‘sledge’. Living in Canada, they used sledges

for hauling their families and their belongings

around throughout the long northern winter.

Sledges and smaller sleds of various types were,

of course, used in St Moritz during the winter

as well and, just as they do everywhere, kids

had their own versions to play with, and to

have races with. You can probably guess that

the young chaps staying in St Moritz – and the

other alpine towns – quickly took to racing

sleds down slopes. Being hugely competitive,

they started experimenting to build their own,

better, faster sleds, and that, naturally, led to

racing courses being established. Building

courses for toboggan racing also stopped them

from causing havoc by racing through the

streets of the town, which was what they had

been doing!

In St Moritz, Johannes Badrutt, seizing yet

another opportunity to provide a winter

holiday experience that would have his guests

flocking back year after year, created the first

purpose-built track, carved out of the snow on

the hillside with banked turns to challenge the

riders’ skill. This was the inspiration for the

now famous Cresta Run.

The actual Cresta Run was constructed in

1884. A young Swiss geometrician named Peter

Bonorad, recently returned to the area from

university in Zurich, was persuaded to design

the run, which was then built by a British Army

officer, Major William Bulpett, along with

some willing helpers and the backing of Caspar

Badrutt, one of Johannes’s nine children. The

course ran for three-quarters of a mile (1.2

kilometres) from St Moritz to Cresta, a drop of

514 feet (157 metres), and included ten turns.

It was hugely popular, but the daring young

men who wanted to go as fast as possible began

having problems when the banks of snow that

lined the turns started to get carved up by the

Top: Sir Henry Lunn,
doctor, missionary and
winter sports enthusiast.

Bottom: Winter sports

really started to take

off after the Second

World War. These

Polish skiers are at

Zakopane in the 1950s.

discovering the downhill art    209