Olten in time for the start. The 330m sprint circuit was set up in the centre of the small city of Olten. The course was tight, flat and covered in an intriguing mix of snow, dirt and cigarette butts (kind of like Circa after a big night on the tiles). While Ronan and myself put in a better performance than at our last outing, we again failed to trouble the top 30, and more devastatingly, failed to beat Grimmer. In the end Team Wombat neatly filled positions 33-35, with only the Danish team and a few Swiss stragglers saving us from a close encounter with the bottom of the list. There is something very frustrating about racing in ankle deep slop, with all of us feeling like we couldn't get the power down. That said, the conditions were the same for everyone, so it's time we stopped feeling sorry for ourselves and set about skiing faster. Chloe McC' put in a face-saving performance, skiing a good quarter final and only narrowly missing out on progressing the semis by the width of a dairy-cow. Keen to get home to check on Frank, we bundled back into the station-wagon on the completion of our heats and trucked-on home to Davos, stopping only for $7 Big Macs at an extortionate Swiss McDonalds (I was hoping for a Quarter-pounder meal, but with the credit markets in turmoil the finance fell through).

The snow on the Olten sprint course was almost as dirty as Ronan's home video library

With a pair of OPA Cup distance races scheduled for the weekend in Klosters (Jan 12/13) we spent Friday admiring the diabolical course that the race organisers had constructed. No worries - as long as the waxing conditions remained stable, we were going to be ok for Saturday's 10k classic. Saturday morning: 0°C and snowing heavily. Either we were desperately unlucky, or god was punishing me for scrubbing my dirty laundry with Ronan's toothbrush. Now it's not everyday that you get to race on yellow-stick covered klister, which is fortunate, because if it was, I would have killed myself by now. In the end, most people ended up racing on some kind of disgustingly sticky goo, while a few brave souls set-out sans wax. No one had great skis, and a good number of people had terrible skis. In the end, the Aussie team put in a plucky effort with a number of good individual performances. Ronan won 'stack of the day', with his drawn-out face plough scoring high with the judges for both technical difficulty and artistic impression.

The weather improved markedly for the Klosters 10/15km mass start freestyle race on Sunday Jan 13. Regrettably, no such marked improvement in my legs was apparent. The entire Australian contingent with the glaring exception of Nick Grimmer started the Sunday mass start (in Nick's defence, German MTV was repeating classic episodes of Pimp My Ride, making his participation almost impossible). Simbo led home the blokes in the 15km, while KT and Aimee Watson put in strong 10km performances. Somewhat confusingly, when I offered to take a dope test at the finish of the race, the testers collapsed in uncontrollable fits of laughter.

After the best part of 3 weeks, it was finally time to say goodbye to Davos. It was hard to work out what I'd miss most. The trails? The chocolate? That easy-going Swiss sense of humour?

Classic Swiss Joke:
Knock Knock
Who's there?
Heinrich
Heinrich who?
Heinrich Gruben from the police department. Your entire family has been killed in a combine harvester accident

It would probably be the chocolate...

Our next destination was Madonna di Campiglio, an iconic ski village in the Trentino region of Italy. The purpose of our visit was the Italian Police Ski Championships to be held at the neighbouring Campo Carlo Magno ski area. Now I know what you're imagining - a bunch of fat, moustachioed Carabinieri sitting around eating donuts and chain-smoking filterless cigarettes. To be honest, that was kind of what we were hoping for. Unfortunately, the reality was precisely the opposite. In Italy, we were soon to learn, professional skiers frequently masquerade as policemen in order to pick-up the fat pay-checks while in return conferring a degree of vicarious fitness on rank-and-file officers. Good job if you can get it. Intrigued by this arrangement, we started asking some questions. No, they assured us, we never do any real police work (they seemed to find this question particularly amusing). We were also intrigued that Italy appeared to have two separate law enforcement bodies - the Polizei and the Carabinieri - what was the difference between them? That was a very good question, replied an earnest member of the Carabinieri, and yes there were, in fact, three different law enforcement bodies. Unfortunately, he had absolutely no idea what the difference between them was. Didn't seem too concerned either...

We arrived in town on Monday afternoon, with a sprint race scheduled for Wednesday and a 10km freestyle for Thursday. Predictably enough, the weather closed in for race day. The field was a strong one with names such as Schweinbacher and Pasini conspiring to make us look bad. Thankfully, we all skied quite acceptably and the majority of the Danish national team was good enough to finish behind us, boosting morale no end (whether we should take solace in defeating skiers from a country with no natural snow is a question for another day). Weather conditions were better for the following day's 10km freestyle, although a foot of fresh snow over the past two days ensured that the race course was soft and slow in places (compounded by an elevation of almost 1700m). Schweinbacher took out the men's event in the relatively slow time of 26:30, with myself and Grimmer around 3 mins back and Ronan a further couple of mins back.

