graft to develop the winter sports industry,

persuading mountain railway companies across

the Alps that they should remain operational

throughout the winter, and doing the same

with hotel owners to make sure his clients had

places to stay.

But why should I be so interested in skiing?

What I was looking to do, after all, was to set a

world record on a sled, not on skis. It’s not quite

as simple as that. Skis, you see, can travel very

fast indeed – and we’ll be looking at the reasons

why they go so fast. Sir Henry Lunn and his

chums might have been slithering around on

nicely carved timber planks, but modern skis

are marvels of technology, and considerably

But why should I be so interested

in skiing? What I was looking to

do, after all, was to set a world

record on a sled, not on skis.

faster than the type of sled used in St Moritz.

Whereas a champion rider on the Cresta Run

today might hit a maximum speed of 80 mph, a

downhill ski racer can get up to 90 mph, and a

speed skier, heading straight down a slope and

going for outright speed, can do 125 mph.

That is one of the reasons why Rolf Allerdissen
chose to use skis, not runners, on the bottom of
his sled when he set his record on the Pitztal

Glacier in 2010. Clever chap. I was going to

have to do the same. Skis rather than runners

were obviously going to be better on snow, but,

thinking back again to those proper wooden

toboggans that didn’t always go as fast on a

slope as a boy with his bum on a bin-bag, I

began to wonder why. Well, I needed a scientist

to answer that one.

Above: The techniques

used by riders on the

Cresta Run to transfer

their weight for cornering

haven’t really changed

since these photos were

taken in the 1950s.

discovering the downhill art    211