It’s that time again. When we all become conversant in the difference between triple axels and triple solkas or the proper technique required for tearing down a mountain at 70 or 80 miles an hour or the best way to position yourself on what certainly looks like a tin tray as it careens down an icy track.
It is, of course, the Winter Olympics where, to all intents and purposes, sane and rational people in all other aspects of life, leap and twist and jump and pivot over snow or ice in the most bizarre and utterly hypnotic ways.
The Winter Olympics doesn’t quite have the reach or audience of its summer counterpart but it is just as compelling and far, far more brilliantly bonkers. Ireland has a team but truth be told winter races or icy competitions of any ilk have never been our forte.
My mother, who loved her sport, any kind of sport, was a ski buff. She had never been skiing. It wasn’t an option for her generation but she sat glued to Ski Sunday on the BBC and could tell you about the Alpine exploits of Franz Klammer and his cohort as they competed week after week – Franz being the Carlos Alcaraz of downhill skiing at the time.
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I was living in Japan when the Winter Olympics took place in Nagano. The Japanese love winter sports and they were particularly taken with speed skating, where they had some definite gold medal prospects. A friend was over to visit and we had booked a whole wintry itinerary in the northernmost island of Hokkaido.
At some point during the trip, we arrived in a quiet, practically deserted town, the locals having had far more respect for the sub-zero temperatures than us entirely naive “gaijin”. I’d done all the bookings and had reserved a twin room in a moderately priced hotel. To say that the room turned out to be tight would be the greatest of understatements. It was cell-like in its proportions, poorly heated with a TV perched high on a shelf between the two beds. We lay there, heads up watching the Olympics. It was the only way to put in the time before we wandered into town, found nowhere to eat and returned with whatever could be gleaned from the local 7-Eleven.
When in New Zealand years ago, another friend and I found ourselves in a similar situation – stuck in a snowy town, ensconced in a cramped, freezing hotel room but with no Olympics to distract, and bored, so bored. So we decided to make a break for it and made our way to the local cinema to pass away the evening. We weren’t the only ones with that idea. There was a substantial queue outside, all of us shuffling from foot to foot while disappearing into coats and scarves, hats and gloves. None of this apparel was discarded once inside, mind you, New Zealanders having a dysfunctional relationship with heating appliances of any kind.
What passed for this indulgence was the equivalent of a plane engine, roaring away on the wooden stage at the top of the room, just past the row of locals perched on seats in thick, close-fitting sleeping bags, snug as proverbial bugs. Because of the noise it generated, the aeroplane engine had to be turned off once the film began. And the movie in question? The Day After Tomorrow, which followed the progress of an apocalyptic Arctic storm engulfing the world.
“Not much difference between what’s happening up there and down here”, an American fellow tourist muttered as we held our hands up to the whirling, swirling air, generated by the aeroplane engine during the interval.
Watching the Olympics, it’s nice to think of what might have been. Could I have been a ski jumper? A bob-sleigher? A speed skater? I did give skiing a try but my body went into full panic mode when the skis caught the slightest incline on the nursery slopes. I would have been a fantastic figure skater, had figure skating been on the curriculum in my secondary school in Navan in the 1970s.
Soaring into the air while rotating again and again and again and maybe even again, before landing elegantly on one foot. How hard can that be?
