Letter from Europe: Seasonal Angst

Upcoming in the next Vo2max:

“Now I just want the snow to melt so I can sit outside in the sun,” says Claudia, my local barber, in her thick local Austrian dialect. Just a few months earlier she was telling me how much she was looking forward to colder weather so she could get her skis out.

Such is life in countries where the contrast between seasons is so stark. Compared to New Zealand, the seasonal differences are huge. The average minimum temperature in July in Auckland is 8°C. In Salzburg, my nearest city, it is -6°C for the equivalent month, January. Average maximums in summer reach 24°C while Auckland hits 23°C.

I live in a small alpine village and the way people react to changing seasons is fascinating. If there hasn’t been snow when there should have been, people are tetchy, endlessly commenting on winters past when they were up to their armpits in powder.

One September we woke up to 5cm of snow on the ground. “Far too early, far too early,” said my landlord in an ominous tone.

By mid-November my bike was packed away after a glorious summer of cycling. During my last ride of 2009 I wondered how I would survive five months of winter without riding a bike. One week later, I didn’t care. Summer was history, all I wanted was snow.

This winter came relatively late but at the end of November when temperatures dropped to well below freezing and the peaks had a nice white covering, I travelled to a large sports shop to purchase my ski season pass for the surrounding region.

Bear in mind, this is one of many shops that sells the 500 Euro pass, and yet the queue was dozens long. There were plenty more people buying flash new equipment. “The season starts now,” said a friend I bumped into in the queue.

Europe’s 2009/10 winter was a cold one, making headlines worldwide, but for the most part people carried on as normal, enjoying the conditions when they could by skiing, snow shoe walking, cross country skiing, or sledding. There were also a few wry smiles and sniggers when discussing how a puny 10cm of snow brought the UK to a halt.

My cycling club put on ski touring trips instead of bunch rides and aside from a handful of hardnuts, roads were clear of cyclists.

And then suddenly in mid-March, the country’s collective mindset changed. “When will winter release its grip?” Asked newspapers. “I’m fed up with shovelling snow off the driveway,” said the landlord.

Right on cue, two weeks before Easter, the sun came out and temperatures switched from minus five to plus 10. This was merely a glimmer of spring yet joggers and cyclists emerged from hibernation and the shops were packed with folk buying new bikes and summer sports gear.

Ski slopes emptied and those who did take to the slopes were more interested in sipping coffee and schnapps in mountain huts rather than taking a final few runs before the pistes returned to green farming pastures.

As I write this I’m still in winter mode. I don’t know how I’ll survive until next November without skiing but probably by the next Letter from Europe, it will be a distant memory and life will be all about cycling.

“Isn’t this weather great?” Claudia the barber says. “Thank goodness summer is finally here!”

Letter from Europe: What’s the Point?

Latest Letter from Europe piece, currently to be found in the March edition of Vo2max:

From the end of December 2009 to the first week in January 2010, one of the biggest annual events in English sport took place in front of thousands of cheering, boisterous fans and received hours of prime time TV coverage.

The eventual champion was hyped throughout Sky TV’s broadcasts as one of England’s finest sportsmen and media across the spectrum haled him as unstoppable.

I am of course talking about the Professional Darts Corporation’s World Championships, and the now 13-time winner, Phil ‘The Power’ Taylor from Stoke on Trent.

Often viewed as a joke outside of the handful of countries that boast professional players, darts is a popular sport in the UK and top players can earn big money. Taylor, 49, picked up prize money to the value of NZ$1.8m during 2009 and has a number of endorsements.


It’s not hard to understand why folk like darts so much. Who doesn’t enjoy throwing a few arrows while sinking a couple of pints at your local? But you may be wondering how a pub game with overweight, tattooed, middle-aged ‘athletes’ has so much credibility and coverage in a supposedly sensible country like England?

I honestly don’t have an answer. However, I would say that watching a darts match can actually be very intriguing. The players’ consistent accuracy is amazing and seeing their nerves crumble at critical moments makes for great TV.

Venues for major championships look more like German beer halls, with rows of tables filled with alcohol-fuelled fans. Each player is introduced to the crowd with a boxing-style entrance and is accompanied to the stage by a scantily-clad model and their own signature music. Taylor usually comes out to Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man followed by Snap’s The Power.

Games can go right down to the wire, steady hands disappear, and the audience screams at every winning or losing shot. It’s cracking stuff.

The sport seems to have more than its fair share of flamboyant characters, and their antics only add to the general atmosphere of excitement and merriment. Former professional Bobby ‘The King of Darts’ George used to enter the arena wearing a cape, huge gold chains and a dozen gold rings, and waving a candelabra. ‘Voice of Darts’ commentator Sid Waddell is known for his bizarre references and metaphors that can leave viewers rolling on the floor or scratching their heads in puzzlement.

