Chase of a Racer
By CONOR MADIGAN

We meet in Soelden in the sun at the bottom of the glacier after the season opener. I'm winded after sprinting from autographs and the AP, and she's fumbling for the keys to her red Quattro. She has no camera and is not seeking my scribbled-name keepsake.

We flail off-course when attempting the other's native tongue, so we exchange e-mail info. I somehow find an "A presto" to match her "See you soon," and she super-chips into the village for vino rosso and the night meant for me.

Instead, I ski back to the motor home and Jake's waiting gourmet, and we play Playstation so I can stay on the down-low. When I log-on from my laptop, she's already sent me her phone number in Sestriere. She wants me to call, but I'm too deep inside tomorrow's second run of slalom gates.

Three flights and four races later, I dial her on the way to Italy, thinking we can share a sleigh ride and chilled wine around Christmas. I hang up mid-ring when Jake's burning carbonara sauce smokes us out of our ride. The Bormio races get a weather cancel, and I handle press calls on the cell outside in the cold.

I win the Combined race at Kitzbuhel and try to duck the teen mob in town. I should start mentally prepping for Schladming, but I think only of her. Coach McQuade jabs that he's never seen his crash pilot show the fear of flight, but he doesn't know Italian women. More than her looks, it's the way she types "Have a good weekend!!" with two exclamation points that makes me weak.

Quattro's next message says world-famous Racer X now has a "red flag" by his name and has world-class excuses for not calling. I read it aloud, and Jake recalls my "crash or win" strategy on the phone in Park City to get a date who upchucked his rigatoni.

Jake lays down five Euros on Red Quattro not even awarding Racer X a start bib.

She waits all season for the call, the day before my last slalom at the Finals. I tip-cross and skid only because I've put her on a Mont Blanc pedestal, high above the white-circus groupies. I manage to transcend our language barrier and my aversion to the phone, the new nemesis of my skiing.

At the cafe overlooking the Sises piste, we finally sit together and try to watch the extra virgin flakes falling from the heavens through the blaze of photographic flash.

Un altro cappuccino? I ask her.

Per favore, she says.

This is all that passes between us for the next hour, all that needs to. Her light touch on my knee, like the alpenglow in our vista, bridges a mountain divide.

                                                                                          prev | next