Tales from my cross country skiing youth
Cross country skiing was a sport defined by its sheer insanity.
Image Credit: China Meldrum
It’s 2016, you are 14, it is minus 2 degrees, and you are freezing to death with a condition well known to the XC community — lycra induced hypothermia. To make matters worse, you just found out that Snowy Mountains Grammar got special hoodies for cross country. You are furious. Moving your skis in the tracks to no avail, you accept your fate. Death. Or more likely, a hyperactive race marshall – with long dead dreams of Olympic glory, shouting at you to move to the blue line. You can see your teammate approaching, cow bells ringing in your ears, and you skid like Bambi on ice to the centre of the relay change zone. Clumsily you get a pat on the back, almost knocked to the ground, and then it goes quiet. The race has begun.
I participated in cross country skiing from the ages of 11 to 17, and within those 6 gloriously harrowing years I have witnessed some absolute scenes. To the luckily uninitiated, cross country skiing is like regular skiing, minus the benefits of gravity and exponentially warmer clothes, with the added bonus of year 6 stress meltdowns! Instead of skiing down the hill (the fun version), you ski up a hill for the grand reward of…spiritual fulfilment?
I got roped into this godawful sport in year 5, but little did I know I was about to be thrown into a community rife with addiction (of the fudge variety), corruption (of the insidious sport parent variety), and petty crime (rampant cowbell theft).
Cross country skiing was a sport defined by its sheer insanity. I will never forget when, midway through a relay race, as I neared the top of the final hill, a fellow skier stabbed her pole into the bindings of my ski, sending me sliding down the hill with my second ski flying down the snowy planes to the carpark almost 500 metres below. As she cried breathlessly, “On your left,” I have never felt so much homicidal rage.
This sport is insidious. I have lost my faith in humanity on that track. Whether it be getting tripped up or shouted at by an ex-pro coach through a walkie talkie with the sound up to apparently ear-drum-destroying, my young soul has been darkened by this sport.
But, of course, it did have moments of greatness: there was nothing more fulfilling than getting to the top of the menacing Valley Trail hill, upon which sat a tree infamously riddled with shrapnel from the detonation of a Vietnam War-era hand grenade (don’t ask). And despite Australia’s inadequacy on the XC world stage (where anything above the bottom 10 is a victory), I would recommend XC skiing to any sadist willing to give it a shot.
Above all, I remember my time in the XC scene fondly, from my proudly hanging snowflake medals, to my bitter hatred of the infamous sprint loop, that wasn’t so much a sprint than a 4 minute hike up a hill that would make Norwegian 2 year olds scared. Alas, it will not be remembered fondly enough to take my skis out of storage — even if a custom hoodie was on the line.