Fifty years ago: Miracle on wheels

In March of 1969, I had decided to join my friends Michel Duret, Pierre David and Borolli (I can't remember his first name) to travel from Haute-Savoie to the Pyrennees in order to take the “Capacité à ski exam” which was the unavoidable “sesame” towards a ski-instructor career.

The exam, that could only be taken three times, consisted in essence of a timed slalom in which contestants were expected to finish with a certain percentage of a top skier time, then show their ease in some god-awful crud, on steep terrain, and execute as flawless a series of clean parallel christie turns as they could, that represented the perfect rendition of the ideal turn representative of the French ski technique at the time.

The four of us piled up in the Peugeot 404 of Michel's dad, strapped our skis on its roof and headed for a 500 miles road trip.

We first made a short overnight stop at Montpellier, in the south of France, and didn't sleep to long as we resumed our travel around 5 am the following morning. I don't remember exactly which Pyrenees ski resort we were headed to, but what's still clear in my mind is that it had rained a lot the night before.

When we got to a small place called Gigean, just 12 miles after leaving our hotel, the two-lane highway was literally flooded and as its surface slanted somewhat, the left wheels of the car got hydroplaning and slammed us smack into one of the many large trees that lined up the road.

Since none of us wore seat belts, and the four doors of the sedan blew open as a result of the harsh impact, we found ourselves seating or laying in the middle of the road among the scattered skis, while one of us almost drawn as he was thrown into a deep ditch that bordered the road.

We were so lucky; we could all have been killed!

I think the cops and the ambulance came, took us to the Montpellier hospital where fortunately, just minor fractures were diagnosed on some of us.

Sadly, this was also the end of our exam and we returned home via rail, bruised and disappointed. I don't know about my mates, but this accident would have some far reaching consequences for my future, that I'll detail in the next blog...