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    the Cresta Run: Gentlemen, Count Your Bones!

    For 125 years, the death-defying members of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club have thrown themselves, one by one, headfirst down the steep, narrow Cresta Run. Invented by the British, the Club is British-run to this day but it has always attracted the cream of the international jet set, prepared to risk broken bones – or worse.



    This delightful insanity began in the winter of 1884/85, when British visitors to St Moritz turned the lighthearted pastime of tobogganing into a serious sport.W. H. Bulpetts, an English Major, worked with an Australian enthusiast to design an ice channel, three quarters of a mile long, between St Moritz andCelerina. With a total drop of 514 feet through 10 banked turns, and a gradient of up to 1 in 2.8, gaining speed was never a problem. Riding ‘skeleton’ toboggans, heavily ballasted with lead, the officers, gentlemen and aristocrats launched themselves into the abyss, without brakes. Within five years, all riders were using the now traditional headfirst riding position and speeds of up to 80mph became possible.Cresta riders follow the club’s unique rules and customs, with traditional clothing favoured. There is a noticeably military ethos; no bad thing in such a dangerous sport. Although it’s a playground for the rich, the famous and the titled, theCresta Run is not a snobbish clique. Anyone with the courage, the manners and a pure sporting spirit is welcome, regardless of class. It just helps if you like gin and tonic with your adrenalin.Apart from the British, the Cresta Run has attracted a passionate following of international celebrities over the years, including playboy industrialist Gunter Sachs, Fiat patriarch Gianni Agnelli and top auto industry figure, Bob Lutz. Although women have been barred from riding since 1929, the social membership includes such stars as Brigitte Bardot. Relaxed but elegant, the Cresta Runseems slightly eccentric; non-British members see it as a charming last outpost of the British Empire.
    © Jason Larraman
    Behind the fun, danger still lurks. Between them, innumerable riders have managed to break every bone of the human body at least once. Since 1885, there have been over 500,000 rides and 28,000 falls – but only four deaths. Beginners are lectured with the famous ‘Death Talk’ in their introductory lesson, which includes a collage of interesting X-ray images. Those who do fall are instructed to stand up (if possible) and signal their survival by waving to the Control Tower. Only then may they depart for the krankenhaus (hospital).
    © Max Galli / Jason Larraman
    There are two starting points on the Cresta Run. Beginners must ride competently from the starting box at Junction, outside the Clubhouse, before being allowed to start from Top, which is considerably higher up the valley. One corner, Shuttlecock, acts as a safety valve and it’s especially tricky from Top. Then taken at over 50mph, riders steer by alignment of the body. Those who get it wrong tend to fly over the top, harmlessly at that point into soft straw and loose snow. Statistics show that one in 14 rides ends there. Fallers then qualify to wear the Shuttlecock Club tie. Steering in the lower slopes is more by movement of the head in the airflow. With one’s face inches from the ice, the notorious ‘Cresta Kiss’ needs no explanation.
    © SMTC /Max Galli
    Beginners who follow instructions properly, by raking hard with their spiked boots, always get to the bottom safely on their first ride. The risks rise as speed is increased and expert riders use different boots, with no spiked rakes. Everybody feels apprehensive before starting and, once on the move, the Cresta Run feels incredibly fast. Even first-timers are convinced they’ve broken the sound barrier. At lunch afterwards, in the Sunny Bar of the Kulm Hotel, daring exploits can be explained at length. The Run is closed in the afternoons, for maintenance and to avoid damage from the sun.
    © Jason Larraman
    The Cresta Run is a favourite destination for many members of the British armed forces, including such stars as RAF fighter pilot and World Land Speed Recordholder, Squadron Leader Andy Green. However, the locals often dominate the results and St Moritz greengrocer, Nino Bibbia, won the ‘Grand National’ no fewer than eight times. That honour is now shared by Franco Gansser. Nevertheless, British rider James Sunley holds the record from Top, which he set in 1999 at 50.09 seconds, making an average speed of 53mph.For evening entertainment, there’s always the Dracula Club, by the start of the nearby bobsleigh run. Built in 1974 by Gunter Sachs, even the Dracula Club can seem frightfully British at times. The Cresta season runs from about December 20 until the end of February or early March. The Run is still crafted by hand every year, out of the ice and using the natural contours of the valley. An exhibition, celebrating 125 years of the Cresta Run, is being held until May in the Design GallerySt Moritz. See www.stmoritz.ch.
    Many more pictures of the Lake Parade and Uphill Cresta events can be found in our extensive gallery. Also, do visit the website of official Cresta photographerRyan Larramanwww.crestaphotos.com, where you can order photographs and buy prints of the 125th anniversary celebrations.Text: Jan Baedeker & Tony Dron (himself a wearer of the Shuttlecock Club tie; and for 35 years a member of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club)
    Photos: SMTC (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 9, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16), Jason Larraman (6, 8, 11), Max Galli (7, 10)


