Speed
“Can you imagine being in a really, really hot frying pan and not being able to escape?” asks Jan Farrell, a 34-year-old speed skier from Great Britain and the 2014 world speed skiing champion.
The Englishman knows the feeling. In Vars, France, in 2016, he hooked an edge on course. Miraculously, he walked away from the crash with a shredded suit, second-degree burns, and heavy bruising.
A speed skier’s world unravels before their brain can catch up. A groove in the snow, a misangled ski, and before the mind even realizes it, the body is in a 200 kilometer per hour slide for life. Snow becomes fire—the custom-made speed suit designed to eliminate wind resistance doing little to relieve the scorching friction of skin on frozen water.
Surrounded by the picturesque couloirs of the Andorran Pyrenees, Farrell joins 62 of the world’s fastest skiers at the top of Grandvalira Resort for the 2017 FIS Speed Skiing World Cup Finals. As he readies for his run, he admits the mental scars from his slide have lasted a little longer.
The April sun is warm, but the mood in the starting corral is not. Conversations are limited to single words, each competitor clawing for the mental tipping point that will push them through the start gate and a kilometer straight down the 50-degree course.
To increase speed at the finals, officials added 30 vertical feet to the course by constructing a scaffolding ramp with artificial field turf. One by one, skiers make their way up the metal ladder with their massive skis to the start area, their tight red speed suits stretching
