High life
Downhill all the way
Taki
ack in the halcyon days of the late Forties, and throughout the Fifties and Sixties, the powers-that-be made sure the Winter Olympics took place in intimate Alpine villages in the order of the cuckoo clock. This was in keeping with the wealthy amateur idea of sport, while enabling RIWTs (Rich International White Trash), Beautiful People, jet-setting bimbos, as well as the odd Greek ship-owner, to feel sporty but safe in the kind of environment they were accustomed to.
There was St Moritz in 1948, where Zeno Colo won the downhill and Ari Onassis first saw snow; Cortina in 1956, where Toni Sailer won all three Alpine events and Linda Christian ran off with Alfonso de Portago; and Innsbruck in 1964, where the great Egon Zimmerman beat the field in the downhill in record time and the Aga Khan raced for Iran and did an Eddie Edwards.
The rot set in with Grenoble in '68. It was a lousy year to begin with, what with having to move to Megeve in order to watch my friend Jean-Claude Killy do a Sailer and win three golds. Grenoble wasn't intimate, and it was hardly Tyro- lean, but at least it was Europe, and the mountains were the Alps. It certainly wasn't Calgary. Calgary? I shudder just writing the word. As Al Capone said when he was told by his henchmen that he had to go to Canada to avoid the Feds, 'I don't even know what street that's on.'
I guess holding the Winter Olympics in an oil town full of glass and steel buildings where predators such as Shell, Mobil and Esso reign supreme is par for the course, once there are as many real amateurs competing as there are democrats in the Kremlin. Personally, I'd much rather be in Philadelphia, or Gstaad, as happened to be the case.
For any of you who may have been incarcerated in Albania for the last 50 years, Gstaad is the charming Bernese Oberland village that is known as the Mecca of the rich. When I first discovered the place it was as yet inessential to the status of the world's snobs that they be found skiing, and be seen apres skiing, in chic resorts. And it was light years before everyone who was anyone owned chalets with saunas, private cinemas and heated swimming pools. Not to mention their choppers parked outside next to their Rollses.
The focal point of Gstaad was and is the Palace Hotel, one of the world's greatest, and the Eagle Club, the sine qua non among snobs who ski and a hell of a lot who don't. These two institutions were mainly responsible for the coming of the nouveaux riches, the brassy and the vulgar. Last week I sat up at the Eagle reading all about my favourite ski resort in Tina Brown's organ, a magazine which deals with plutography, the study of the un- acceptably rich and pushy. The article was written by my old friend Bob Colacello, better known among us hacks as Bob Culacello. Bob has never been known to pull his punches: here's what he had to say about Gstaad in the February issue of Vanity Rich.
He announced that Valentino, the stuck- up seamster of overpriced clothes for old bags, was the ultimate Gstaad success story. He called Doris Brynner, the ex-wife of Yul, the arbiter of Gstaad society, and managed to drop the names of Lynn Wyatt, the wife of a Texas oilman I have yet to encounter in Gstaad, as well as that of Ron and Claudia Perelman, probably the ghastliest couple since Shamir and Rabin.
Now there is nothing wrong with getting it totally wrong about Gstaad, but it does bother me because more ghastly and repul- sive people will read about the place and flock to it. The Gstaad of the Olden and Hedy Mullener, of the Rossli of Papa Hemingway's time, of the Sonnen Hof, might even be discovered by them, and that will be curtains. I will probably have to move to Calgary.
The divisions between the Gstaad of the new and the Gstaad of old were never more evident than during the Olympic weeks. In fact, there was an Olympics of
'My palace or yours?'
sorts taking place right there, but it had to do more with social climbing than with sport. There was a three-day bash given by the adopted son of Axel Springer, with people like the Flicks and Gunter Sachs overrunning the place. Then an unknown Greek, a certain Tassos Xanthopoulos, gave a dance for the rest of us Greeks who had never heard of him. Finally, Princess Michael of Kent arrived with her husband of all people, and moved in to the chalet of Mohammed Al-Fayed, the Arab who owns Harrods. (She would stay there, wouldn't she?) I shall return to Gstaad in March, once the glitzerati have left, when the Gstaad of Bill Buckley, the Speelmans, the Mullen- ers, Goulandrises and Brundisfields, and yes, even if I have to say it, the Gstaad of Taki will be waiting for me.
Previous page
