Ski equipment

Planks for the memories

James Leith

Somewhere among the shambles of our possessions is a pair of wooden skis with iron and leather bindings, inherited from an old friend who used to langlauf in the early 1950s, They were as near to planks as makes no difference. Each evening he would have to place a block of wood between the skis beneath the bindings and then clamp the ends together to restore the bow in the skis that a day on the snow had straightened out. Another (younger) friend can remember his father coming home full of excitement, and watching as he routed out a right-angled length down his skis before screwing in a set of steel edges he'd bought that day.

When I first went skiing, quick-release bindings didn't exist, which accounted for the incidence of broken ankles. Skis were sized by getting you to stand with your arm above your head, and the skis that reached the inside of your wrist from the floor (220cm in my case) were right for you. Boots were leather and lace-up and not much different from hiking boots except for the groove in the heel to hold the binding. Since there were no quickrelease bindings, it was possible (believe me, I did it) to bounce your face off an icy mogul between the rapidly separating tips of your skis and, if you were sufficiently out of control, for your speed to bounce you upright again. If your binding did come off, there was nothing preventing your ski setting off on its own down the mountain and embedding itself in the ski school wall 1.100 metres below. All you could do was yell `SKI!!!' and hope for the best. Fortunately there weren't that many people about, and hardly any health and safety officers.

Shortly afterwards, quick-release bindings were introduced, together with retaining clips that kept your quickly released ski attached to your ankle. This meant that when you failed to execute the parallel turn correctly and went over on your downhill edge, the binding clicked open, your boot plunged into the snow and the ski spun lengthways around its boot attachment and whacked you behind the ear.

At the time, accepted teaching had it (despite whatever the young Jean-Claude ICilly was doing) that skiing was about traversing the slope, turning and traversing back. This led to many happy hours digging myself (and my quickly released skis) out of the deep off-piste snow around the bole of the first pine tree when I didn't turn soon enough. To turn around when stationary involved the 'kick turn', an excruciating and cramp-inducing manoeuvre that usually meant you fell over. I packed it in in 1968.

Ten years later everything changed. The change was principally remarked by the then editor of the Sunday Times, Harold Evans, who along with Brian Jackman and Mark Ottaway wrote We Learned To Ski in 1979. He did, too, and he was 51 years old. The reason was the introduction of shorter, wider skis, and since then the development of skiing equipment has been extraordinary.

Mark Jones, a director of ICE, an instructor training school in Val d'Isere,

explains it like this: 'Skiing used to be the preserve of the wealthy, and style and elegance were essential. It was a pastime, and they had several months each year in which to perfect their parallel turns and ensure their skis were together and their hips fluid.' (Think of David Niven in The Pink Panther.) 'Now it's about getting down the mountain. Some ski-bunnies can only afford a week each year, so they don't really mind if their feet are apart as long as they are having fun. Equipment has developed to meet this requirement. From wood laminates to foam injection to carbon fibre and Kevlar, modern skis are there to help you get down the hill. It's not how elegant you look but how accurately you ski, and modern-shaped 'carving' skis will help you down the mountain.'

Sally Chapman, director of 'Inspired to Ski' and author of Pock'it Instructor, puts it this way: 'Don't turn — curve. All you have to do is control your equipment, and nowadays it will help you instead of fighting you. Speed is controlled by the radius of your curve as you carve. If you keep your weight centred and your feet apart, the equipment will help you. Ski manufacturers got a huge kick in the butt from the snowboard industry. Now the clothing, the equipment and the activity are seriously cool. If they weren't, you wouldn't have so many people on the slopes. It's a huge business, and new equipment and techniques mean that anyone even halfway fit can learn. The new boots give huge lateral support to the ankles [as far as I can see this means that instead of breaking your ankle you break your knee] and the piste itself is treated so that it provides the most ski-able surface. Snow blades [tiny skis] are great, too. If you came to me I'd have you back to your 1968 ability in two hours and carving down the mountain in two days.'

I believe her. This woman, who keeps pushing her chair back in the restaurant to demonstrate ankle, knee and hip rotation, could teach a blind badger to ski.

When she offered her book on curving technique to her original Austrian ski instructor, he proudly produced his own copy from his ski jacket. 'I give it to all my young instructors,' he whispered, tut don't tell my boss. You'll get me into trouble?'

Mark Jones is equally convinced that modern equipment and the nature of the sport mean that no one skis like David Niven any more. 'At Interski, the fouryearly meeting of the skiing nations, everybody skis the same way.'

I guess that means they've cracked it.

For those who broke their ankle in 1970 and haven't been back, £1,000 will cover all the equipment you will need to have another go. Do not blame your cruciate ligament on me.

The ICE website is www.icesi.org; Sally Chapman's is www.inspiredtoski.com.