IN A little puff of snow powder, he was gone. It was my first day and my tired
legs were howling in protest. Antoine Dénériaz, Olympic gold medallist,
local hero and poster boy, had told us to follow him.
All I had to do was go down - straight down. But while he sliced up the snow
elegantly, I just gathered momentum. What started with speed ended in a
tangle of skis and ice just before I bulldozed a group of children.
Antoine just smiled at his awkward charge, then sped off again. Humiliation -
but it was the closest I will get to an Olympic pursuit and worth all the
pain.
As I sat in the French village of Morillon, surrounded by posters of
“Antoine”, I began to decipher what was written on the cable cars. Each had
“Bravo Antoine!” stuck to its windows in big italics.
But what seemed like an outbreak of boy-band mania soon began to make sense.
The 32-year-old burst into the limelight with a surprise win in Italy in
February 2006.
A month later he was injured in competition and later forced to retire. Now he
is back on the slopes and in between jet-setting and stints on television,
he plans to offer ski sessions to those who want the Olympic experience.
Just remember those turns.
There is no escaping Antoine - not that it is a bad thing to have a superhero
politely correcting your “technique” - but pictures of him are everywhere,
his family and friends are all ski instructors and locals, and his father
was even re-elected as mayor while I was there. Just say Antoine's name and
doors open for you across the slopes, and a vin chaud suddenly
appears on the table.
The Morillon boy did good, and it is difficult to see how the village will
ever take him off his podium - a week in Morillon and you, too, will be
chanting the mantra.
It is easy to be oblivious to local character once you are wrapped up in four
synthetic layers and seeing the world through a bright orange lens.
Even the villages can seem like ready-made packages: take a small church, add
a few mountains, a bar or two, a light sprinkling of locals, then allow to
chill for a week. Morillon has all those ingredients, but with a vivid dash
of character that comes across in the locals' pride.
Here, the minute I walked back into my hotel, Le Morillon, they looked at me
with glee and almost whispered: “You've just been with Antoine, haven't you?”
But it is not just the golden boy. The village is built around a 16th-century
church, and it feels cosy and authentic, even if it is ambitious enough to
shout about its successes, and sponsor a boat in this year's French solo
grand prix, the Solitaire du Figaro. (No prizes for guessing which Olympic
star was pictured on the sail.)
It is a summer resort as much as a winter resort - so if you prefer your
adrenalin warm, then you can mountain-bike down the slopes in the summer. If
you would rather not be exerting yourself at all, whatever the season, there
is a lake to savour, a weekly market and a club to keep the children busy.
Morillon's one hotel is just as much a family affair as the rest of the
village. While the parents usher the guests upstairs, their daughter, a
trained masseuse, unknots tired shoulders downstairs. The restaurant menu
has Savoyard flavours, but is broad enough to reassure fussy eaters - and
the Raclette evening should give you something to burn off on the slopes.
The comfortable rooms manage Alpine style discreetly, which is no small feat,
and it gets a little more cosmopolitan downstairs in the spa area.
The village is at 700m - and mid- March, I was pushing it for snow. People
kept telling me that if I had come earlier, I could have skied all the way
down to the village. Either way, a cable car will speed you up to its
high-tech counterpart, Morillon 1100 (Les Esserts) and on to the 265km of
pistes in the Grand Massif, which sits between Geneva and the Mont Blanc.
That's the joy of Morillon - you get to ski the same area as Flaine for less
money but more personality. Don't be put off by the strong euro - pre-pay
for as much as possible in pounds before you go, and you will have to fork
out only for drinks and lunches on the slopes.
If this year is set to be a bumper one for snow in the Alps, last year it was
the snow cannons that kept me skiing in the lower parts of the slopes. After
a few days, the spirit of Morillon had me thinking about the mountains. How
could snow cannons and an increasing number of ski lifts be good for the
slopes?
Benoit Gallienne, of the Grand Massif lift pass company, swiped away this
suggestion: “We're not expanding, we're refining.” Cannons were used on a
maximum of 30per cent of the slopes, he said. Better lifts also meant less
waste. Among the statistics, there was one thing that he and others
repeated: “What's important is teaching people about the mountain.”
Education comes in many forms in the Grand Massif. Local tours will take you
snow-shoeing through pristine parts of the slopes - daytime and nightime -
to give you a lesson in nature far from the crunch of the pistes. Then there
is the more renegade shape of the snowboarder group Mountain Riders, which
teaches people how to care for the slopes.
One of their activities is to trawl the area in spring when winter litter has
come to the surface. Last year they collected 30,000 cigarette butts for
every ten pylons. That made my friend put her cigarettes away.
I explored the Grand Massif more as I got my ski legs back, and despite my
growing fondness for Morillon, a more modern creature intrigued me as I made
the most of the wide, open slopes higher up. Flaine, at 1,600m, may look
like brutish prison blocks from a distance, but get closer before you
dismiss it.
Its Bauhaus architecture echoes the mass of surrounding rock; a Picasso
sculpture is planted casually among the buildings; and who can resist a red
run called Mephisto? However intriguing, I am not sure that I would have
stayed there overnight, and was glad to get back to convivial Morillon, my
adopted village.
Bravo Antoine indeed.
NEED TO KNOW
Getting there Peak Retreats (0844 5760170, www.peakretreats.co.uk)
offers a week's half board at Le Morillon hotel from £539pp. The cost
includes Eurotunnel, with free FlexiPlus upgrade, for car and two people.
Information: www.ot-morillon.fr, www.antoine-deneriaz.com
