From here, I can see the Ganslern’s lower pitch—white and brutal under the morning light, gates already in, nets hugging the edge of the drop. Someone in the empty grandstand has already hung a huge flag over the railing. Another one is standing alone halfway up, stamping his feet, cowbell in hand, like he didn’t get the memo about the party being yesterday.
Real fans. The kind who show up at inspection and stay until the last bib.
I nod at the liftie, drop my skis on the snow, and slide into place just as an empty chair swings around. He slows it a touch, more out of boredom than need. I sit, feel the familiar grab under my thighs, then the gentle jerk as it picks up speed. I pull down the bar, place my skis on the footrest, and lean back.
The town falls away behind me as we rise over the last houses. Up here it’s just frost-coated trees, the pale strip of the track, and the occasional echo of someone’s voice on a radio. On the steep section, I can see patches of blue through the white where the water injection has glazed the surface; they’ll grind a little off before we race, but not enough to make it friendly. This is Hahnenkamm, we’re here to beat it into submission, not make friends with it.
Below the chair, a handful of early fans are already trudging along the footpath toward the finish, various flags in hands, steaming cups in hand. One of them looks up, waves at the lift when he recognizes our race suits as “the real ones,” and calls up. I lift a pole in acknowledgment, which will probably make their day. It’s hard to stay humble when people treat you like this. Luckily, the icy slope will pull me back to earth.
At the top, the chair slows, bumps me off. I slide away from the unload, click my poles into the snow, and take a moment to look down the full length of the Ganslern from the side. Classic Kitzbühel brutality, inhumanly steep, gates in intricate patterns that make you doubt everything you learned since your junior slalom days.
I take a breath, blow it out slowly, and push off toward the inspection lane.
The cold, grippy snow hums under my skis as I glide into the slow-moving stream of racers snaking their way along the side of the course. Coaches stand in clusters, talking fast, hands drawing invisible turns in the air while their athletes nod, eyes locked on the red and blue gates above us. The sun hasn’t softened the surface yet; it’s still that aggressive, salted hardness that punishes every mistake and throws every tiny imbalance right back at you.
I slip sideways along the side of the first pitch and let my gaze trace the line from gate to gate. Rhythm first. Always rhythm. This course setter likes combinations—offsets that build, then a tighter hairpin to break any false sense of security, then a delay gate pitched just steep enough to catch out anyone who comes in late. I mark them automatically: “Here it rolls over, here it turns under you, here you need to be early, or you’re dead.” The thoughts run through my head in a calm, clipped cadence, like notes I’ve written a thousand times before.
Out of habit, I search the slope for Luca only to realize he’s not here. He’s retired to coach his miraculous girlfriend. Back in the old days, we would nod to each other with dead serious eyes, like gunslingers at a showdown. A few years back, in my rookie years, I used to hate him. It would never have occurred to me how much I’d miss my rival.
I move closer to the line and let myself feel it with my body instead of just seeing it. Turn shape. Pressure. Where the skis will want to accelerate, where the hill will fall away under me. I imagine my edges biting, the slap of the slalom pole across my shins, the familiar, satisfying crack of my guards as I blockeach gate out of my path. This is where I stop being a guy with too many thoughts and become something simpler—weight, timing, instinct.
Halfway down, I pause above a section where the course setter has gone a little wild. The red gate sits low, the next blue offset hard to the right, then another red dropped down the fall line. A little trap for anyone who’s greedy with the line.
I push on, following the last gates to the finish, where the inspection lane merges back into the open piste. From here, the stadium looks smaller, the timing hut perched like a toy house at the bottom, the start gate up above an empty rectangle against the sky. The loudspeaker crackles to life with some announcement I don’t really hear. I’ve already started running the course in my head, turn by turn, over and over, until it stops being theory and starts feeling like memory.
At the edge of the finish area, I swing my skis across the hill and come to a stop. My heart is beating a little faster now, but it’s the good kind of fast—tight, focused, ready. I check the clock on the timing board and do the math automatically. Enough time to ride up, breathe, and flip the mental switch from inspection to warm-up. I plant my poles, shove off toward the gondola on the right, and let gravity take me down to the loading area.
