Epilogue
Reiteralm, Austria
ZLATA
The snow at Reiteralm looks exactly like the last weekend of the season should look: tired.
The slopes are still white where it matters, but the edges of the hill are all brown grass and grey ice, dirty piles of old snow slumped around the car park like somebody forgot to take the decorations down.
Kids in numbered bibs dart between the parked cars, skis over their shoulders, parents jogging behind carrying forgotten poles.
There’s a group of older guys in race suits so vintage they should probably be in a museum, trying to out-flex each other in the registration line.
I stand in the middle of it all in my own cheap race suit, neon yellow with a cushioning that will barely protect my arms from the gates. Luckily, I won't be skiing that close to them, anyway.
I feel ridiculous and exhilarated in equal parts, like I’ve accidentally walked into somebody else’s race.
My number is low enough to make my stomach flutter. Masters women 30+ isn’t exactly packed, but still. A start number is a start number.
I almost didn’t sign up.
Even after we talked about it, even after I stalked the Masters calendar and found this race, I hesitated.
Clicked on the registration form, closed it, and opened it again.
Told myself it was too much money, too far, too late in the year.
Told myself I could just keep “training” without ever putting a number on my chest. These races are different.
At home, I race with pensioners and hobby racers; here, most of the people are either retired racers or people who take skiing seriously.
A few are like me, especially in women's categories. I still don't feel like I fit in.
Fabio had looked at me like I’d grown a second head when I mentioned my doubts, though.
“If you’re thinking about trophies,” he’d said, arms folded, “you start somewhere. You don’t wait until you’re magically ‘good enough.’ You sign up, you show up, you ski your run. Everything else comes later.”
So I signed up.
Now I’m here, bib on, breathing the spring air, skis leaning against a snowbank, trying not to grind my teeth.
“Stop chewing your lip, Golden Girl,” a voice says behind me. “You’ll need it for the finish photo.”
I turn.
He’s leaned up against the back of his car like he hasn’t spent the winter leaning into start gates on TV. Beanie pulled low, sunglasses on, softshell jacket over jeans. If you didn’t know who he was, he’d look like any other ex-racer uncle who came to watch the kids.
Except for the way he stands. The way his eyes flick automatically up toward the course every few seconds. And the man next to him.
Max—my personal fairy wax-god for the day—is bent over my skis on a portable stand, iron in hand, steam rising from a layer of fresh wax. He’s muttering to himself in German, something about structure and spring snow, checking the light on my edges like he’s prepping for Kranjska.
“You realize this is overkill,” I say, nodding toward the stand. “For a girl in the women 30+ category.”
“Overkill?” Fabio raises an eyebrow, pushes off the car, and strolls over, hands in his pockets.
Max snorts without looking up. “Top equipment for top woman,” he says, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.
Heat crawls up my neck, but it’s the good kind. I roll my eyes anyway. “You two are insane,” I say. “Somewhere on this hill is a woman who sharpened her skis in her bathtub this morning. You’re waxing like I’m fighting for a globe.”
Fabio shrugs. “She can sharpen however she likes,” he says. “You race on my watch, you get my standards.”
“Your standards gave me a nervous breakdown in Saalbach,” I remind him.
“Yeah, and then they gave me the overall,” he counters. “So clearly they work long-term.”
He reaches out and flicks my bib with one finger, right over my number. “How does it feel?” he asks. “Having this on and not hiding it under a hoodie.”
“Feels,” I say slowly, “like I might throw up. And also like the best thing I’ve worn in my life.”
He grins, quick and bright. “Good,” he says. “That’s how it’s supposed to feel.”
***
The start gate looks smaller than it does on TV. I've never stood in an actual start gate, with tech and the famous beep I use as a mobile ringtone.
But it’s nothing elaborate. It’s just two bits of metal and a wand, a timing cable snaking away under the snow.
No cameras, no big sponsor banners, no helicopter buzzing overhead.
Just a row of plastic numbers screwed into a post, a volunteer in a Masters race jacket, and the little digital clock over my head counting down in red.
My heart still manages to pound like I’m in the World Cup.
“Seven,” the starter says, checking his clipboard. “Ready?”