     The Classic Driver 

    Getting Ready for the Cresta

    The St Moritz Tobogganing Club is an institution like few others. Since 1885, men of courage have dared to plunge head-first on a toboggan down the famous Cresta Run. With the official season opening on 19 December, Classic Driver follows one Cresta rider preparing for the 2012/13 season. 

    Much has been written about the SMTC – most of it inaccurate. This is due, in part, to the careful way the Club protects its members from outside intrusion. It has created the ‘myth’ - but it underplays the hard work of the organising committee and its many Arbeiters to make every Cresta season an unforgettable happening. The construction of the Run (and the installation of timing equipment) involves many day-and-night shifts before it can be officially declared open.



    And that’s just for the Run. Our rider will need a toboggan on which he can rely to complete the 3/4-mile course. Urs Vescoli, himself a very successful skeleton rider with international experience, is one of the few craftsmen in the world who make the special ‘carriages’ for the SMTC. His metalworking workshop is located in the sleepy valley between Zurich and Chur, on the way to St Moritz.
    There are three types of toboggan: American, Traditional and Flat Top. The two most commonly used are the Traditional (with its sliding seat) and the faster Flat Top. We accompanied our rider as he collected his new Traditional (built the same way as it was in the 1930s), and he explained why the sled, which takes many days to make, looks as it does: “It’s pared to the absolute minimum – nothing is surplus”. Every single toboggan is handmade and unique.

    It's hard to imagine descending the ice channel lying on more than 66lb of heavy sleigh, as it, plus the rider, rapidly accelerate on the glassy surface. The rider will quickly reach high speeds, with the ever-present danger of a ‘Cresta Kiss’ – the removal of skin from the face as it makes contact with the icy run – which has left deep scars in some of the riders' faces.
    Clearly, Bentley didn't consider the transportation of Flat Tops when it designed the interior packaging of the latest Continental GTC. It doesn't fit in the boot. So there’s only one thing to do: place the sled in the area behind the front seats. It’s a one-way trip, after all, and the roof is going to stay open. This isn't seen as a problem by the Club Member we are accompanying.


    Arriving in a snowy St Moritz - and entertained by some interesting Cresta stories - we park outside the Junction Hut, the place where the toboggans are stored. ‘Junction’ is the starting point for the intermediate-distance runs. ‘Top’ is 352 yards higher and a run from Top can be made in just over 50 seconds, with an average of around 53mph and a terminal speed at ‘Finish’ of close to 80mph.
    There’s much activity. The huge red safety ‘cushions’ are being put into place at ‘Shuttlecock’, the course’s most famous curve, an accident at which qualifies the rider for membership of the Shuttlecock Club. On average, one in 19 riders will exit at Shuttlecock - hence the 25 safety mats which protect the unlucky from harm. It takes the 12-strong team of experienced Italian and Portuguese course-builders nearly two months to build the Run: first, they build the section from Junction to Finish, which takes just under four weeks. Then, while nine of them support the daily Cresta riding, the remaining members of the team create the section from Top to Junction in around three weeks.


    Together with 'our' Cresta rider, we pass through the metal gates with the hexagonal orange, red and white ‘SMTC’ badge, and cross the threshold to the members-only club. The Clubhouse Dressing Room is where the riders prepare for the run. Alongside the modern racing suits are the traditional wrist, knee and elbow pads that have been used for over 100 years. One can imagine the electric atmosphere here, early on a sharp, icy morning – when the ice is at its best.
    The Club’s predominantly ‘British’ atmosphere is in keeping with the fact that the SMTC is primarily about enjoying oneself, both on the course and, importantly, at social occasions. Not for nothing does the selection committee, when considering a new application for membership, ask itself “Will they be a fun member?” The SMTC is unique, but as long as applicants show courage and are willing to join in with the traditions of the Club and its members, they will always be welcome.
    Related Links

    A history of the Cresta Run: 125 Years of the Cresta Run: Gentlemen, Count Your Bones! 

