Chapter 10
The Kitzbühel Burn
Playlist:
Guano Apes: Big In Japan
Scarlett Johansson: Set It All Free
Kitzbühel, Austria, January 22
NICO
Kitzbühel is impossibly posh and somehow full of drunken roughness at the same time on race weekend.
You can still find the genuine sport on the hill, but not in the city.
The town turns into a catwalk for people who have never touched a ski edge in their lives, all fur trim and champagne flutes, pretending they’re here for the racing and not the photos.
They thread their way through crowds wrapped in flags, one spilled beer away from ruining their designer shoes. It’s chaos.
When I was a kid, I loved it.
Our national holiday. You walk through the streets at sunrise, and the fans are already out, wrapped in flags and stupid wigs and cow costumes, faces painted red-white-red, carrying plastic horns and crates of beer.
Someone is always blasting Andreas Gabalier too loud from a balcony.
It smells like stale alcohol, cold metal, and deep fryer fat.
When I was finally old enough to drink, I got drunk before lunch in the finish area. Twice.
Just a pity that was all I got. From twenty on, I’ve been one of the idiots standing sober on top of the hill instead.
This morning, I’m one of the sober idiots again. The only difference is that this time, Kitz feels like it's watching me.
***
Up top, the town disappears. No fur, no champagne. Just techs stomping their feet, coaches talking into radios, and boards showing start numbers and times. The start house sits like a wooden mouth at the top of the Super-G, ready to spit us down into the mess.
Roland waits by the fence, hands in his jacket pockets, eyes on the course. When I stop next to him, he doesn’t bother with a pep talk. Just tips his chin toward the hill.
“You’ve got all that it takes this year,” he says. “Make it yours.”
My thighs hum from warm-up runs. I slap them through the suit, feel the muscle answer. Binding check, boot buckles, and chin strap.
The beeps from the starter for the guy before me cut through the thin air. I slide into the little start corral, plant my poles over the wand. The world narrows to the first roll, the blind breakover, the line I traced in inspection.
Kitz feels different from Birds of Prey. Beaver Creek was wide and surgically clean. Here, the hill is narrower, meaner, closer. The houses, the nets, the fans — it all feels one mistake away from crashing straight into someone’s breakfast table.
Even up here, you can hear them. A low animal roar waiting to decide if you’re a hero or an idiot.
The beeps start.
Four. Hands ready.
Three. Hips forward.
Two. Weight on the front of the boots.
One.
Green.
I dive out of the gate like I’m attacking a person, not a slope. Edges bite, then chatter as the skis pick up speed, drop over the first pitch. My stomach goes light, the air punches past my helmet, the course comes at me in a white tunnel.
It’s just me, the line, and the hill that raised me through a TV screen.
The first gate spits me straight into the Seidlalm jump.
Seidlalmsprung, small by downhill standards, but even the Super-G is enough to lift you off the snow and drop your stomach.
I tuck over my tips, let the skis run, and the landing comes fast. My knees eat the compression, quads flexing hard, and I'm already carving into the first technical turn before the shock leaves my legs.
The course drops me onto the lower section of the Streif—L?rchenschuss, the larch trees blurring past the nets, speed building with every gate.
The snow is perfect, surgical ice, and my edges bite clean.
I let the skis drift wide just a hair on the turn, then snap them back onto the fall line, hips driving forward, shoulders squared.
The noise from the crowd is everywhere now. Cowbells, screams, someone yelling my name in a voice that cracks halfway through. It doesn't matter. The only sound that matters is the scream of my edges and the wind drilling past my ears.
I hammer into the Oberhausberg section, another steep pitch that tries to fold my knees into my chest. My quads are already burning, that good kind of fire that means I'm pushing the edge of control.
The course carves left, then right, gates flashing past so fast I'm reading them on instinct, not thought.
Then the hill opens up ahead.
Hausbergkante.
The edge of the mountain. Sixty-nine percent gradient, and you hit it blind unless you've memorized the breakover in inspection.
I did.
I know exactly where the snow tips away into nothing, exactly when to load the outside ski and trust physics to hold me. I launch off the lip, chest over my tips, skis loose under my boots for one weightless heartbeat.
The landing is a hammer. My legs buckle, absorb, then explode back as the course whips left into the Hausberg traverse.
