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For non-racers, it is an enduring puzzle why outwardly rational people might be interested in standing around on cold, slippery, often dark, windy, snowy or rainy race arenas waiting seemingly countless hours to train on challenging, preferably icy, race courses, and then be willing to wait even longer on race days for two brief runs that the racer barely perceives or understand while they are in progress, or, for that matter, after the fact.  Sure, there is the companionship.  And the stark and startling beauty of the surroundings.  And perhaps a feeling of accomplishment, notwithstanding the frequent frustration of not achieving some aspirational level of skill or performance.  People who don't ski and probably most skiers who don't race might be slow to see the attraction.  There is, we would like to think, some glamour to the sport, at least at the highest levels, although admittedly not much glamour rubs off on most of us. And certainly the on-course drama is outwardly exciting, but probably not very enticing, to non-skiers.  To non-skiers, one of the great attractions of watching alpine racing is the warmth of the room where the television sits and the ready availability of beverages, snacks, and electronic distractions.  Indeed, for non-skiers one of the great attractions is the fact the living room where the television sits is not cold and windy and is not moving on a sheet of ice at 60 miles an hour, unlike those crazy people on screen.  The greatest risk those non-skiers confront is dropping guacamole and beer on the carpet when a racer on television catapults into the B-net at 60 miles an hour. The idea that someone would voluntarily push aggressively  - or at all - out of the Hahnenkamm start gate after staring down between one's ski tips at the icy track far below for nearly 60 seconds is alien to most non-skiers, indeed, almost everyone.  Even among racers, there wouldn't be much enthusiasm for doing that unless they were among the top 100 male speed skiers in the world.  Everyone else would have something better to do that day.  

Fundamentally then, what is the attraction?  Is it really just about speed and risk?  Are all other explanations just rationalizations to convince the unconvinced?  

Part of the attraction may be the tension between the inherent impossibility of perfection in an extremely difficult sport and the great pleasure of making one good turn, or maybe two good turns in a row.  Racers sometimes say to each other, "If it were easy, everyone would want to do it."  Usually the racers saying that didn't just win a race;  something triggered the comment, some adversity in weather or competition.  The comment reflects the ultimate silver lining in racing, and helps explain why the inherent adversity doesn't drive everyone away.  This element of the attraction comes down to success, even minor success, in achieving something - however limited - in a demanding, unforgiving, often uncomfortable, always expensive, sport.  But beyond that, we assume or believe, that everyone would in fact do it if it were easy.  For an annointed few (maybe as few as two in the world) it is "easy," at least in the sense they are successful by any standard.  For everyone else, it is not easy.   But what makes us think everyone would do it if they could?  It has to be some shared and implicit appreciation of something about the sport that is intensely attractive, so attractive it could not be resisted.  Something that can capture the mind and snare the soul.  Is there really something irresistible about the sport?  Does the sport actually have such magnetism, something that Odysseus could have resisted only by lashing himself to the mast?             

For racers the question is irrelevant.  You don't think about it; you just do it until something (poverty or injury or employment) stops you at least for a while.

There is an analogy in literature.   Romain Gary, the fine French novelist, wrote The Ski Bum (1965).  Lenny is the Ski Bum.  He lives to ski.  He escaped America to Switzerland so he almost never has to leave snow.  For him, summer is like death.  For him, descending below 6,000 feet in the summer to snowless city life is like death.  (Steve McQueen should have played Lenny in the movie version, and if he had, it would have been a great movie.  It is worth finding the novel.)  Many of the older Masters, who had been racing in the 1930s, were still racing into their late 80s.  

These racers, all NCAA competitors, make it look easy.

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