On The Edge: What does the 0 in 05.00hrs stand for?

There’s nothing like a decent Sunday morning lie in. However, for those who crawled out of bed at a time that should be illegal on a Sunday morning, this was nothing like a decent lie in. Indeed by 5.15am the car was loaded, breakfast had been attempted and a catsuit had been filled by a half asleep racer whom probably didn’t realise that 5 o’clock happened twice in one day. Yes, indeed my son, the 0 in 05.00 hrs stands for "O my God it's early."

At 6.30 we were circumnavigating the Starship Chill Factore, a futuristic building illuminated with blue and white lights that wouldn’t have looked out of place in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Indeed I felt a bit like Fallon Colby as I made my way towards the entrance doors.

However, even from the outside I had serious reservations about the apparent 100 metre slope with. Perhaps it was more Tardis than mothership.

Inside, it was clear that the 100m claim was a bit of a red herring. Sure, the bottom 50 metres or so probably were that wide but given the main and nursery pistes are separated by a humungous toboggan/luge feature the possibility of covering the entire width (should you ever be daft enough to try) is roughly about nil.

The main piste itself spans around 40 metres in width and is a similar length to Britain’s three Xscape slopes, as is the gradient. This is where the similarity ends however. With each development the snowmaking at Xscape improves and this trend has continued at Chill Factore. Even though the snow was nowhere near the management’s desired depth and it is yet to be fully packed down the skiers only had good words to say about the quality of surface. A white carpet of distinction.

For spectators the early start bought a few teething issues. With coffee facilities not opening until 8am and main piste viewing courtesy of a mall window (no seats) due to the main bar being closed there was a distinct need of the calming benefits of caffeine early on. These however are only teething issues. Give the site a month or so and I’d anticipate that they’ll have these issues sorted out.

The can be no question that Chill Factore is a magnificent facility that can only help to improve the quality of British ski racing. The more facilities that we get like this in the UK the better. And, whilst there’s a fair chance that Chill Factore won’t turn our National team into competition that frightens the life out of the Austrians just yet, if it takes us one step closer to consigning those video clips of Konrad Bartelski in Val Gardena to history then that alone will be progress.