Slopes of hazard

Skiing, ironically, is the safest thing you can do in St Moritz, says Rosie Paterson, who traces the Swiss resort's love affair with adrenaline-pumping winter sports back to a Victorian bet

- Rosie Paterson

B RITONS have such a reputation for behaving badly abroad that scientific studies on the phenomenon have previously been ordered.

And the bad behaviour isn't anything new.

Rumour has it that, in the mid 19th century, the residents of St Moritz in the Engadine Valley were so irked by merry English visitors hurling themselves down steeper parts of the village on crude sleds that they built them the Cresta Run. It is now the world's most famous toboggan track and the birthplace of modernday skeleton racing, a single-rider sliding sport that sees competitors lie face down on a sled that looks like little more than a kitchen tray.

It's not necessarily my weapon of choice against the icy serpentine chute that drops 515ft and sees riders grapple with 4G forces.

COUNTRY LIFE's former Deputy Editor, Rupert Uloth, is a fan, as is Lord Wrottesley, who is so good that he holds the record for the number of 'Classic' Cresta races won and was the first person ever to break the 50-second barrier (on February 1, 2015). The Irish sportsman, who has competed in bobsleigh for Great Britain and Northern Ireland, also holds the current Cresta speed record (82.87mph).

St Moritz has been inextricably twinned with modern winter sports since the 1860s, when hotelier Johannes Badrutt bet a group of four well-heeled English regulars that, if they agreed to stay on through the winter (it was customary for tourists to take to the mountains in the warmer months, for walking and bathing, and leave at summer's twilight, forcing the hotels to close for months on end) and didn't love it as much as predicted, he would pick up the tab.

Needless to say, Badrutt won and never did have to cough up the cash. Back in London, word soon spread, more hotels opened and more sports and activities were formalised. So headlinemaking was the resort's rise that it went on to host the Winter Olympics in 1928 and 1948.