Europeish: Adelboden

Normally when I think about doing a park-and-ride to get to a major sporting event, I imagine that it will take forever to park and that you will wait for an hour for a bus to arrive and take you to the event. Not so in Switzerland, where the parking lot was a disused airfield, and there was a long queue of busses just waiting to take everyone to the event. We were in Adelboden in no time!

The weather had cleared nicely from the previous day, and we arrived just after the first racers had begun their descent.

Linda had bought tickets for the stands, but it took us a while to figure out the ticketing system so we ended up standing in one of the side stands, from where you could see the course perfectly well, but it was a real crush of spectators.

Once we figured out where we were meant to be (in the main stand with a view right up the course) the situation improved markedly and we had plenty of space to stand.

Of course it was amazing watching the skiers come down the mountain and to be in the crowd cheering enthusiastically. Naturally we didn't really know what was going on - not knowing the competitors or anything - but the atmosphere was the most important part.

In between the qualifying and final rounds we wandered around Adelboden a bit, although to be honest there wasn't much to see apart from the usual selection of holiday chalets.

We caught a lift up along the slalom course to check out the view from the top, where it was so cold water vapour was crystalising in the air and glittering in the sun (I tried to take some photos of this but it just looks like I have something on my lens).

After some lunch at the top we headed back down the mountain. By this stage the final runs were underway and we got to watch the racers from some different angles.

When we finally made it back to our spot in the stands the race was practically over. We watched a few more racers come down the tracks and with a couple of the last few racers crashing out it was all over much quicker than we expected!