St Moritz - White Turf

St Moritz - Skijoerking

Well, I went to the White Dinner, and now I’ve been to White Turf. These are two very different events!

I’ve been to White Turf several times before and wanted to grab the opportunity to go again while I was having a year in Switzerland. At this event, the horses race, not on green turf, but on the frozen lake of St Moritz. Even the spectators watch the event on what should be a lake. That’s how cold it gets.

We took the train to get there, changing at Chur, and then sat in the panorama carriage from Chur to St Moritz (drinking champagne and eating cheese and chocolate). The panorama carriage has windows stretching up across the ceiling so that you are bathed in light and get the full view of everything around you. St Moritz is in the south of Switzerland – but because of the higher altitude, it’s colder.

At this time of year, everything should really be snow covered for most of the journey, but this year it wasn’t until we were nearly there that we could start to see that the ground was fully snowed over. White Turf had been cancelled the previous week (it’s held for three Sundays in February each year), so with the lack of visible snow, we were becoming concerned that we would arrive and find it wouldn’t run.

When we got there, it was cloudy with snow falling, although the platform was ice- and snow-free (unlike in previous years). But with the snowflakes all around me, I felt I was finally experiencing a proper winter. 

White Turf is positioned as an up-market event, so you see many people in fur coats, there’s an oyster and champagne bar, and I saw a few Rolls Royces. It’s not unusual for people to bring their dogs with them, either. Multiple white, tented stalls sell food (including more down-market sausages and Chinese); others sell art and there’s usually a stand for cars, but I didn’t see that one this year. However, I did spot a horseshoe throwing competition, which was new to me.

You can sit on chairs on a podium (for a premium), or you can have a standing place by the ringside. Some races are peculiar to White Turf, or at least peculiar to horse racing on the snow; there’s skijoerking (pictured, to save me trying to explain it, although in the race the jockey's legs are  splayed out in a V-shape and he leans back) and also a race where they ski behind the horse as the way to guide it.

Although the event wasn’t cancelled (they got a lot of bad press for the previous week’s cancellation), the races were shortened, one race remained with only one competitor (subsequently declared the winner), another race was cancelled. There were long waits between races due to “technical issues” and it seemed that several jockeys were unwilling to enter their horses.

Puddles formed by the fence where people were standing. I’d never seen that before, either. It was fun to take in the atmosphere and to watch all the people, but the waits for the races were frustrating and the races were all over very quickly.

We disbanded at 3pm to go to a hotel overlooking the lake where they served a chocolate buffet and afternoon tea. Because we’d booked in advance, we managed to get one of the only two window seats. The chocolate buffet was amazing.

Feeling completely stuffed, we got the train back to arrive back in the late evening. 

This is now the third horse event I’ve been to in my year away (Ascot, Sahl Hasheesh, and now St Moritz), but all three were completely different!