Scary to Ski, Scarier to See

The ski lift goes up, goes up, goes up, past the internal checkpoints, past Anxiety, by Butterflies, beyond Gut Churn, over Don’t Look, into Nausea, above Nosebleed, approaching Adrenaline, ascending toward Euphoria, easing into Serenity.

The car seat sways, like a Ferris wheel’s. All around you: beauty. Down below: Death. Your life. Hanging by a cable. Your prayer: Save me, Lord, and from now on, I’ll be a good boy, stick to safer sports on Sundays, maybe go bowling.

Shut your eyes. Squeeze the lock-bar. No, open your eyes. Too much scenery to ignore. Too picturesque. Sun-glistened snow. Frosted flakes. Serpentine slopes. Ski bums and bunnies in purple wraparound sunglasses. Alpine railways. Trains being swallowed by mountain tunnels. Disneyland’s Matterhorn, multiplied by 10.

Land safely. Kneel. Kiss the ground.

Check out the starting gate. See where the Winter Olympics men’s downhill racers push off.

Look down.

Go on. Look down.

Gulp.

Quick, pick up your Adam’s apple from the ground, before somebody trips on it.

Look down again.

Go on. Be an adult.

Double gulp.

Quick, of what are you reminded?

Buzzz. Time’s up. Jimmy Stewart in “Vertigo,” right? Somebody just spun your eyeballs like the lens on a camera. You’re all out of focus. You’re going into a swoon. That can’t be a race course. No way this is a slope. This is an abyss. You go off this ledge, you’re never heard from again. They search for your remains with flashlights and husky dogs. All they find is your boots. Either that or Kathy Bates finds you and gives you the bed next to James Caan’s in “Misery.”

You don’t belong here.

Go back to the bottom.

Wait this thing out.

There, that’s better, isn’t it? The ride down wasn’t so bad. Here’s a good spot, right by the finish line. You can watch the whole race. That tiny speck up there at the top, that’s skier No. 1. He’ll be down in a minute. Maybe two minutes. That’s if he doesn’t go hurtling over the cliff into those fir trees, like that “Wide World of Sports” guy who’s been wiping out for about 30 years.

Wait a second. Where’d he go? Can’t see him any more.

I know. He had second thoughts. He went back. He decided to come back tomorrow, maybe try the men’s uphill.

Nope, there he is. Like a bat out of Helsinki. Look at him go. Weaving in and out. Zipping through those flags. Poetry in motion. Patrick Ortlieb is his name. Let’s see, where’s he from? Ah, Austria. What a surprise. Where’d you expect him to be from, Iowa? Of course he’s from Austria. If you are a male growing up in Austria, you’ve got two choices--ski or join a boys’ choir.

Whoosh. A spray of fresh powder. A round of applause. Ortlieb, 1 minute, 50.37 seconds.

That’s all? He got from up there to down here in 1 minute 50.37 seconds? Check him out. Don’t check him for steroids; check him for jets. Frisk the dude. Get the checkpoints on your walkie-talkies. See if he did the whole run or took the Rosie Ruiz shortcut. Maybe he skipped a couple of hills when nobody was looking, a hump here, a bump there.

OK. Ortlieb’s official. Give him the benefit of the doubt. Guy probably did do the whole course.

He won’t have the best time for long.

Let’s see, how many people behind him? Uh, 55. Frenchmen and Norwegians and Swiss. And four Americans. Make that eight Americans, if you count Canadians. Which doesn’t even include Brazilians and Mexicans and those three guys from Chile. All sorts of Americans out there.

Somebody’s bound to beat old Ortlieb. Maybe AJ Kitt from the USA--or, as some people initially thought of him, A.J. Kitt from the U.S.A. Or maybe Leonard Stock, another Austrian. Or Franz Heinzer, from Switzerland. Or Marc Girardelli, the lone Luxembourger. Or one of the homeboy French favorites, Franck Piccard, perhaps.

Or maybe Lotharchristian Munder, whose name I see on the list. Maybe I’ll root for Lotharchristian, if only for sentimental reasons. That was my father’s name.

And . . . they’re off. Down they come, one guy, three guys, five. Nobody beats Ortlieb’s time. Stock crashes. Heinzer comes out slow as catsup from a bottle. Kitt loses the whole kaboodle. The Lux runs out.

It’s up to Piccard if anybody’s going to overtake Ortlieb. He doesn’t. He’s too slow by 0.05 seconds.

That will teach him to dawdle.

So much for the men’s downhill. The Winter Olympics is off to a flying start. Tell me, do I have to go way up there again for the women’s downhill, or do they start a little closer, like, you know, golf?