{"id":1476,"date":"2019-08-22T11:05:02","date_gmt":"2019-08-22T11:05:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=1476"},"modified":"2022-08-08T11:53:00","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T11:53:00","slug":"when-should-you-stop-skiing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/randomthoughtsltd.com\/?p=1476","title":{"rendered":"When Should You Stop Skiing?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Published: 7 February 2019 <\/em><\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n
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The Last Schuss? Seefeld, Austria, January 2019<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have skied with a few octogenarians. Patrick, with two hip replacements under his belt, left me in his tracks on the steep runs of St. Anton. But he quit last year. All my skiing chums have given up or died. After half-a-century on the slopes when should you hang up those comfy, ancient rear-entry boots? There are no regulations, if you\u2019re in reasonable health no doctor can advise you; you\u2019ve got to balance the risk and reward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was in my thirties when I first clamped a pair of hired leather \nboots into wooden rental skis. It was the year the Winter Olympics were \nheld in Innsbruck, but there was precious little snow in nearby Igls. I \nclattered over ice and rocks for a week. My instructor, who was well \ninto her seventies, despaired of my ever learning how to snowplough, the\n essential manoeuvre for stopping. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I\u2019m still skiing at an age when people are breaking legs leaning over to pick up the tea cosy”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I started too late to ever become expert, but I reckon I\u2019ve spent \neighteen months of my life in mountain resorts, skiing hundreds of \nmiles. I was part of that generation that studied the theory of parallel\n turns in We Learned to Ski<\/em>, published by Sunday Times editor \nHarold Evans in 1974. I absorbed the psychological mantras, \u2018leaning \ninto the valley\u2019, \u2018following the fall line\u2019, and \u2018attacking the \nmountain\u2019. I got better, but I got older, too. Sometimes I over-reached.\n In Kirchberg I was tail-end Charlie in the top class, ending each run \nwith steam rising from burning quadriceps through the fabric of my \nflared stretch trousers. By the time I felt skilled enough to have a go \nat deep powder, I didn\u2019t have the stamina for all that knee-jolting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m still skiing at an age when people are breaking legs leaning over\n to pick up the tea cosy. I\u2019ve been lucky. In St. Anton I saw off a ski \ninstructor in the blutwagen<\/em>. In Selva I persuaded a girlfriend \nwho took a bad fall to man up and carry on to the bottom, where we \ndiscovered she had fractured her femur. In Saas Fee I had to wave my \ntranquilised wife with a smashed shoulder off in a helicopter. My only \ninjury has been a twisted ankle. It was fine strapped in the ski boot, \nbut I limped around town all that winter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Clearly one\u2019s bones are more vulnerable now. But safety measures have\n evolved. My first skis were 2.1 metres long; now they\u2019re 1.6 metres. \nLighter, wider, shorter skis make turns much easier. There\u2019s a machine \nnow which sets the correct tension of the clamps and adjusts the \ntwisting torque. It\u2019s calibrated by your height, weight, skiing ability \nand age (although the oldest level is \u2018over 55\u2019). A few years ago only \nkiddiwinkles wore helmets; now, like almost everyone, I do, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it\u2019s not injury that worries me; it\u2019s endurance. I have less puff\n these days. I have atrial fibrillation and a touch of sciatica. I walk \nmore slowly. I can do fewer press-ups. I\u2019m creaky. As they say in \nCornwall, \u2018The age is there\u2019. Tramping about in heavy boots schlepping \nskis over icy streets, uphill and upstairs is exhausting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am no longer strong enough to ski badly. Dragging a foot and \nbraking on turns consumes an enormous amount of energy. You don\u2019t need \nstrength to glide down a well-groomed piste; gravity does the work. You \nneed style. I still don\u2019t crouch and sway and bend the knees enough; in \nvideos I look a bit like Prince Charles in Klosters, too upright and \nrigid. But then he\u2019s not used to bending a knee. We both need to relax a\n bit more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best protection is in your head. The days have long gone when we \ncaught the first lift and chased the sun all day over vast swathes of \ngeography, seeking out washboard moguls and challenging black runs. \nNowadays I\u2019m happy with a few leisurely runs before and after lunch. As a\n veteran you know it\u2019s not the steepness of the run that matters, so \nmuch as the quality of the snow and visibility. So, I\u2019m a fair-weather \nskier now. If it snows, I head for a hot chocolate. And I no longer \nattack the mountain; I negotiate with it. I used to believe that if you \ndidn\u2019t fall over occasionally, you weren\u2019t trying hard enough. But now \nit\u2019s hard to get back up again in a snow drift.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My wife and I anticipated this. A lot of elderly Europeans saunter \nabout on those long, slender cross-country skis on the valley floor. So,\n we thought we\u2019d have a go. But the Europeans must have been born welded\n to those skis. It was ten times more strenuous and I kept falling over.\n We ended up playing football on skis, which at least was a bit of fun.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alpine ski resorts are ambivalent about lift passes for Oldies, and \nkeep changing their minds. This year, over-75s get a 50% reduction in \nSt. Anton, while Seefeld, a far tamer Austrian resort, grants no \nconcessions whatsoever to the aged. I\u2019m not sure why they want to \nclutter up their slopes with geriatrics, but French resorts are more \ngenerous. Montgen\u00e8vre charges 40% of the standard price to \n\u2018Legendaries\u2019, the honorific they use for us Oldies, while you can ski \nfree both in villages like Val Cenis and fashionable resorts like \nCourchevel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That\u2019s where I met my wife. She was a competent skier, and even after\n comprehensively smashing her shoulder and later being concussed by \nfalling off a horse (the horse was not on skis), she gamely took up both\n horse-riding and skiing again. But at the end of a white-out run in \nEngelberg she was no longer having fun. So, now she comes along to walk,\n or sit on a mountaintop and sketch, and we keep in touch by \nwalkie-talkie. I\u2019m not liable to pick up anyone of a companionable age \non a chairlift, so I usually ski alone. This is not ideal; you need a \nbuddy for sharing and for safety.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We have spent dark, sorry days trudging through dirty lumps of snow \non rain-soaked slopes. But when sun and snow combine a skiing holiday is\n paradise. This January there was a great dump of snow in Austria and we\n enjoyed good conditions in Seefeld, not far from Innsbruck, where it \nall started for me. The mountain restaurant displayed the bobsled used \nby the Austrian team in the 1964 Olympics, now a historic relic. The \nwheel had come full circle and I wondered whether somebody was trying to\n tell me something. My wife, as usual, has the answer. When you\u2019re not \nhaving fun any longer, she says, you don\u2019t \u2018give up\u2019; you stop and start\n doing something else.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2018Decision Theory\u2019 holds that sound decisions flow from a choice \nbetween values: rather than maximising existing values, we opt to shift \nthem. My old value \u2013 the sheer exhilaration of downhill skiing \u2013 might \nbe replaced by another \u2013 relief from the increasing hassle of organising\n and enduring the encroaching limitations on that experience. Or, as \nthey say, \u2018Get over it\u2019!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brexit may provide the imperative. I carry in the pocket of my frayed\n and greasy ski jacket the European Health Insurance Card, entitling me \nto free medical care throughout the European Union. At the end of this \nwinter season, this will no longer be valid. At my age, what price \nwinter sports insurance?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Published: 7 February 2019 I have skied with a few octogenarians. Patrick, with two hip replacements under his belt, left me in his tracks on the steep runs of St. Anton. But he quit last year. All my skiing chums have given up or died. After half-a-century on the slopes when should you hang up … <\/p>\n

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