French get tough with ski hooligans

JULIET RUISSEN had just stopped at the edge of the piste to catch her breath and admire the view with her friend. As she stood on the Plein Sud ski run, on a ledge above the resort of Val Thorens, a teenage boy in a green jacket was hurtling out of control on the icy slope above. Swerving to avoid a ski school class, he hit a patch of ice, skidded as he tried to turn, hit the 23-year-old Dutch woman and her colleague full on and knocked them over in a haze of ski tips and flying powder.

As her family crowded round Ms Ruissen, the French teenager came over to apologise. They shooed him away and tended to Miss Ruissen's broken nose, which was bleeding heavily. The boy was away into the multicoloured crowd, shooting down the mountainside in the winter sunshine.

Skiing, that most genteel of pastimes, is experiencing an upsurge of hooliganism in common with many other sports. It was always unrealistic to expect tens of thousands of people, hell-bent on pleasure, to converge on one corner of a mountain with planks or boards tied to their feet, without some sort of nastiness ensuing.

But this season, some of the most prestigious resorts in France have drafted in new policing powers that bring the full force of the law on to the piste.

Rene Ternoy looked the sort of man who would have been a successful sheriff in 19th- century Texas.

A public prosecutor in Albertville, site of the 1992 Winter Olympics and nearest town to the resorts of Tignes, Val d'Isere and Meribel, he is one of the most important men behind the clampdown on ski rage. "What should you have done with the boy in the green jacket?" he asks. "You should have followed him, safely, to the bottom of the mountain and reported him to the authorities.

"If you have sufficient witness reports I would prosecute him for endangerment. People like this must be prosecuted."

Under the new by-laws in operation at some resorts, anyone causing an accident may receive a fine of up to 100,000 francs (pounds 11,000) and a year's jail sentence - or at the very least a standard issue 250 franc fine for a skiing "traffic offence".

At the beginning of the season, Mr Ternoy wrote to the mayors of all the main ski resorts within his jurisdiction, urging a clampdown on reckless skiers and snowboarders. "Those on the slopes have to know that if they endanger each other's lives, they will have the force of the law on them."

Given that almost 200,000 skiers were yesterday on the mountainsides that he patrols, and that some mayors have already decided to send out patrols of uniformed gendarmes, it is a threat any holidaymaker should take seriously.

Speeding skiers are not the only targets of the safety campaign. Georges Cumin, the mayor of St Martin, whose jurisdiction covers Les Menuires and Val Thorens, tells me angrily of "drunken idiots who spill out of nightclubs" and go sledding on the giant orange airbags tied to ski lift pylons.

On the face of it, Les Menuires is one of the most unlikely places on earth to require new policing and by-laws. It is one of France's more upmarket resorts, and most of the residents seem preoccupied with trying to slide down the mountain without damaging their Chanel sunglasses.

But this week is the most crowded of the season. Middle-aged businessmen were hurtling down the slopes, which were as packed as a high street on a sales Saturday, in a way one suspects would earn their children a severe ticking off.

I had the sunglasses knocked off my face by the flying hand of a cool- looking young woman, perhaps a lawyer or a banker, who would never come close to inflicting injury on anybody in real life.

Campucine Gibeault, a bank clerk on holiday with her boyfriend, said she had seen a collision almost every day last week. "People ski beyond their ability, it's dangerous," she said.

Did she know the local prosecutor would encourage her to grass on dangerous skiers? "How would we catch them?" she shrugged.

The truth is that it is not just skiers and snowboarders who are becoming more badly behaved. Jean-Lou Costerg, piste manager at Val d'Isere, is an opponent of stricter policing on the slopes. In true Gallic philosophical style, his conclusion - probably an accurate one - is that the problem is wider. "It starts in the home, in school, with society as a whole. We need to address the problem there, otherwise the danger will always be getting greater."

Although no one has suggested that flooding the slopes with gendarmes could be a solution, Mr Cumin says we should prepare for highway patrol- style speed traps on the pistes.

The airbag hooligans are another problem. In L'Oisans bar at Les Menuires, three Parisian students admit they are planning to liberate a giant mattress and hurtle down the mountainside that night, after several dozen vodkas. They did it last year at Tignes, they said. "C'est formidable," said Jean- Herve.

Weren't they worried about the possibility of a jail sentence? "How will they find us afterwards?" said Benoit, pointing at the mountain and the crowd milling around the central square.

Skiing, the connoisseurs will tell you, will never be taken over by hooligans because it is a sport for the monied classes. But with monied classes like these, who needs hooligans?