WINTER SPORTS.
[TO THE EDITOR OP THE “SPECTATOR.'rj
SIR,—Being away from home, my Spectator for the 11th inst. has been delayed in reaching me, and I have only just read the somewhat pessimistic letter on winter sports published in that number, which, with your permission, I should like briefly to refute. Your correspondent has no quarrel with the winter sports themselves, but with the way they are carried out, contending they are not adequately supervised. Now it is on this point of supervision that I wish to lay stress, and I have had experience of Marren, Wengen, Adeiboden, Grindelwald, Grimmi-Alp, Pillars, Montaua, Davos, and Morgins.
Unless beginners disregard the expert advice that is always on tap in the hotels in all these villages, they are safer and almost as well supervised as when crossing a London street under the genial protection of a policeman. It is obvious that adults cannot be coerced, only warned ; and if beginners, elated at the ease with which balance on ski is attained, essay to jump, they are simply riding for a fall. Personally I have never come across an example of this rashness; in fact, as a nation we are considered by the leading ski-runners as hardly adventurous enough.
But to come to statistics which I have just obtained from Dr. Lemon, the official father of all the visitors in this village. From before Christmas there have been continually close on two hundred, an ever-changing population, mostly composed of beginners in Alpine sports. Here is the list of accidents: one dislocated shoulder, two sprained ankles, two sprained knees. No one could pronounce this a heavy casualty list. Not a bone broken by one of the continually changing two hundred. Just a few sprains and one dislocated shoulder ; surely a less hazardous mode of life and better supervised than that of the wayfarer who braves the traffic of a big city of to-day. Your correspondent's sinister suggestion that "so very little is heard of winter sport accidents " is easily explained. The simple reason is that there are so few to hear about. And this particularly applies to ski-ing, the sport that has so rapidly outstripped all others in popularity. Of course one cannot help sympathizing with your correspondent for the unfortunate accident from which he is still suffering, but it seems hardly fair on winter sports to suggest that because he met with a bobsleigh accident—after sunset, too—that they are not care- fully enough supervised. And I would remind him that there are centres where bobsleighing—admittedly the most dangerous and least patronized sport—is very little practised.—I am,
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