There's no sport that cannot be played out on frozen water, according to the fabled Swiss ski resort of St Moritz. In fact, skiing, ironically, might be the safest thing to do whilst you're there, says Rosie Paterson. Britons 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. The world’s most famous toboggan track and birthplace of modern-day skeleton racing, a single-rider sliding sport that sees competitors lie face down on a sled that, to the uninitiated, 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 .
