World cup ‘fever’

Last weekend, La Clusaz hosted the world cup of cross country skiing, or, in French, le coupe du monde de ski de fond (which rhymes quite nicely).

The high wind on Sunday closed any higher parts of the resort that had snow worth skiing on (although the wind blew that away too), a friend and I decided to check out the world cup. Please understand that I have no interest in cross-country skiing: I have tried it (once, in a competition for my university, and even the people who knew what they were doing fell on the downhill sections and looked unsteady at the best of times), and I think downhill skiing or telemarking is far more enjoyable – both for participation and watching.

But with nothing else to do, we walked to the hill in the distance of the photo and tried to figure out which countries had which outfits; we established, much to the horror of my French friend, that France had the terrible black and yellow lycra, perhaps inspired by the nasty Burton one-piece from a few years ago.

The highlight of the day was this guy carrying the flags of France, Norway and Sweden. I know, that’s not much of a highlight. I just can’t hype this sport. Anyway, the reason it was a highlight is because he seems to be hedging his bets pretty well there. I mean, those two Scandinavian countries are always going to do well in this sport, and it makes sense to carry a French flag in the somewhat Xenephobic environment of the Aravis region of France.

Meanwhile, I carried around my tiny plastic ‘Annecy 2018’ flag, but chucked it out when waving it caused the plastic support stick to bend.