Eine Frage der Haltung

Allegedly without anybody being able to see in from the outside. ;) This made me think about a story, which at that time happened something like this:

In my childhood, I was a member of an Austrian ski association, which sub-organized local small race series. Here you could measure yourself up against the children from the neighbourhood in both slalom and giant slalom. The preparation for these races always took place every Saturday morning – amongst others with the Hungarian ski instructor, Agnes. 

The blonde, extremely cool lady inspired above all the girls in our ski group, to set their sights on a job in winter sports (can still be read today in various family register entries with school colleagues). She was witty, always in a good mood and of course a top skier…..which is why no one ever questioned her training methods.

One day was technique training. She demonstrated an exercise that was intended to help us use the edges of the skis optimally even in icy conditions (and we had these very often during the races). It went something like this: The person whose turn it was should place his skis parallel to the mountain and squat down. We should put weight on the downhill ski, so the lower ski, and at the same time, to center our hips over the other ski, the poles should have been straight across our bodies, held in both hands, then to quickly ski down to her whilst not forgetting to breathe. She watched everybody very closely and then from her position, about 50 meters below, she gave us some feedback. Of course, I had the thankless “starting position”.

During her whole explanation I noticed that my hands were sweating profusely and I could hardly follow the instructions – which was most definitely not down to her broken German: At that time, I generally did not really like to be the center of attention and especially not the front man, regardless whether I knew the people or not, I would just come out in a cold sweat. But, in front of cool Agnes, I had to stay cool…..even in this case.
After the explanation, she skied down to her position and waited for me to ski down. I got into position and did exactly what she said and skied off. Under observation, I tried as best as I could to use the edges as she had described and I had been concentrating so hard not to perform badly, that I only noticed on the third or fourth turn that all of my friends were laughing and only then could I hear what Agnes was screaming from the bottom:

“…on the MOUNTAIN!!! THE TOILET….IS ON THE MOUNTAIN!!!” - The rather to the point instruction that I should bring my bottom over the mountain ski.

This professional tip for a good position, you can certainly keep, if you are ever on the Planai enjoying the panorama – regardless whilst skiing or when relieving yourself on the top of the peak.