The Downhill
Professional ski racing is full of heroes... and villains. A mystery novel.
Fiction by DAVID STEERS


                                  Chapter 3

I booked some serious downtime Sunday. I piled the stuff I'd need on the bed, then shoved it into an old equipment sample bag left over from my sales days. I was taking my ski boots because it had taken me a season of agony to get fitted. Ski boots that don't fit are cruel shoes indeed. Boot fitting is an art, and I was lucky my brother Mac was an artist whose medium was plastic. I knew I could borrow skis and poles from some of my old buddies who'd be at Whistler entertaining their more lucrative accounts.

The ski business is still largely based on perception—with a lot of show business thrown in for good measure. If I had a nickel for every time I'd heard "Sell the sizzle, not the steak," I'd be comfortably retired. The big shooters would fly their big clients out for the race and then they'd get together and moan that times were tough. The business was a lot more respectful of the bottom line now. A lot of excess fat had been trimmed. I guess I'd been part of the fat.

My traveling bag was gaudy with the manufacturer's name on every side but it was a snap to spot on luggage carousels. I took Currie to the park and played Frisbee with him for a few hours, his last real workout before his banishment to the kennel.

Back home, I ordered a couple of panzerottis and a salad from the local Italian eatery and ate them while I watched the news. There was a very short follow-up bit about the timing fiasco in Aspen. The word "sabotage" wasn't used, by apparently there were "suspicious circumstances" and the matter was being investigated. In hockey news tonight...

I turned the TV off, walked the dog, then turned in and read for a while, not long, because plane travel always tires me out. Airlines take all the inconveniences of a four-day car trip and cram them into four hours. I can never sleep on planes.

I tossed and turned for a while, grinning to myself in the dark at the prospect of my vacation, but not for too long. I woke up early, had a leisurely breakfast, and called a cab. When it arrived I threw the dog and my bag into the car and we headed first to the kennel, then north towards the airport.

Traffic was horrible in town and it took twice as long to drop Currie off and get to the airport as I'd thought it would. By the time we got there, I had 35 minutes to check in, clear security, and board.

I paid the cabbie, grabbed my bag and started running. Pearson International is a really big airport. They had to open the plane's door for me when I got to the gate. I thanked the attendant warmly between gasps. Life in the city wasn't doing anything for my conditioning. My brother was going to kick my butt on the slopes.


We'd grown up in a big house in Forest Hill, convinced we were just an average family. I really believed, until I was about eight, that everyone had a live-in nanny. We went to good camps in the summer, then joined our parents at the cottage at Honey Harbor and spent the winter holidays in our cabin near the Osler Bluffs ski area.

We sailed, swam, and skied our way through childhood. I was a voracious reader. My brother used to tease me about that. He only read when he had to. Mac spent a lot of his youth taking mechanical things apart and then trying to put them back together. He often succeeded. Occasionally they even worked better. When Dad needed a hand building or fixing something about the house he always asked Mac for help. He never asked me. Mac was an avid waterskier. I preferred sailing. Mac loved going into the woods with his BB gun. I preferred to take a camera.

It was skiing that got us. Dad had been a ski instructor in his younger days at Mount Tremblant and perhaps it was his love of the sport that influenced us. Mac and got hooked before we were six and eight.

We started racing in the Toronto area a year later. We moved on quickly to the Southern Ontario Division. We both persevered, with occasional time outs for girlfriends and school. When I was a junior in high school, Mac started beating me. At first it was just once in a while. By the time I was ready to graduate he invariably won. I studied English at the University of Toronto and Mac took Psychology of Sport at Ottawa U. When we competed at university ski meets he beat the pants off me. I didn't care that I had no future in ski racing. I loved the people, the life, and the challenges. Less than a week after I'd written my last exam I'd moved to Whistler. I was tired of school.

I spent a couple of years working as a liftie before snagging my dream job, pro patroller. I'd patrolled at Osler so I had some first aid, but I had to get a lot more, as well as blasting and avalanche tickets. Those cold, dark mornings spent traversing Whistler or Glacier bowls, ski cutting or bombing, then skiing the best uncut powder slopes I've ever seen—for pay. That was living.

It wasn't Never-Never land. Picking up wrecks was traumatic. Injuries seemed to be getting worse as more and more people skiied faster and faster. Equipment and grooming were getting better. New alpine lifts made areas accessible to skiers of all abilities but gave them less time to rest between runs. More people seemed to be wandering off the trails too, requiring arduous, but surprisingly successful, night searches. Far more people were found than not, in the dark, on a large mountain.

Eventually I realized I was on extended vacation. So I got the sales job. Then I moved back to Toronto.This wheel keeps on turning. Here I was, heading back to Whistler.

