EX CRESTA – TA Championships Lt Giles Fearn RWxY It started with an innocuous e-mail in mid December saying that, in less than five weeks, you too could be hurtling head first down an icy run in the not so expensive alpine resort of St Moritz participating in the TA Cresta Championships, the organisation of a separate TA Championships being necessary this year as the TA were not permitted to participate in the Army Championships. So it was that 8 members of the TA found both the time and finances.The final roll for the Championships was 2 x RWxY, 2 x HAC, 2 x RY, 1 x 7 RIFLES and 1 x RMLY with a mix of both officers and OR’s. Considering the time of year and short notice this was not a bad turn out. The Cresta Run is a hand built natural toboggan run that follows a small valley leading out of St Moritz and is managed by the St Moritz Tobogganing Club. This is a private members club that allows non-members to ride the run; rules abound, as do numerous traditions which all go to give the feel of being back at basic training! The pre-Championship training – or rather introduction to the sport for all except Capt Morgan RWxY – began at the ungodly hour of 0645hrs on a cold and overcast Monday morning with signing in and“the death talk”.This is a frank description of what
happens in the Club, the rules, the equipment and the danger, given by the Club Secretary. All the while he is overlooked by an x-ray montage of a skeleton showing the various injuries of members of the Club’s committee – it did seem that every possible bone had been broken at least once. We were then allocated our “Guru” and it was his duty to teach us the rudiments of riding the run and to help us get down in one piece. Armed with the most basic knowledge, equipment and toboggan, the moment arrived when you had to do it. The “Tower” calls your name, hand raised to acknowledge, track marshal helps lift the toboggan on to the start line, you lie down, dig the metal teeth on your boots into the ice and you stare down what appears to be a never ending ice tube that drops off into space. As you let go, you raise your feet and begin to accelerate away from the start, the toboggan seems to fight you all the way down the straight wanting to throw you into the solid ice walls – which it does. The noise of metal runners against ice increases as your speed rises. The first corner approaches, then the second and now the infamous Shuttlecock corner – some make it round, others don’t and end up thrown out of the run into rotting straw and soft snow - now you stop breaking and the toboggan hurtles down the run, the corners flashing by as your speed increases and then you are at Finish, exhilarated and strangely breathless.
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