    The website of the St Moritz Tobogganing Club: www.cresta-run.com

    The website of Urs Vescoli: www.vescoli.com
    Text: J. Philip Rathgen (classicdriver.com)
    Photos: Jan Baedeker

    STEVE MCQUEEN REMEMBERED | FORMER LOVER, FELLOW RACER



    1960 Lime Rock Nationals– Denise McCluggage sits on the grid  while SCCA gets things straight.
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    Back in 1955 or so, a young Denise McCluggage had a chance encounter with a then unknown Steve McQueen which led to a brief affair and a long-lasting friendship. They would be separated by their own career ambitions, and the many demands and erratic schedules that come with the territory. That said, McCluggage managed to stay in touch over the years. She herself would go on to become a legend in the world of auto racing– a renowned driver, writer, and photographer for over 50 yrs. McCluggage has won trophies around the world and raced for Porsche, Jaguar, Lotus, Mini Cooper, Alfa, Elva, OSCA, Volvo, among others. In 1961 she won the grand touring category at Sebring in a Ferrari 250 GT, and in 1964 McCluggage scored a class win in the Rallye de Monte Carlo for Ford. She shared her remembrances of McQueen and their relationship years after his passing, published in AutoWeek magazine back in 1981. She recalls a young, lean McQueen who was already obsessed with cars and racing, who swept her off her feet with his searing looks, charm and well… incongruity, as she puts it.
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    1955, Steve McQueen as he looked back in the day, running around the Village w/ Denise McCluggage – Image by © Roy Schatt
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    Shortly after our reunion he had sidled up next to me and whispered in my ear: “I’m falling in love all over again,” and given me the full brunt of the smile. My response had been an instantaneous hoot of laughter. –Denise McCluggage
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    I first saw Steve McQueen in front of Joe’s luncheonette on West 4th St. in Greenwich Village. He wasn’t *STEVE McQUEEN* then, just Steve McQueen, Village hang-about. He was leaning against his cream-colored MG-TC holding a new leather-covered racing helmet and telling someone how some friends of his in England had sent it to him. And, man, that was too much!
    I was on my way into Joe’s for a toasted bran muffin. Joe’s is long-gone, but at one time tout le village passed through there. That was before the Village was quite so boutique-y or self-consciously freaky. It was just a place to live.
    Being a TC owner myself (my second — this one red) and interested in racing, I stopped to listen and stayed to talk.
    Steve it seems, was an actor. Well, I knew something about actors having been married to one rather recently, albeit briefly. And I had studied the craft myself at night classes at the Neighborhood Playhouse (the one continuity of my life has been taking classes– in anything). So Steve and I had a wide range of commonality.
    And I was touched by his almost waif-like quality– his delight and genuine surprise that someone would go to all the trouble to send him a present, particularly one he really dug. There was this incongruity in Steve’s vulnerability, his cock-of-the-walk posturing, his jive talk. And if there’s anything I’m a sucker for, it’s incongruity.
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    1955, Steve McQueen as he looked back in the day, running around the Village w/ Denise McCluggage – Image by © Roy Schatt
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    So the conversations continued. Then and later. At Joe’s over toasted bran muffins and at my five-flight walk-up around the corner. Indeed, we became something of a Village “item,” which surprised me. But then MG-TCs — or any sportscars — were comparatively rare, and two of them parked nose-to-tail on Cornelian Street didn’t go unnoticed. One regular at Joe’s, (as pleased as a successful matchmaker) said, “I’ve been watching those two cars around here for months and I knew it was inevitable that you’d finally get together.”
    But it wasn’t like that at all! Well, it was a little like that, but not such a big deal.
    I’ve been trying to remember what exactly was the Big Deal in my life at that time. The year must have been 1955 or 1956– that means it was after I had become sports writer for the New York Herald Tribune and before I got my Jaguar and raced my first SCCA National at Montgomery, NY.
    Steve was at a nowhere place in his career– all possibilities and promise. But every actor I knew, including my ex-husband, had possibilities and promise. And little else.
    But possibilities turned into actualities for Steve shortly thereafter, and he was off for the Coast, eventually to become Josh Randall on TV. I left the Tribune, kept racing, published Competition Press. Stuff like that.
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    A brilliant photo of racing legends Juan Manuel Fangio, Stirling Moss, Denise McCluggage, Pedro Rodriguez, Innes Ireland, and  Ronnie Bucknum. via
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    The next time I saw Steve McQueen must have been at Sebring in 1962. He was driving an MGA for BMC (British motor corporation). I was driving an OSCA (Officine Specializzate Costruzioni Automobili) with Allen Eager, a jazz musician with whom I had won the GT category with the year before. Allen had known Steve in the Village even before I had, and long before I knew Allen.
