skiing – Old Lady Writing

There was only one significant Summer Olympiad in my life https://oldladywriting.com/2020/08/09/personal-best/ , if I do not count the 1924 Paris Games, portrayed so gloriously in my favorite movie, “Chariots of Fire”—and, predictably, the occasional gymnastics competition that I caught when spouse (most decidedly not a fan) was not watching. But, I have tried to see the Winter Olympics every time, and when they suddenly showed up in 1994 after only two years, it was an extra dose of excitement for me.

Coincidentally, the first Winter Olympics also came in 1924, but if there is an awesome movie about that, I am not aware.

I like to watch pretty much every winter sport with, again, a very predictable exception of curling. Some of it might be going back to the fact that in the limited TV offerings of my Soviet childhood, European and maybe even world championships of figure and speed skating, alpine and Nordic skiing and, of course, hockey took up a lot of viewing time. If something similar was going on in the summer, I cannot comment—summers were not spent in front of TV.

The first Winter Olympics I watched were the 1984 Sarajevo Games, they of the incredible Torville and Dean’s Bolero. Although we had more channels than I was used to, still, this was before cable and all of the other choices we have today, and my parents would not have missed the Olympics. It was a great time, seeing familiar sports (because to this day I have no concept of American football, and understand that baseball is basically an opportunity to enjoy a hot dog for the price of a steak), and even some of the athletes familiar from the Before Times. I may or may not have pranced around our living room to my own choreographed Bolero moves, as my love of Christopher Dean momentarily overcame my dislike of Ravel’s music.

And then came Calgary 1988. I was in college, and in my first wonderful year of solo apartment living. Although there were many highlights, including the Jamaican bobsled team, what I remember best is that, while almost everyone left for winter break, my BFF and I, neither in possession of a TV set, would trudge to our old dorm, watch the games on the TV in the first floor lounge, and bluntly discourage any stray denizen of East Quad from attempting to change the channel. There was one timid freshman who seemed to cherish a hope that he might glimpse some other program during this, his first big break away from home, but that was not to be in the presence of two brash Russian women. Eventually, he succumbed and joined us in our ardent and vocal support of Katarina Witt and Alberto Tomba.

That also happened to be the week that we somehow discovered the invention of answering machines, and were making an almost daily drive to the F&M Drug Store, now defunct, to buy, try, and return them in the quest for the perfect one, and then run to the payphone during commercials to check if anyone left us any messages. If the machine picked up after the first ring, there indeed was a message—in my case, inevitably from that moronic boyfriend who once used up the entire answering machine tape reciting the Gettysburg Address. Overall, this technology ended up getting used more for evil than for good, especially by my grandmother, who immediately mistrusted it and assumed that recorded message in response to a call is a harbinger of doom and a sure sign that I am dead or at least in peril, for what possible reason could any human have to be away from their landline, at any age or in any circumstance? In subsequent years, she has also been known to use up the entire tape with messages of escalating fury, usually in a span if some minutes, but in February of 1988, this new toy seemed hopeful and benign.

By 1992, I owned a TV set. Well, more accurately, my law school boyfriend did, and Alberto Tomba temporarily replaced Matlock in his affections. I seem to recall an unusual number of figure skating bloopers that year, with women flying out of hands of their partners and crashing into boards, people crashing on their heads, and that one female skater who fell literally every time she stood up and eventually gave up. Curiously, I cannot find any validation for this after an afternoon of extensive research, so either my memory is terribly flawed, or there is a major decades-long cover up. If anyone has any information, please comment!

I must add that in Winter Olympics, I do not always root for the Home Team, whatever name it might bear over the years[1]. In speed skating, I cheer for the Dutch, the historic masters and inventors of the sport. If a Dutch skater wins, I stand and sing “Wilhelmus van Nassouwe”. OK, sing is not what I actually do—I mostly hum with interjections of “Prinse van Oranje” and “Koning van Hispanje” at random times. And I have a shot of genever in memory of Uncle Art. I have no idea if he enjoyed speed skating, but he was Dutch and liked genever, and that’s good enough for me.

In hockey, my loyalty is also time-honored. My grandpa was a huge hockey fan, and a great admirer of Team Canada. I live in Hockeytown, USA, where all the best players have always been Canadian[2]. I actually know the words to “O Canada” and cry every time I hear it, and pretend to be Canadian whenever I think I can get away with it[3]. And of course, Canadians are masters and inventors of the sport. Canada is near, and grandpa is always is my heart and never far from my thoughts. His saying, whenever a match outcome was less desirable was “Friendship won”. Oh, would that everyone had his generosity of spirit!

In bobsled, I root for Jamaica—who doesn’t?

This year, the Russian Freestyle Skiing team is packed with athletes from my home town. How cool is that? I am not entirely sure what this event is, being that it is a newer one, but I am watching, and cheering. I did hear one commentator acknowledge that a competitor was from Yaroslavl, which filled me with pride and joy.

Final thought: When I asked my students whether they had any questions (after I just finished talking about regulatory compliance obligation, an understandably riveting topic that kept everyone awake), the only one they had is the only one that was at the forefront of everyone’s minds: were Nathan Chen’s scores inflated? Because as a professor I must always take an opportunity to educate, I responded that no, I do not think so, and that he is indeed extremely capable. Privately, I awarded Nathan Chen extra points for skating to both Charles Aznavour and Elton John.