This is the turn that breaks people; sharp left at over a hundred kilometers an hour, ice under your edges, crowd so close you can smell beer and grilled sausage through the fence.
If you're tentative, you lose the line. If you're aggressive and miss by a centimeter, you're in the B-net with a broken collarbone.
I'm not tentative.
I tip onto the inside edge and carve it like I own the mountain, like Kitz was born to watch me do this. The skis hold. The turn spits me into the final pitch; the Zielschuss, the finish straight where you just tuck and let gravity finish what you started.
A hundred and forty kilometers an hour. Maybe more. I don't check the speed, I feel it in my bones, in the way the world blurs into streaks of red and white, in the way my suit snaps against my ribs.
The red line rushes up.
I cross it in a white explosion of adrenaline and noise.
Green.
The whole stadium detonates. Cowbells, air horns, a wall of sound that hits harder than any compression on the hill. I throw my skis sideways into a spray of ice, rip my helmet off, and scream at the sky.
My name flashes on the board. A gap big enough to hurt.
I slam my fist into my chest once, twice, feeling my heart trying to break through my suit.
For that whole stretch, from the moment I crossed the line to the last note fading into the alpine air, there is no élise, no impending scandal, no French godfather to scare me.
Just Kitzbühel and me, and the hill that finally let me win.
***
They've got us crammed into a long table under a wall of sponsor logos for the press conference.
Thomas and I, and Coach Leitner, sitting off to the side looking like he'd rather be anywhere else.
The lights are too hot, the microphones too close, and every journalist in the room has their phone aimed at us like we're performing seals.
I'm still buzzing. My legs feel like they're vibrating under the table, and I keep catching myself grinning at nothing. It’s been hours since I crossed the red line, but the energy of winning the Kitz still hums in my veins. And after this press nuisance is over, we head to the ceremony and bib draw for tomorrow, into an arena surrounded by tens of thousands of screaming fans. I’d have to be made of stone not to vibrate with all that in mind.
First question comes from ORF, predictable: "Nico, how does it feel to win the Super-G in Kitzbühel?"
I lean into the mic. "Like Christmas and my birthday had a baby on the Streif."
A couple of laughs. Katharina, standing in the back corner with her arms folded, doesn't crack a smile. She seems a bit tense, told me to be careful before we went here. But in my elevated state, her warning could not reach me.
Next question, from a German outlet: "You're stepping into some big shoes with Thomas out of competition for so long. Do you feel the weight of Austrian expectations?"
I glance at Thomas. The amused look in his eyes dared me to answer honestly.
"Thomas's shoes are too big," I say. "I'm just trying not to trip over them tomorrow in the downhill."
More polite laughter. Thomas doesn't react, but I catch the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth.
A woman from Kurier leans forward. "Nico, we've seen you looking into the stands quite a bit this season. Is there a special someone here cheering you on today?"
My stomach clenches, but I keep the smile easy. "Family, friends, the fans—Kitz is full of love today. Hard not to feel supported with this crowd."
I don't look at Katharina. I can feel her stare from across the room.
The tabloid reporter doesn't wait for the moderator to call on her. She just jumps in, loud enough to cut through the shuffle of notebooks.
"Nico, is it true you're in a relationship with élise Moreau who’s family owns Eiswerk? There are photos circulating from this morning—"
Katharina's voice slices through before I can even open my mouth.
"We're not taking personal-life questions in this session." Her tone is polished steel. "If you'd like a lifestyle angle, please contact the federation office, and we'll find a separate slot. Right now, we're staying with performance, and tomorrow's downhill. Thank you."
She holds the reporter's gaze just long enough to make the line crystal clear, then nods to the moderator to move on.
I keep my face neutral, maybe let a tiny PR smile touch my mouth. Inside, I feel both protected and cornered; grateful she blocked it here, pissed that élise's name just landed in this room at all.
The next question is something technical about my line choice through Hausberg. I answer on autopilot, talking about edge angles and inspection notes, but my brain is somewhere else entirely.
The session wraps up fifteen minutes later. Katharina catches my elbow in the hallway before I can escape to the locker room.
"We need to talk about this." Her voice is low, clipped. "You can't have Streif wins and soap opera in the same news cycle."
I yank my arm free, not hard, just enough to make a point. "élise is handling it. We'll write the story ourselves. Maybe we should all sit down and talk about it, but I'm not hiding."