By the time I'd moved back to Toronto Mac had finished racing and had done some coaching with the Southern Ontario Division. He'd also started to get a reputation as a master craftsman with files and stones. Racer, coach, and technician are rarely combined in one person and as time went on the team realized what an asset Mac was. Now he was working in the big leagues, for the North American manufacturer of choice, an Austrian ski maker.

The Canadian team had had some very good years but injuries had marred the past two seasons. Downhill racing is still dangerous. The speed, the tight turns, some so tight that misjudging the line can often mean disaster. Course safety was starting to get the attention it needed only in the aftermath of some serious injuries and their concomitant lawsuits and criminal proceedings.

The sections that required skiers to run their skis flat and straight had been removed from most courses because it was safer for racers to be on edge and turning, even if the turns were really, really big. The netting alongside the courses had become far more effective. Racing still was a matter of calculated risks all the way down the course, risks that didn't always pay off.

We landed on time after a very loud flight. The cabin was full of business types off for brainwashing designed to turn them into a lean, mean corporate team by the end of the retreat. Rum and Pepsi was their drink. I recognized Mac from behind as I got to the luggage carousel. He was six feet tall, 200 pounds, with a little more muscle and a little less fat than I, but we were basically the same build. He had blond hair and blue eyes; my hair and my eyes were a perfect dark brown match. I was really glad to see him. I didn't tell him that, of course.

"Mac me boy!" I yelled at his back.

"Ian! How the hell are you?" Mac spun around, grabbed my hand, and pumped it. We grinned at each other.

We small-talked while we waited for my fluorescent blimp luggage to come down the carousel. It led the pack this time, my reward for being last on. We were out of the airport headed north on Granville Street in Mac's factory van in under 10 minutes. It was a typical early March afternoon in Vancouver. People were out cutting grass and watering their gardens. I loved the climate. What's a little rain? It beats the hell out of frozen pipes. Most of the old houses in Vancouver don't even have double windows. It doesn't get really cold at Whistler either, at least not by Ontario standards.

We drove through the West End, over Lion's Gate bridge, up Taylor Way and onto the Upper Levels highway. As we sped past Horseshoe Bay headed north on Highway 99, I leaned back in the seat and concluded that my holiday had truly begun.

On the way to Squamish we caught up on the last year. Mac had been to Austria twice, choosing new skis for his racers and learning the latest tuning techniques. He'd also been following the work of the Canadian coaches and trainers who were trying to find a way to decrease the number of World Cup ski injuries. The trainers were working on a new conditioning plan designed by team doctors from the UBC Sports Medicine facility. Initial results were encouraging.

Mac related that there hadn't been any breakthroughs on the equipment side, but cryogenic research was spinning off programs to speed recovery from injuries when they did occur. Everyone was guardedly optimistic. Knee injuries were a racer's nemesis. Nearly all sustain at least one serious 'knee sprain' requiring surgery during their careers. Some undergo five or six knee injuries during their career and retire with bodies that resemble those of veteran linebackers. Scars from operations, the occasional metal pin, possible eventual loss of mobility. Racers knew the long-term odds were 100 per cent against their staying injury free. The Canadian Alpine Ski Team had started to use the ironically appropriate acronym CAST.

The drive to Squamish is beautiful. If I traveled it a million times I'd still think it was beautiful. Growing up I'd believed for years that highway scenery was run-down warehouses and garish billboards. Howe Sound glimmers on the west side of Highway 99 almost all the way to Squamish. The densely wooded Coastal Mountains loom on the right. Swift creeks full of melted snow rush to the ocean in deep ravines crossing under the highway every few miles. I enjoyed the scenery while my brother shared the latest racing gossip.

Eric Tindle was aggressive and somewhat lacking in judgment. Typical of a 21-year-old male.

"People on the tour have a hard time with him," Mac said. "He's got a huge ego, which isn't exactly a downhill racer's worst enemy. He has the results to back it up right now. But he pisses people off. I think he's afraid he's going to lose his edge if he doesn't stay focused, but he's maniacal about it. He wants the overall downhill title more than he's ever wanted anything in his life and he's very close to getting it. I just hope he can keep things in perspective. He's wound so tight we're all waiting for him to explode."

I shot a slightly startled look at my brother. There was something in his voice and I wondered what he meant.

"With two races in Whistler now it should be interesting to watch the show unfold," I said lightly. "We may see some fireworks."

"The big surprise is ol' Heinz Stockl," Mac continued. "He's really surprised us. We all thought he'd show up for the races, finish mid-pack if he was lucky, and retire gracefully at the end of the season. That isn't happening. Maybe marriage suits him." Heinz had married Monika Brenner, the very beautiful and very young daughter of his ski sponsor, a year ago. The media was all over it. Herr Gustav Brenner had always been against the marriage, but now he was even more opposed.