[1] Currently, it is Russian Olympic Committee, but throughout the history of the modern Olympics, it competed as the Russian Empire, Soviet Union, Unified Team, Russia, and Olympic Athletes from Russia. I am not bothered by the absence of the flag, but I miss the anthem.

[2] Occasionally they are Russian

[3] No, I am not making a false claim to citizenship, this is just in casual conversations—don’t report me to IRCC!

Pandemic winter is both harder, because there is no place to go, and easier, because there is no compulsion to go places. I briefly interrupted my hibernation on a Saturday afternoon to engage in some cross-country skiing. It was more like “cross-yard”—in fact, it was exactly that, because I literally skied out of my backyard and around the subdivision where I live. Very Old Country. Driving to a specified and possibly paid location just to ski around seems entirely too bourgeois, unless one is on a holiday.

This is me, starting out in my actual back yard.

I would not say I was skiing before I was walking, but I certainly do not remember learning to ski. It was just something children did all winter long, along with sliding down every snow drift and every patch of ice in our path. All my skis in childhood were the kind that did not require special boots, but the type where you just slide your foot into a rubber band, and another rubber band goes around the heel (and sometimes not even that). You put your “valenki” onto the rubber piece, because “valenki”, being just felted wool, are very slippery (Although I was always made to wear galoshes over mine. I come by my indifference to fashionable footwear honestly). In Russia, I never graduated to the adult skis which came with special boots that attached to the skis with the metal cage-like fastenings that looked complicated and somehow final, leaving no possibility of escape.

Not my actual skis, but a pretty accurate representation.

In my childhood, my main ski route was in the front yard of our house (so that my grandmother could watch me out of our kitchen window). It was an easy and pleasant morning before going to school during the second shift, until it became less attractive when big garbage bins were installed in my direct path. Occasionally, I was allowed to ski in the big field behind our house, a site of soccer matches in the summer. Both of these have since been sacrificed to progress: the field is now home to an auto dealership, and an extremely shocking high rise is getting built right across from the old two- and three-story apartment buildings. At least the trash bins have disappeared.

These are way fancier than anything we had back in the USSR

Skiing was the gym activity during the 2nd and 3rd quarters of the school year. As a gym activity, it was terrible for many reasons. First, the school-provided skis were awful and literally went nowhere, because they were never properly waxed and got stuck in the snow. Choosing skis in the gym was a predictable pandemonium. If you were not appropriately aggressive, you could end up with two left skis. I usually brought my own skis, like some of the children of Soviet privilege, and because my grandmother was convinced that the school skis were unsanitary disease-bearers. This involved hauling a pair of skis on the crowded trolley #4, an experience similar to riding the NYC subway during rush hour, but with worse smell (some of which was contributed by me, because at one point I had a winter coat with goat fur collar. Let me tell you, nothing, nothing at all smells worse than goat fur, even after it was aired out AND sprayed with Red Moscow perfume. This might explain why I have never found goats even remotely adorable). Guarding my skis against breakage was a nerve-wracking experience for several winters.

When I was very young, we were not allowed to use poles in school—the temptations of wielding them as swords or trying to poke someone in the eye was too great. I am ashamed to confess I was not always able to resist either once the pole ban was lifted.

Second, although gym during the ski season was a double lesson to allow us time to change, returning to regular classroom after being outside for an hour and a half, sweaty and soaked, covered in snow, was entirely uninspiring. In my later school years, I have taken to not returning. Along with a few pals, we would ski away from the pack on the field where we raced in a long loop, right across the roundabout at October Square (luckily, there were not that many cars in my hometown in those days), grab our backpacks from the school vestibule, and keep going. Who knows what kind of a delinquent I might have become had we stayed in Russia? American schools sure scared me straight…

Third, we had to learn downhill skiing. Now, there are no mountains where I come from. In my entire life, I have never lived anywhere near a mountain range of any kind. To me, anything taller than me is a mountain. If I see an incline, it’s a mountain. There was not so much as a hill in either our front yard or our back yard. However, my hometown, like any medieval fortress, is built along a river. The dramatic and terrifying hill, “Friday Descent” (probably referring to Good Friday, otherwise it is a pretty random name) was the location of our Alpine exercises.

Trust me, this is significantly more terrifying in winter.

Although I am not particularly afraid of heights, I am strangely afraid of speed—or, more precisely, of my inability to control myself on runaways skis. Thus, most my training on Friday Descent ended with practicing safe falling, which is the skill that serves me well to this day whenever I am confronted by any elevation while skiing. I either fall immediately, or sit on my skis like they are a sled. Occasionally, tired of rolling over into a snow bank, I would just find an opportune moment while the gym teacher was focused on observing students at the bottom of the hill and ski away on the hilltop, across the roundabout, and you know the rest.

Since I have not attended a gym class since I managed to get an exemption from my last one in the mid-80s, skiing, strictly of the Nordic kind, has been a pleasurable activity. And so, if you see a middle-aged woman gliding across your front yard—or your back yard—one sunny winter afternoon, it just might be #oldladyskiing.