    “Hey, man,” Steve said to Allen in a conspirator’s whisper. “I bet we’re the only two guys in this race who ever…” And he made toke-taking gestures with his thumb and forefinger. Allen’s answer was to start a hand for his pocket. “It just so happens…”
    “Hey, man, what are you doing!?” Steve glanced around in a minor panic, his hands pushing disclaimers. I thought that was unfair to Allen. Allen had thought that Steve had gone Hollywood hypocrite. To me it meant Steve had Made It and wanted to Keep It. (This was 1962, remember.)
    He had made it. People in restaurant booths pointed at him and called him “Josh” and grinned those give-me-a-prize-for-recognizing-you grins. Steve rather stiffly reminded them: “My name is Steve McQueen. The role I play is Josh.” That broke up Allen, who had had some share of fame for his tenor sax. Gradually Steve loosened up and laughed too, and and we talked Old Times talk. As we talked the quick McQueen smile became less mannered, less shtick-y and more like the Village days.
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    Denise McCluggage (with a camera strapped around her neck) at Le Mans in 1958, published her first article for Autoweek in the magazine’s first issue back in 1958. via
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    Another incident had loosened him up a bit too. Shortly after our reunion he had sidled up next to me and whispered in my ear: “I’m falling in love all over again,” and given me the full brunt of the smile. My response had been an instantaneous hoot of laughter. Steve looked hurt at first– that old vulnerability– and then th too laughed. It was a good line, and he had delivered it well, and I had loved it, but we both knew it was a stranger to any truth– either at the moment or long before.
    And Steve’s truth was what I liked best about him. He had it in his acting. His full use of himself in the character of the moment. I liked his work.
    I saw Steve several years later in California. I had a script idea about racing and he liked it a lot, but I wanted a friend of mine to direct it and Steve said (this was before The Great Escape) that he wasn’t big enough yet to risk an unknown director.
    He was in a good place then. Enough success for a sense of satisfaction and a strong belief that plenty more was to come. Swell, it was. He led me in his British Racing Green Jaguar D-Type up the winding roads into the hills to see his house and meet his family. Chad was just about two yrs old I think. And Steve proudly showed me  job he had just finished– putting cork on the walls of a den.
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    Denise McCluggage with Stirling Moss at Sebring, 1961. McLuggage was driving a Ferrari 250 GT SWB with Allen Eager, who was better known for his tenor sax. via
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    Some years later when in London I picked up a newspaper and there was Steve McQueen along with an interview. He was on his way to France to start filming Le Mans. I called the reporter who had done the interview to find out what hotel Steve was in, and I phoned. I had no ide how thick the barrier would be to reaching him. I wouldn’t have tried very hard, but it was only one man deep. I told him I was an old friend of Steve’s and told him who I was. After a while a voice came back: “Denise McLuggage. Now that’s a name from the past.” 
    We talked a long time– about his racing successes, his motorcycles, what he had done in Bullitt, what he wanted to do in Le Mans, and how he might revive my long-put-aside racing film ideas.
    That was the last time I talked to Steve directly. He used to see Phil and Alma Hill in Los Angeles, and we sent “hellos” back and forth through them and said how we must get together again sometimes when I’m in L.A.
    I knew what was happening, as much as you can know what is happening through the simultaneous successes and neglect of the press.
    I thought that Steve was going to beat his illness. I really did. Hope gives a lot of color to how I think about such things.
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    Steve McQueen, Monaco, 1969
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    Steve’s name came up in a group conversation shortly after he had gone to Mexico and a young reporter among us said: “Boy, that’s the way to make a lot of money right now. If you can get to Steve McQueen you can make a fortune. An exclusive interview.”
    I said nothing, but my mouth opened slightly as I tried to think of a word that described my feelings. “Appalled” probably came closest. And I thought too that I probably wasn’t much of a journalist.
    Appropriately, it was a car radio that delivered the news to me Steve McQueen was dead. He was 50 years old, the announcer said. Fifty. That had no meaning. It was far too young. It was far too old.
    I saw then that 1950s day in New York, and a young man with short-cropped hair wearing chino pants and a stark white T-shirt lounging against a cream-colored MG-TC with a machine-turned dashboard. He squints into the stark white sun and smiles a quick, not-yet-famous smile suddenly there, just as suddenly gone. He turns a new white helmet over and over in his hands.
    I think too of those E.E. Cummings lines:
    “And what I want to know is– How do you like your blue-eyed boy, Mr. Death?”
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    RELTED TSY POSTS:
    from theselvedgeyard