Sammy sent me a photo today of a Cresta Run timesheet. It was for The Willoughby Cup. Her cousin was riding and she knew enough about me to know it would be familiar and interesting.
I haven’t been back to St Moritz for decades. I went under my own steam a few times after dad died and we lost the flat. The last time I went I was was still at drama school. I stayed in the Soldanella, but round the back, looking after an old guy who was a friend of dad’s who had been shocked by a car crash he’d had on the way up the pass. Urs gave me a deal in an unused staff room, so long as I took care of Kyle. He was feeling old. We played backgammon for higher stakes than I was comfortable losing, and I won thank God. I marched him to the cash point the next day. “You’re your father’s son”.
It was cathartic to go back there, fund it with a double six, ride again. I would have been so fucked if dad’s ghost hadn’t brought me that lucky double. Kyle couldn’t believe it either. “Double or quits,” he tried and I said I had to stop. O knew he was good for it. He was the one who named the stakes. I was being hustled. Dad again: “You can make profit from hustlers as long as you pull out earlier than they think you will.”
I wouldn’t be able to get near my times now on the Cresta. I was incredibly good, briefly.
The timesheets haven’t changed. It brought it all back to see him as an SL rider, in the Willoughby Cup.
Digby Willoughby was my first boss. The cup is named for him. He was a Gurkha Colonel, and he was an incredible man, in many ways. I worked for a season as a Tower Boy for him, running the timing machines and doing odd jobs. Putting the flag up in the morning, getting to know the various people who came through the club. I flew back to London from time to time to audition for drama schools. It was that time. My Guildhall first round audition was one such time, a stolen couple of days. It cost me anything I might have earned. I’m so glad I did it.
Digby was compact. Traditional. He hated all the technology that was coming in to this amateur version of Bob Skeleton. The Willoughby Cup is a new innovation that plays to his strength. You ride on a club toboggan in normal clothes, no skin suits. They have a seat that slides forward and backwards on the frame. If you are forward, your weight lifts the knives from the back runners out of the ice so you steer with momentum only but you are faster. If your weight is back, the little knives are in and you can influence your direction a little bit.
Basically for Junction riding on one of those things you have to ride full forward until just before Shuttlecock when you have to pull right back, right hand forward, pull up to Nino’s broom and then push yourself into a good line round the top, coming forward just as you exit and enter Stream. Then, so long as you can control the careening toboggan away from hitting the sides in the straight you’ll have a reasonable run through Scylla and Charybdis and a good time if you don’t stick your feet in. There are some fine points of steering and line, but if you’re on a trad you aren’t doing what I was doing as a young man and trying to see how fast it is possible to go. I preferred riding from top, but I had a death wish. Were I to come back now, I would start in Junction season.
It’s funny to think I got really fucking good at something and I haven’t been able to afford going out there since. I love it though. Dad is buried there. It is part of me, that valley town where I spent so much of my childhood. But the people we laughed at growing up, wearing their furs, spending way too much on everything – they haven’t stopped spending. And daddy doesn’t work there anymore.
I miss the place though. Oh lord. This season no go but perhaps next season I’ll finally get back out there. My handicap will be awful, in light of my old times. I’ve learnt caution in some small measure since those days. Not much caution, but a bit.
AlBarclay 