By Emma Berry
Racing around the world offers plenty of diverse experiences but there really is nothing quite like the White Turf meeting on the frozen lake at St Moritz.
Robert Louis Stevenson once wrote, “To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive.” The novelist and travel writer died 13 years before the running of the first White Turf meeting in St Moritz in 1907, but had he had he lived long enough to pay a visit to the world's most extraordinary racecourse he'd almost certainly have had cause to revise that sentiment.
The journey to the Engadine Valley in the Swiss Alps is quite something. Never mind the routine flight to Zurich, it's once you head for the train station at the airport that the fun begins. As with most things in life, knowledgeable contacts are important and, fortuitously, having persuaded Darley's European nominations manager Dawn Laidlaw to be my travelling companion for the weekend, we then bumped into seasoned St Moritz visitors Mark and Deirdre Johnston with their son Angus at the airport.
The Johnstons had worked out long ago that the train journey of around four hours would pass much more agreeably with a little liquid refreshment en route and they directed us to the nearest wine shop where the thoughtful man behind the counter proffered a corkscrew and plastic glasses to help us on our way.
Once out of the Zurich suburbs and hurtling south to the mountains, the scenery just gets better and better. We heeded another important Johnston tip to be in one of the panoramic carriages of the brilliantly named Glacier Express after changing trains at Chur, with the cleverly designed compartments with glass ceilings offering a stunning vista of the Swiss Alps as the train eventually passes the Cresta Run and homes in on St Moritz.
Despite having spent most of my life being a catastrophically bad skier, there's still nothing quite like snow-clad mountains to make my heart sing and, even without the extra encouragement from a rather nice Swiss Pinot Noir, it's hard to recall having arrived anywhere, after what was a fairly long journey, in a better frame of mind.
By now, I had fully convinced myself that Dawn and I were slightly unglamorous extras on an incredibly glamorous set for an Agatha Christie movie. Being fairly practical women who spend lots of time outdoors, we felt we were appropriately dressed for the occasion in our ski gear. Unfortunately, the wardrobe department seemed to have issued head-to-toe furs to the rather more important female characters, and even most of the men and some dogs, so it's a safe bet that any appearances we would make in the background would end up on the cutting-room floor.
To look the part in St Moritz you need to be wearing fur of some sort. No self-respecting Swiss mountain pooch would be seen at White Turf without a coat or a fur wrap, though a rebellious pair of pugs was spotted in lurid green puffa jackets.
The action takes place across three Sundays in February and while it's undoubtedly horseracing, it's certainly not as we know it. The White Turf meeting, featuring a mix of flat racing, trotting, and the favourite local sport of skijoring, is held on Lake St Moritz, which is frozen solid between December and May. On the weekend of our visit, the ice was 62cm deep with a good covering of snow, offering perfect conditions for the weekend's activities.
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