The fact is that most English runners seem to be perfectly contented with just so much skill as will enable them to get up and down a hill at a moderate speed and without many falls. Having acquired this, they give up practising altogether, and devote the rest of their ski-ing lives to making tours, never attempting to become really fast or skilful runners or to go in for jumping, even in its mildest form.
It is rather curious that this should be the case, for most English ski-runners are young and active men, accustomed to other sports and games, who, I suppose, take up ski-running at least as much for its own sake as with the object of using it as an aid to mountain-climbing and touring.
Surely, then, one might reasonably expect that a fair number of them would become really fine runners, that nearly all of them would try to, and that even those who had no ambition to excel in the sport for its own sake would be anxious to increase their efficiency as mountaineers or tourists, and would therefore, at the very least, try to run in good style; for good style, in ski-running as in every other game or athletic sport, means economy of muscular force, which is surely an important consideration to the mountaineer.
Most good Swiss runners, I am sure, think that the Englishman is constitutionally incapable of becoming really good on skis. To me, at any rate, it is by no means surprising that they should think so, for, taking any average pair of ski-runners, Swiss and English, who are about equally matched in age, physique, and ski-ing experience, even if there be little to choose between them in the matter of skill, there is in one respect a very marked difference—the Englishman nearly always running more slowly and cautiously and altogether with less dash than the Swiss. In fact, not to put too fine a point upon it, the Englishman, as compared with the Swiss, generally shows what an unsympathetic critic might call a distinct tendency to funk.
How English and Swiss ski-runners compare, in this respect, with those of other countries I have had no opportunity of judging, but that, when compared with each other, there is this difference between them must be obvious to any impartial observer. If the Englishman’s lack of dash arises entirely from poorness of nerve, he is, of course, very heavily handicapped, though not, perhaps, hopelessly so, for patience, determination, and careful training will do wonders in the improvement of bad nerve. I should like, however, to think that there may be some more flattering explanation of this phenomenon—I have, for instance, heard it said that the fact that most Englishmen are unaccustomed to steep slopes may have something to do with it—but I must confess that, so far, I have not hit upon one that entirely satisfies me.
I have heard two excuses given (by Englishmen) for the low standard of English ski-ing as compared with Swiss. One is that the Englishman gets less practice than the Swiss. This is a mistake. The average English runner perhaps gets only three or four weeks each winter, but the average Swiss gets no more, for he has his work to do, and though he spends his winter in the snow he usually only goes ski-ing on Sundays. The best Swiss runners no doubt are usually guides, or men who spend most of their time in the winter on skis; but this is not always so, and I know more than one first-class Swiss runner who gets little more than one day a week. Among English runners the proportion of those who spend most of their winter on skis is much greater than among the Swiss; yet there are now many really first-rate Swiss runners, but, as I have said, hardly any English ones.
The other excuse is that most English ski-runners have taken up the sport comparatively late in life.
No doubt they have, and so, for that matter, have many of the continental runners—and a few of the best of them. But to begin late is much less of a handicap than might be imagined, for a man may become a skilful ski-runner without possessing any of the characteristics of extreme youth.
That is to say that, provided he has a fair stock of intelligence, patience, and nerve (and a good teacher), he need have no special aptitude for picking up the knack of unaccustomed movements, nor need he have more than ordinary strength and activity.
The games and sports which are most difficult to learn late in life are those which call for “knack”—in other words, the ability to perform easily a rapid and accurate co-ordinated movement of a number of muscles. If this movement is an unaccustomed one, the ability to perform it properly is only attainable by long practice.