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I launched myself off rather haphazardly and went fairly wide into the tuck and onto the edges and just<br />
hung on for dear life. There was a lot of judder through the middle of the course, but my gym training<br />
was paying off and I held the gates. Unlike my previous technique, my skis were running as if on rails<br />
and, apart from the judders, I was able to stay on the edges at all times. As I was reaching the end, the<br />
likelihood of making each gate diminished and my lungs and thighs were begging for mercy, but I held<br />
on and slid through the finish line. As I shook my head, James came up to me and said “well done,<br />
that was a pretty good time”. I looked back to see it said 1:16. He said “I was 1:14 and Richard was<br />
1:15. As I watched others come down the times varied, but some were definitely slower than me. Not<br />
only was I not last, but I have never been only 2 seconds behind James !!!<br />
Fast forward again to Wednesday 3rd March. James turned up outside my flat in Knightsbridge in his<br />
‘Bling Bus’ at 7pm in time to catch the 9:40pm Eurotunnel train (which we duly missed) followed by a<br />
long overnight drive… we were off to the British Masters in Megeve, with a short detour via Andorra!?!<br />
We arrived in Andorra at Thursday lunch time and, after an altercation with Google maps, found our<br />
perfectly adequate, but somewhat basic hotel…after all we had shared smaller more spartan rooms<br />
in the past. We skied the afternoon in fog & rain, but thank heavens, because I felt like I was skiing<br />
for the first time. It took all afternoon for me to get my ski legs. It would not have been good to start<br />
the race like that straight off the bat.<br />
That night, James went off for the Captains briefing as the British Captain and on Friday morning we<br />
were up early, off to the small station at Arcalis for our first Super G. We retrieved our start numbers,<br />
grabbed a croissant and headed off for the inspection. On the lift up, we went over the course and I<br />
spotted a tricky bump & camber just leading into a gate and remarked “that’s the one we need to<br />
watch out for”, but James was looking elsewhere, unconvinced.<br />
The start of the course took us quite by surprise. Whilst we were well familiar with steep narrow<br />
couloirs (courtesy of skiing with guide Anthony Franklin) we had never expected to be racing down<br />
one in a Super G. It was a “hairy entry” and I figured I would have to ski like one to get down it!<br />
The start launched us off from a little hut perched on a mini hill on the side of the couloir, and a short<br />
distance across straight into a sharp left hand gate down the mountain. James was drawn before me<br />
again. He was turning well. Now my turn. I went for it – a bit messy and tentative at the first gate,<br />
then found the carve, and probably screamed for most of the way down! My thighs were like lead<br />
by the end, but I had completed my first Super G. As I went thru the finish, I heard the immortal<br />
words “For Great Britain, Alexander Oakes, with a time of 1min 24 seconds.”<br />
Of course this meant nothing to me at that point. My heart sank as the next two came in at 1.19, 1.16,<br />
but then 1.32 and 1.30 – "woo hoo1", I wasn’t last. James, bizarrely, was nowhere to be seen and then<br />
suddenly he appeared from above the finish gate. It turns out he had popped a ski…guess where…on<br />
that dodgy cambered gate I spotted on the way up! Luckily he still had his humour intact, because I<br />
was able to constantly to throw in the odd line, such as “for those of us who have actually completed<br />
a Super G”... it’s not often I get to say things like that to James, so I like to really milk it…<br />
That afternoon and on the Saturday we did some free skiing, racing each other down the mountain,<br />
practising race turns. This was all in vain as Sunday’s GS race was cancelled because it was too icy.<br />
Too icy…after Kaunertal, we laugh in the face of ice, we thought.<br />
So, we headed off to an earlier than planned exit to Mégève…for the British Masters, buoyed up by<br />
lots of Queen and Led Zeppelin, before arriving later that night.<br />
We found our way to our hotel in Sallanches (which James now knows well, having had to spend 4 days<br />
in hospital there after ‘behaving like a teenager’ in the park at the end of the season), about 25 mins<br />
outside of Mégève, in the valley on the way to Chamonix. A prompt start saw us up at Cotes 2000<br />
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