1999 WMC GRINDLEWALD SWITZERLAND

(by JACK WHITE NATIONAL DIRECTOR)
To say this Masters World Cup was eventful would be quite an understatement. Most skiers traveled to Switzerland knowing the road and rail system into Grindelwald was closed due to avalanche danger, but anticipating these routes would be cleared prior to the first race date. "This was not to be".

After flying to Zurich and other airports and a three hour train ride to Interlaken, Wednesday Feb24th and thursday Feb 25th were trying days for many Masters from various countries. Upon reaching the Heliport at Interlaken, many were denied the only means of travel - via helicopter - to Grindelwald, even though many hundreds of other skiers and tourists were permitted this mode of travel. Heliport officials were saying that meetings were taking place to decide what would happen regarding WMC. These meetings finally did take place on Thurs Feb 25th at Interlaken. It was later learned that the whole fiasco was caused by some municipal politician from Interlaken, who thought it a great way to capitalize on having all these people stuck in his town spending money on hotels and food etc.

Eventually most Masters were flown to Grindelwald via Helicopter, an 8 minute flight in various size helicopters. The cost was approximately $50 Canadian. Due to these problems some European teams delayed their departure and arrived Sunday Feb 28th, when road and train travel commenced. The origional race schedule was to start on Sat 27th and continue through Mar 5th However this was changed and racing commenced on Monday Mar 1st with everybody doing 15km classic or free. Tuesday, M1-M6 did the 30Km classic or Free, Wednesday M7 and up plus women skied 10km. Thursday was relays and Friday, 2okm,30km and 50km races for all. How was that condensed format for recovery times??

Needless to say, there was a great deal of snow in Grindelwald. I recall that on Thursday, Feb 25th, more than a foot fell between 8am and noon. However the village was well equiped to handle these conditions. Again this year the races were not without incident. I won't go into the details on this subject. Several skiers took the wrong route, supplies of food and drink were slow and not sufficient at the longer races. The race office was small and understaffed and not open for long enough periods. The provision of results lists was unsatisfactory. These items will be passed on to future WMC host committees.

Considering all the difficulties encountered prior to and during this WMC, I'm certain we will all remember the warm sunshine, and spectacular mountains that dwarf this beautiful village and most competitors will have fond memories of participating and having given their best. Once again the Canmore group was out in force and gave a great account of themselves as statistics will confirm..

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