At the bottom, I click out, sling my skis over one shoulder, and follow the taped-off path that funnels everyone past the official Hahnenkamm fan shop by the finish. Of course, they’ve put it right here, like a toll gate between me and the warm-up hill. The window is crammed with Gams-logo everything—plush toys, hoodies, caps, mugs, keyrings. I tell myselfI’m just killing a few minutes before I have to meet the team and veer toward the door.
Warm air and the smell of coffee hit me as I step inside. For a second, I just stand there, letting my goggles clear, surrounded by my own world shrunk and sanitized for tourists. There’s a whole herd of plush cows and chamois piled up by the entrance, all with tiny red Hahnenkamm bibs around their necks. One of them is so big it would basically count as extra furniture.
Zlata with a giant stuffed Kitz cow on her bed flashes through my head, so absurd I almost laugh out loud. She’d snort, call it kitsch, probably make some cutting remark about “grown men and their mascots,” and shove it off the pillow.
I drift toward a smaller stand half-hidden along the side wall, more to avoid the crush of people than out of any real interest. Jewelry. Not my habitat. Most of it is loud and shiny: dangling charms, big pendants, things that scream I went to Kitzbühel and need everyone to know. Then I spot them—a pair of small stud earrings on a plain white card. Just the Kitzbühel Gams silhouette in brushed metal, simple and clean. If you didn’t know the logo, you’d think they were just some abstract shape.
I pick the card up before my brain can veto it. The earrings are light in my hand, stupidly small for the amount of chaos they stir up in my head.
You barely know her.The thought lands with the weight of a coach’s correction.
I stand there a moment longer, thumb running over the cardboard edge. I almost put them back. Then, over the shop speakers, someone announces the end of the inspection, and something inside me just…tips.
“These, please,” I hear myself say, voice coming out steadier than I feel. The cashier smiles, scans, wraps, and hands me a tiny box that suddenly feels like contraband.
Outside again, I tuck the box into an inner pocket, shoving it down until the cardboard presses cool against my chest. “If she actually comes to Reiteralm,” I mutter under my breath, “then you can think about giving them to her. If not, they can live there and shame you quietly.”
I zip the jacket up over the pocket, shoulder my skis, and turn back toward the gondola. Warm-up now. Feelings, cows, earrings—later.
***
The start pen is a controlled kind of chaos.
Athletes bounce on their skis, shake out their legs, slam their poles into the snow in choreographed little rituals that probably make sense only to them. One guy, a few bibs ahead of me, is doing those explosive jumps like he’s trying to reach the timing wand with his helmet. Coaches hover behind the fence, muttering last-second instructions into ears already full of noise: “Higher on the delay, don’t chase it,” “Free the skis on the roll-over,” “Trust the line.” Cameras slide past on rails and swing on cranes, lenses nosing in like curious animals, hunting for nerves, for stories, for cracks.
I pull my chin strap tighter until the padding presses firm against my jaw. Two easy pole plants into the packed snow, just enough to feel the bite of the tips. I start running thecourse again in my head, numbering gates in a calm, mechanical rhythm. One, two, three—easy tempo at the top. Four, five—offset builds. Six to nine—watch the roll-over. Ten, eleven—hairpin. Twelve—delay, don’t come in low. The numbers stack neatly, a scaffold for my brain to climb up on instead of spiraling.
For a heartbeat, the noise around me thins, and an image slips in uninvited: My Golden Girl, somewhere in that Czech resort, helmet pushed back, goggles on her head, leaning over her phone between runs. She’d either love this chaos or hate it. Or both. I can practically hear her commentary about all the pre-start theater. I wonder if she’s trying to find a stream, watching a shaky feed of me on some Czech channel with dodgy commentary, half-dressed in her race suit and one boot off.
“Bib fifteen to the gate.” The start referee’s voice snaps me back. That’s me.