I click my poles into the snow, feel for the groove my skis left when I slid in. The hill drops away under the wand, steep enough that my stomach does a small, nervous flip. The course looks short after all the World Cup GS I’ve watched, but from here it’s a proper wall of blue and red.
Somewhere down there, out of sight from the start, Fabio is standing on the edge of the fence with his arms folded, pretending not to coach. The thought makes my lungs tighten.
What if I screw up in front of him?
Stupid question. Of course, I will screw up; it’s a race. The real fear flickers in behind it.
What if I prove I’m not a real racer after all?
It’s ridiculous. I know exactly how much work I’ve put into this season. Early mornings, edge tuning, Saturdays in the mountains instead of bars. He knows it too. Max wouldn’t be here with his wax if this were a joke.
Still, the old voice is resourceful. It uses any opening.
I breathe out, slow, the way my therapist drilled into me, and reach for the line Fabio fed me in Stubai when he set a training course for me, and I wanted to impress him so badly I almost forgot how to ski.
“You don’t have to win the whole hill in the first turn,” he’d said at the start, gently bumping my shoulder with his. “One gate at a time, Zlata. Get the first one right. Then the next one.”
The memory drops into place like a good edge set.
One gate at a time.
“Five seconds,” the starter says.
I settle into my stance. Hands forward, hips over my boots, eyes on the first blue. The rest of the hill fuzzes out.
“Three… two… one…”
Beep.
I push through the wand.
The first gate comes faster than my training brain expects. My edges bite anyway, catching in that familiar spring-slush chatter, and my whole body remembers what it’s here for. Pressure into the outside ski. Hands quiet. Look ahead, not at the tips.
Blue. Red. Blue.
The world narrows to color and impact. The panels slap my shins, the sound hollow and satisfying. Snow splashes up in little bursts; the course flicks by. My legs burn in the good way, lactic acid sitting just under the skin, promising to make things interesting if I get lazy.
There’s a delay gate in the middle—a weird flat bit between two steeps where, in training, I either went too straight and panicked or too round and lost all speed.
Today, I manage something between the two.
Not perfect, but committed. I hear somebody whooping from the fence.
It might be Fabio. It might be some random dad. I don’t have the brain space to care.
By the time I cross the finish, lungs on fire, the whole run has smeared into one long sensation in my body. My skis slide to a stop in the soft snow, and I look up at the timing board like all of this is real.
It is.
My time pops up in red, then settles into the list. Tenth in category. Not podium. But not the disaster my night-brain can always invent.
A laugh bubbles up in my throat, half relief, half hysteria. I let myself have it. Tenth. With a little mistake at the delay and a line I know I can sharpen.
I can do better.
And for once, the thought doesn’t land like self-hatred. It lands like… opportunity.
***
Between runs, the hill goes soft and lazy.
Kids’ categories run, old guys in retro suits take their turns, somebody falls spectacularly in front of the finish banner, and gets up grinning.
There’s a smell of grilled sausages from the Ganslerhütte near the finish, and the sun has settled into that late-afternoon angle that makes everything look like an Instagram filter.
The spring lets us all know it's here, and we sit there in our race suits unzipped, cooling ourselves with snow and ice like we want to bathe in it.
We find a bench just off the side of the finish area, half in the sun, half sheltered by a snowbank. I peel off my helmet, and my hair explodes in damp, tangled waves under my beanie. My face is hot, my nose is burnt, and my legs are starting to remember that I am not twenty.
Fabio drops down beside me, thigh bumping mine. He’s holding two plastic cups of iced tea and a packet of those terrible dry biscuits they hand out at every Austrian race.
“For you, race queen,” he says, passing me a cup.
“Stop it,” I say, but I take it. The tea tastes like boiled water and paper. It’s perfect.
We sit in silence for a minute, watching some man in a skin-tight lime-green suit argue with the starter about his time. I know he’s going to say something about my run. He also knows I know. We let the expectation stretch until it’s almost funny.
“Well?” I say finally, without looking at him. “Coach?”
I can feel his grin even before he answers. “You want the nice version or the useful one?”
“Useful,” I say. “You can be nice later if I cry.”
He nudges my knee with his. “You’re rushing the transition on the steeps,” he says, matter-of-fact. “Especially after the delay. You come in good, then you panic a bit because you know you lost time and try to make it all back in one move.”
I wince. “You saw that from down here?”