Nick warns the Danish Team that Prince Frederick "had better treat Mary right"

Pretty soon we tired of Campo Carlo Magno's bountiful snow, amazing scenery and magnificent pizza, so we left. Our destination was Rothethurm, near Zurich, where it was 10°C and largely devoid of snow. We were in town for the Rothethurmer night sprint and loppet, to be held on the 19th & 20th of January. We arrived on the evening of the 18th to the news that both events would no longer be held on snow, but on asphalt. Having anticipated a primarily snow-oriented trip, it would be accurate to say that we were largely unprepared for this development. Our emotions were mixed - on one hand we were pumped for some racing, on the other hand, we were scared for our lives. This fear was not unfounded - not only were the roads around Rothethurm narrow, treacherous and icy, it is also common knowledge that Zimbabwe's CPI is decidedly more stable than the three of us on inline skates. By midday on the 19th we were still undecided about racing, so we did what any normal athletes would do, we headed to Europe's largest indoor waterslide park for the afternoon. Our obliging host for the weekend was Pascal Grab, gun loppet skier, defacto Australian and general madman. Pascal may not be a big guy, but his speed on both the race course and the waterslide are impressive (based on Nick's split times, Pascal took seven seconds out of Ronan down 'Niagra Falls' and was the fastest qualifier on 'The Cobra'). High on adrenaline from our afternoon on the slides, we disregarded our self-preservation instinct and signed up for the night sprint to be held later that evening. Upon our arrival at the race course, further surprises were in store for us. Instead of the cosy, flat road circuit we were expecting, the race organisers had decided to prepare something a little more...dangerous. After a short uphill section of paved road out of the start, the course suddenly narrowed into a 1m wide muddy walking track covered in snow and ice. This section then morphed into a screaming downhill ending in a 120° reverse-cambered turn covered in water and gravel. The phrase 'paralysed with fear' would be an appropriate description of our initial reaction. Apparently our reaction was not a unique one, evidenced by the fact that only two other athletes had the balls to turn up (along with Pascal). Somehow we succeeded in convincing the reps from Powerslide to lend us some funky looking off-road rollerskis and poles (in spite of Ronan explaining to the concerned rep "I'm worried that I'm going to break my own poles"). Pascal helped out by contributing some flimsy looking safety helmets and we were set to go.

Ronan sometimes supplements his income by playing in a Village People tribute band

The race went straight to the semi-finals, with three competitors in each. Semi-final 1 comprised Ronan, Nick and Pascal. To be honest, it was like watching Mike Tyson fighting a Labrador puppy - horribly one-sided, yet compelling. Pascal, the former inline racer, streaked to an inevitable victory ahead of a brave Ronan and downright scared Nick. In semi-final 2, I came up against Oliver Kraas (South Africa's xc representative from Torino) and an unknown local. After a lousy start I managed to get clear and finish ahead of Olli and the local. The final was a four person affair - Pascal, Ronan, Olli and myself. Half a lap into the final, as we turned into the first downhill, Pascal exploded and in a blur of arms and legs and disappeared into the distance. In the race for second, I managed to get the better of Olli with some effective mud-skiing while Ronan skied the corners conservatively, keeping his skin intact and snaring 4th. We rounded out a successful, if somewhat unusual, evening with a scintillating performance courtesy of 'Dusty Boots', a local Swiss band specialising in covers of obscure American country songs.

The roller-disco is that way

The following day's race (replacing the loppet) was 8km long, finishing in a tough 3km hill climb to the top of a local peak. There were 3 categories - Nordic blading (inline skating with poles), off-road rollerskiing (pneumatic tyres) and conventional rollerskiing, with around 100 (fool)hardy competitors fronting up. Pascal entered the Nordic blading category while Ronan and myself decided to try our luck in the off-road category (hell, we were experts now). Nick, still traumatised from the previous evening's action, stayed home and rocked back and forth in the foetal position.

The mass start saw all categories set off together...down an icy road and across a train line. The three of us all managed to navigate the chaos successfully and before long we had hit the climb. At least, Pascal had hit the climb - he subsequently managed to gap the field and cruised to a comfortable overall victory. I managed to work my way up through the field over the course of the climb and sneak a win in the off-road category. Ronan skied strongly for most of the race but faded in the last 300m to finish 4th out of the off-roaders. Although the race had been completed, the ordeal was a long way from over - there was still the small matter of getting back down the hill. "It's ok" assured Pascal "I've been down many times and it is totally safe - very slow". While I was concerned that Pascal was, in all likelihood, lying to us, in the absence of a better option we were forced to take him at his word. Everything was fine up until we hit the icy hair-pin with no deceleration options. I got lucky and ended up on the snow covered verge, Ronan just ate it. We limped back to Rothethurm behind a sheepish looking Pascal in time for the presentations (among other things, I won 5 large knives...) and a well-earned kaiserwurst mit senf.

And so ended one of the more bizarre weekend's loppet racing that I have experienced. This also marks the end of Into the Wombat - Part 2 (apologies for the poor humour). Our next stop is Les Diableret for Swiss Champs. Hopefully on snow...

Into The Wombat - Part 1
Into The Wombat - Part 3
Into The Wombat - Part 4

[Note - here you can find the earlier Mock reports from 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006, Sapporo 2006, and Sapporo 2007]