It’s the Winter Games: Welcome to bravery and lunacy

You stand in the snow on a pair of flexible strips of laminated wood and carbon fibre. You intend to use them to slide down a 2.5km slope, which will fall 750m and at its sharpest has a 65 per cent gradient. You are 41 years old and are about to travel at roughly 130kmh on legs which are slightly unsteady. One knee has a torn ligament, which attaches the front of the tibia to the back of the femur.

This is lovely lunacy, irrepressible belief, reckless spirit and shining courage. This is life on the slopes.