Running wild
It’s 125 years since some foolhardy Brits invented bobsleighing
Photography: © Corbis
IT’S AMATEURISH, ARISTOCRATIC AND HAS SOMETHING OF A DUBIOUS REPUTATION. Yet the St Moritz Tobogganing Club and its frighteningly fast three-quarter mile, trough-like Cresta Run has given rise to not just one, but two Winter Olympic sports.
The snow-and-wood gulley, rebuilt by this British club on the slopes of the Swiss Alps each year just before Christmas, dates from 1885. Olympians tackled its 514 feet drop in both 1928 and 1948 when St Moritz held the Winter Games, reaching speeds of around 80mph.
This month, while Vancouver’s Winter Olympics hosts sled sports first pioneered at Cresta – bobsleigh and bob-skeleton (pictured) – the tobogganing club mark their 125th anniversary with a series of contests and parties.
It’s all fairly exclusive; Britain’s Lady Harriet Brabazon is the club’s membership secretary and women are only allowed on the run under mitigating circumstances. However, the club does allow one-off riders to try the Cresta Run under its supplementary membership scheme, for 600 Swiss Francs (£367). Pony up, lie down, and prepare to break if not the sound barrier then perhaps your collar bone.
www.cresta-run.com
www.thecresta125.com