"Heinz and Gustav don't even speak anymore. People say this is the end of their sponsorship arrangement. Word is they hate each other. Heinz and Monika seem happy though. She's been a tonic for old Heinz. It's too bad Gustav can't find the same kind of tonic for his business."

I laughed at Mac's prescription for Gustav Brenner's business. He'd been making skis for 40 years but he hadn't positioned the company properly for the new millennium.

In the seventies a bunch of companies made skis, a bunch made boots, and a few made bindings. In the early eighties these small companies began merging and diversifying. A number of large companies now offered a full product line: skis, boots, bindings, and ski clothes, as well as golf clubs, tennis racquets, in-line skates, and all the clothes for these sports too.

The conglomerates were slowly but surely eating up market share and driving the family-run small specialists, run by the founders' sons and daughters, out of business. Their unit cost was always higher than that of the conglomerates. They had no excess cash to plough back into R&D. One big company shared technology among its ski, tennis, and Formula One race car divisions. It didn't sound like being Gustav Brenner was a lot of fun these days.

Mac noted that Hiro Takaedo was turning out to be a very classy competitor. Everybody on the circuit liked him. He was charming, interested in everybody, and had a screwy sense of humour. He put Heinz's last trophy in the operator's cab of a skyscraper crane at a development near the ski hill. Heinz wasn't happy about having to climb up the machine to retrieve his trophy. Hiro had left him a map to the cup's location. He was even less pleased to see photographers appear as he neared the top.

Then there was Paul Tellier, a very young, a White Circus rookie. Early season injuries had taken out the veterans and Paul was now the team leader. He'd had the best results of the younger skiers left in the hunt. It wasn't an enviable position for a rookie.

It's hard to lead a team if you've never seen it done but Paul was trying. Mac felt he was doing a good job, and everyone was pulling together. Some of the coaches thought that if Paul survived this year he'd be a very strong competitor mentally. He had all the natural ability in the world. Under very difficult circumstances he'd managed to end up in fourth place in the standings with two races left.

Any racer or coach knows the mind wins downhills. Some courses suit a particular body type or skiing style, but downhill racing is musty a mental struggle. The skier who's focused exclusively on the zone when the start gate opens who wins the race. A winning mental attitude in a young racer is a bigger coaching challenge than teaching a skier how to hurtle off a cliff like Hot Air at 80-plus kph. Racers need to be taught to win.

Paul didn't have the benefit of the veterans' knowledge, or the chance to use them as role models because they just weren't there. They weren't there to ski against anyway, and that's what it takes. A role model on crutches doesn't quite cut it. Paul's results were a testament to his mental and physical abilities.

We got to Squamish around dinner time and pulled off the road to order from the drive-through on the corner of the main drag. The Squamish I'd known couldn't have supported a single fast food franchise. But it was a Vancouver bedroom community now and every fast food chain had a spot on the highway.

I'd been working pretty much non-stop for Dad and I told Mac about some of more difficult and entertaining cases when we got back on the road. Most insurance frauds know they're taking a big risk but the payoff makes it seem worth the gamble. When you catch them they tend to give up graciously. Not all though. I'd been shot in the arm in September. I could still feel the furrow the bullet had made.

I'd spent two days in hospital. The shooter had apparently believed his standing in the community would deflect suspicion when he tried to collect on a $2 million policy, but questions about his liquidity prompted by the unusual size of the new policy had stirred him to flight. Unfortunately, he'd fled while I was interviewing him and he'd found it necessary to flee through me. Luckily he had no idea how a pistol really worked. Of the six bullets fired, only one had hit me. Mac hadn't heard much about this episode yet. I thought he was rather impressed, although naturally he didn't show it.

"You dolt. Can't you think of a better way to prove someone's guilt than offering yourself as bait?"

"If, for the remotest of milliseconds, I'd thought his guy could possibly have had a gun I would never have approached him," I answered. "As it was, when the police responded, they didn't believe a preacher had shot me. 'A guy dressed like a preacher,' they kept saying. Then he made a play for one of their guns as they were putting him in the patrol car.”

Mac laughed. "Would you consider giving up the religious aspect of your work? It might be safer."

"Yeah, I've been considering that," I replied as we crossed the railroad tracks by Function Junction and arrived in Whistler.

I was looking forward to a lot of skiing and a lot of catching up with my brother. I was also piqued by his comments about Eric tindle. Hot emotions, mysterious sabotage, enraged fathers in law... The small world of professional ski racing was never boring, that's for sure.

But curious as I was, I was completely unprepared for the events that would soon unfold in this wonderful winter playground.


                                       Next: Mac's new local enemies...


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