FABIO
Saalbach greets us in fifty shades of dirty snow.
The van noses into the hotel parking lot through grey slush, wipers dragging across a windscreen filmed with salt. Nobody rushes to get out. Boots thud onto the tarmac one by one, the usual joking and shouting cut down to a low murmur. Kranjska Gora is still sitting on all of us, the Podkoren slope, and the burn it caused to our legs.
I haul my race bag out of the back and shoulder it without thinking about the weight. Skis off the roof, stackedinto the rack by the entrance. Someone makes a half-hearted crack about “Baier checking if the nets are softer here,” and I manage a grin, but it dies quickly. There’s no energy left for a performance today.
Inside, the lobby smells like wet wool and stale coffee. I collect my key, nod at the receptionist, and take the stairs instead of the lift, more out of habit than virtue. A single room, the other guys usually share, I prefer to spend nights alone.
In the room, I drop the bag on the floor, unzip it, and start laying things out with automatic precision: boots against the wall, race suit over the back of the chair, base layers on the radiator. TV on for noise, volume off. It’s all movement without much thought, like my body knows the routine even if my head is somewhere else.
The reminder on my phone buzzes at me: meeting with the team head-guy for the mind stuff. I stare at it for a second. I could ignore it. Say I forgot, say I needed more stretching, say anything. Instead, I swipe it away, grab a fresh T-shirt, and head back down.
***
The room they’ve given him is one of the small conference rooms off the lobby, the kind we use for video analysis. No projector today, no slides about line choice. Just two chairs set at an angle, a bottle of water on the table, blinds half-closed against the grey outside. No incense, no candles, no “relaxing ambiance.” Just a man, a notebook, and me.
Julius Strasser looks more like an accountant than someone who’s supposed to crawl into my brain and rearrange furniture.
He stands when I walk in—mid-forties, lean, neat beard, glasses that fog a little from the hallway air: no tracksuit, no team logo, just a dark sweater and jeans. If I didn’t know better, I’d expect him to start the meeting with a PowerPoint about tax reforms.
“Fabio,” he says, offering his hand. Grip firm, not crushing. “Thanks for coming.”
“Didn’t have a choice, did I?” I say, dropping into the chair opposite his. “If I ignore the head doctor, they send physio after me next.”
One corner of his mouth lifts. “They send me to physio when I ignore my stretches, so it’s fair.”
I huff out a breath that’s almost a laugh. “You do stretches, too?”
“Occupational hazard,” he says. “I spend a lot of time listening to people’s worn joints.”
That’s… weirder than it should be. I glance at the empty notepad on the table. No laptop, no recording device. Just paper and a pen.
“Look,” I say, shifting in the chair, “I’m not totally new to this.”
His eyebrows tip up a little. “Not new to what?”
“All the head stuff,” I answer. “Autogenous training, imagery, breathing. Since my first World Cup year, it’s been ‘scan your body, relax your jaw, see the line.’ I could probably run the rookie workshop on that.” I half-shrug. “So I’m not sure whatelse there is you can offer… but if anyone’s supposed to help with this, it’s you, right?”
He doesn’t bristle. Doesn’t write anything down. Just nods once, like I’ve given him the weather conditions.
“Okay,” he says. “So why are you here?”
“Because I have a problem,” I say, and stop.
He waits. No rescue.
“And you obviously want me to name the problem, right? But isn’t that like… your job?”
“It is,” he nods, smiling benignly. “After you tell me what you think the problem is.”
“I lose focus,” I start and try to ignore the dull pressure in my forehead, like whatever is hidden in my head just doesn’t want to get out. Not through my mouth at least. “I mess races. It used to be easy.”
Yeah, that’s it, that’s what I came here to say.
I wait a moment, hoping for him to help me, but he doesn’t speak up. Obviously, that’s how this whole therapy shit works—let the idiot stew and then fish out the meat when it’s ready. And cut it into pieces.
I sigh, rub a hand over my face. “Winning, I mean. My life has always been a mess off the hill—parties, girls, family drama, all of it—and it never touched my skiing. I could still show up, switch on, and go. Now it’s not easy anymore. Same crap, same tools, different result.”
