At the giant slalom start gate, high above the French resort of Val d’Isère, former champion racer Géraldine Petit was revealing her secrets. “You must be in your bubble, ignoring everything around you, just taking long slow breaths,” she said. “Then just before you start, you make short fast breaths — hup, hup, hup — to really get the adrenalin, then you stamp your feet and blast forward.”
This weekend the world’s best skiers will be doing just that, on precisely this same spot, for the Critérium de la Première Neige, the event which for 60 years has kicked off the main Alpine ski racing season. This is hallowed ground: the Face de Bellevarde course hosted the Olympic downhill in 1992 and the World Championships in 2009, events which helped propel Val d’Isère into the premier league of world resorts. Normally it is off limits to the public from the start of the season until after the Critérium races are done, but I was there a week ago — dressed in Lycra catsuit, staring down the ice-injected piste — on a new race-training course launched by one of the resort’s upmarket chalet operators.
The Lycra is an eccentric look, particularly for a skier like me, somewhat past his competitive peak. In the 1980s, it was normal for recreational skiers to ape their heroes by wearing tight “race pants” and using long, thin skis, but skiing has changed. Today’s lift lines are filled with people wearing loose-fitting Gore-Tex and carrying fat skis, backpacks, shovels and probes — looking ready for a Himalayan ski mountaineering expedition even if they are really just on their way to lunch.