Chamonix is cold in a way that bites.
Not the clean, dry cold of Reiteralm or Schladming. This is wet Alpine cold, the kind that seeps through your gloves and settles in your bones. The kind that makes your face ache even before you've clipped into your skis.
I'm standing in the start area for the giant slalom, bouncing on my toes to stay warm, watching the course workers putting the safety netting into place. The set looks brutal, tight, technical, unforgiving. Classic Chamonix. They don't hand out points here. You earn them.
Around me, the usual pre-race hum. Radios crackling. Coaches muttering last-minute line adjustments. Servicemen checking edges one more time, fingers moving with the kind of precision that comes from a thousand race mornings just like this one.
I should feel ready.
Iamready.
But there's a weight sitting on my shoulders that wasn't there in Beaver Creek, or Kitzbühel. Something I can't name. Something that makes my jaw tight and my hands restless on my poles.
I think about home for half a second, her curled up in my hoodie yesterday morning, stealing the last of the coffee and complaining about the taste. The way she kissed me at the door before I left, hands fisted in my jacket like she didn't want to let go.
It makes me smile.
Then I shove it into the box where feelings go during race mode and lock it.
Focus, Reiner.
The beep sequence starts.
Three. Two. One. Green.
I explode out of the gate, attacking the first pitch with everything I have. Edges bite. Skis carve. The rhythm should come easy, it always does in GS, but today it feels like I'm half a beat behind the metronome.
First combination: I come in too round, miss the direct line, and have to fight to reset my angle for the next gate. It costs me speed. Not much. But enough.
Fuck.
I adjust. Drive harder into the next section. The course is steep here, technical, demanding perfect timing on every edge change. I'm hunting the line, but I can feel it slipping like trying to grab water.
Midway through, there's a rut carved deep by the guys ahead of me. I know it's there. I saw it in inspection. But I'm a fraction late reacting, and the ski catches the edge of it, jerking me off balance for a heartbeat.
I recover. Barely.
But now I'm fighting. Chasing instead of attacking. Reacting instead of dictating.
I cross the finish line and immediately know it's not good.
The time flashes on the board.
Safe points. Solidly mid-pack. Nowhere near podium.
Nowhere near what the Austrian press expects from the silver Olympic medalist.
I skid to a stop in the finish corral, chest heaving, and tear my goggles off. My face is hot despite the cold. My hands are shaking, not from adrenaline, from frustration.
Thomas finishes a minute later, slots in two places above me, and gives me a sympathetic look I don't want.
"Tough set," he says.
"Yeah."
I don't say anything else.
***
