The fact that Del Bosco wasn’t satisfied with bronze and went for silver on the penultimate jump, and ended up with his nose in the white stuff (...) seemed to encapsulate the drama and ensured the sport was welcomed with open arms by everyone into Olympic sport.
So, why the cries of dissent from much of the Alpine skiing fraternity? Of course, the “tradition” card. Alpine skiing has been most revered way of deciding who is the finest skier of them all for around a century, in competition at least: the female gold medallist Ashleigh McIvor says “ski cross is just a new form of ski racing, which has been around forever - racing your friends to the bottom”.
But in Britain, we don’t have the same connection with alpine skiing as those in The Alps or The Rockies, so there’s no reason for us to hate ski cross and every reason to love it. But if I was born into a alpine skiing family in Tignes, ski cross would would be like taking one of our most traditional, longstanding national sports and commercialising it... oh, wait.
Tradition is clearly very important to sport. Wimbledon whites, Cup Final Day, the Grand National on the BBC... all these are pillars of reference for us, traditions that will be constant no matter what’s going on in our own lives, and that will certainly enrich the lives of many. So therefore it’s going to be a shock when things change, as the wild children grow up to be wild adults. And as the old lady loses her friends, the OAPs must grudgingly rely on those wild children who to pay for their care homes with the money from the sale of their souls.
The TV money from Twenty20 has been vital to keep the county game in England alive, so the bacon and egg-wearing old boys must be happy that they can still read the Telegraph in peace at Lords on a Tuesday in late April and have a bit of a snooze afterwards, even if they have to put up with a few cheerleaders in bikinis on the odd evening in the school holidays. And as traditional winter events are under threat from the rock and roll X-Games, the Alpine skiing world must open its arms to Chris Del Bosco, let him keep his money to fuel his alcohol habit, and sit back to enjoy the chaos that follows.
By Will Atkinson
