Sochi Olympics, Ski-jumping, and Courage

Watching the spectacular hair-raising sport of ski-jumping in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics brings to mind the will, strength, and courage of my late husband Charles. By the time he was ten years old he was an experienced ski-jumper.

Perhaps no winter sport asks for more raw courage than ski jumping. Charles literally took  a leap of faith using his body to soar without wings.

In the excerpt below from his award-winning memoir, Border Crossings: Coming of Age in the Czech Resistance, Charles describes his experiences ski-jumping in the lower Tatra Mountains of Slovakia shortly before the German occupation of his homeland. These experiences played a part in Charles developing the essential self-discipline, control, and physical fitness for his work in the Czech Resistance and later life.

“Despite my growing awareness of the darker side of life, there was much fun to be had. For instance, I enjoyed skiing with the village boys. Although there were challenging slopes everywhere, we always invented more daring displays of courage and competed among ourselves. My family’s home stood alongside the main road, parallel to the river Hron. On the other side of the river was the railroad, and behind it was a huge mountain. Using snow, we built a small ski jump and used it as a springboard perpendicular to the train line. All of us jumped over the train, but only two made it through the locomotive smokestack. I was lucky; my skis were perfectly treated, perfectly crafted wood, while the other boys’ skis were improvised from the strips of wood used for wine barrels.

One day my mother didn’t know where I was. Then she spotted little boys ski-jumping over the trains. She took my father’s binoculars and saw me coming down the hill through the smoke of the locomotive. My father later told me that Mother almost fainted, but she came running to his office, yelling at him to stop us. He knew he couldn’t, and that we would find another treacherous activity anyway; at least they could keep an eye on us as we ski-jumped.”

Is there an activity you pursued in your childhood that prepared you for dangerous and/or difficult activities in later life? If so, please describe.