“If we'd had Phil Taylor at Hastings against the Normans, they'd have gone home,” he said during one world championship. Another time he described mulletted 2001 champion Steve Beaton as, “The Adonis of darts, what poise, what elegance - a true roman gladiator with plenty of hair wax.”

This is not an endurance activity. Darts will never be part of the Olympics and its stars will always be overweight, tattooed, middle-aged men. But I encourage you to put that aside and if you get a chance, give watching darts a chance – it’s fun, and ultimately, isn’t that what sport is supposed to be?

Published in the Herald

Wrote this article on Krampuses yonks ago, figured it had bit the dust but recently received an email from the Herald saying they'd printed it in January. Nice.

Day 17 with Mikey in Dienten

Good times

Letter from Europe: The Herminator won’t be back

As published in the December 2009 Vo2Max magazine:

The retirement of a sporting icon is always a time of tribute and rose-tinted reminiscing, but none more so in Austria where Hermann Maier, its most well-known ski racer, recently announced the end of his career.

Austria is a place that thrives on winter, not just for the tourist dollar that its ski resorts bring in, but because on a given weekend a large proportion of the population enjoy taking to the slopes themselves.

Skiing is its national sport, the top racers are its heroes and losing a race to Switzerland is akin to New Zealand succumbing to Australia in the Bledisloe Cup.

Maier’s record of 54 World Cup wins puts him among the most successful alpine skiers of all time, but it was the incredible ups and downs during 13 years of top-flight competition that made him so amazingly popular.

His early years weren’t exactly promising. Kicked off the development squad at age 15 and told he wasn’t going to succeed, he spent years working as a bricklayer through summer and ski instructor during winter in his hometown of Flachau.

He finally managed to secure a spot on the national team at 23 after winning numerous regional races and then recording the 12th fastest time as a non-counting fore-runner at a World Cup event in 1996.

His first World Cup event victory came a year later in Garmisch, Germany and he quickly became the sport’s dominant force, picking up wins in giant slalom, super-giant and downhill races (the different disciplines are defined by the number of gates skiers have to pass through and the distance between them).

He won by skiing all out and taking big risks, appearing as though he was hurling himself down mountains. A defining moment came at the 1998 Nagano Olympics in the downhill, the fastest of all disciplines where athletes reach speeds of 160km/h.

The course was tricky and one particular left-hand corner over a small lip had caught out many of the early hopefuls. For anyone watching on TV, it was obvious Maier was carrying more speed approaching the troublesome turn than anyone else.

He hit the lip ridiculously fast, becoming instantly airborne. He was travelling so quick that he flew tens of metres through the air, rotating so that by the time he landed, he was upside down.

"I was very fast and there was a lot of wind from the back side," he said afterward. "And I went up in the air and was looking at the sky. I looked down at the snow and waited for the crash."

A photo taken mid-flight with Maier’s skis above his head and his face locked in grim expression went round the world, ending up on the cover of Sports Illustrated.

After tumbling through two layers of crash fencing, he came to a halt 50 metres away from where he took off.

Amazingly he was able to walk away from this, but what made him the stuff of legend was that over the next few days, he went on to win two gold medals in the giant and super giant slalom race.

Over the next few seasons, Maier racked up wins but in August 2001 disaster struck. Colliding with a car whilst out on his motorcyclist, his career was written off. The accident was described as ‘near fatal’ and doctors were close to amputating the lower part of one of his legs.

He sat out the 2002 season but returned to competition in January 2003. A matter of days later, he won a super giant world cup race in Kitzbuehel, Austria – the most famous and most feared of all courses. It was a remarkable comeback earning Maier praise from all corners of the sporting world and reinforcing his ‘Herminator’ image.

Victories followed including a win at the biennial world championships in 2005 in the giant slalom, but by 2006 his dominance was waning despite picking up a silver and bronze medal at the Turin Winter Olympics.

In 2007 and for most of 2008 he failed to record a win. Perhaps indicative of the pressure Austria places on its skiers, Maier was regularly recording top ten finishes ahead of most of his team-mates, but faced increasing calls to retire, ‘because he wasn’t as good as he used to be.’

A public argument to that effect between him and retired-skier-turned-commentator Armin Assinger didn’t help his cause. Maier reacted to criticism by Assinger, a popular TV personality after a reasonable racing career, by saying he (Maier) had “won a lot more races than him.”

In November 2008, he recorded his 54th world cup race victory in Lake Louise, Canada, and it was to prove his last. In October, 2009 he announced his retirement citing physical problems.

He had previously stated that he was aiming for an appearance at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, however following recent knee surgery and the rigours of returning to fitness, selection for the Austrian team would not have been guaranteed.

Maier leaves a huge gap in the sport, although he is unlikely to drop away from the public eye. He appears in countless TV ads, on chatshows and in the celebrity gossip pages, but more than anything, he’ll be known for generations in Austria as one of the greatest ski racers that ever lived.