The beautiful race

SIPPING champers with European billionaires, David May discovers Switzerland's White Turf St Moritz race is not just for the beautiful people.

RITZY St Moritz has an enviable reputation as a chic ski resort with sophisticated hotels, gourmet restaurants and a glittering social scene.

In winter it's all skiing, skiing, a bit more skiing and lots of serious partying but for the first three Sundays in February – ever since 1907 – Europe's social elite abandon the pistes to mingle where the White Turf flies.

On frozen Lake St Moritz, set against a magnificent backdrop of the Engadine Alps, the annual White Turf St Moritz horse races attract about 30,000 spectators to a program of gallops, trots and skijoering, an event exclusive to White Turf in which men on skis are dragged along a 2700m track by sprinting, riderless thoroughbreds.

It all began again last Sunday in beautiful sunny weather. In the middle of the iced-over Lake St Moritz were grandstands, an elegant tent city covering 130,000sq m, a horse paddock and a large oval race circuit. It was all held up by ice a perilous 80cm thick covered with a few centimetres of snow.

In and around the hospitality tents were 11,000 beautiful people, neck-to-ankle fur coats, babies in designer strollers, Russian billionaires attended by impossibly beautiful women, tinkling flutes of champagne and galaxies of diamonds glistening in a place where the sun shines an average 322 days a year.

St Moritz is the only place name anywhere to have trademark protection, and the sun motif the town still uses on its logo was registered in 1937.

There may have been a sprinkling of royals strutting their stuff; there could have been some ageing rock stars and sundry celebrities (Liz Hurley, the Earl and Countess of Wessex, Lester Piggott and Britt Ekland are regulars) but beneath the fur hats and stylish beanies and behind the sparkling sunnies it was difficult to be sure. But there was an orchestra and a grand piano to entertain the milling cream of the social crop.

And there were horses, too. Not just any old horses, mind, these were some of Europe's finest thoroughbreds – just as much on show as the spectators – and brought from across Europe and the UK by owners attracted by the prize money of more than $400,000.

Skeletal chariots

As the rich sipped champagne and munched on oysters, the first gallop (flat race) on the six-race card, over 1100m, got under way on time at 12.45pm.

Ten horses thundered around the first bend, eyes blazing, their jockeys clad in bright tunics and plastic motocross-style face masks to protect against the blizzard of ice and snow kicked up by the leaders.

Unlike the raucous racegoers that populate Aussie racetracks, from this crowd came nary a murmur.

Oh no. In sophisticated St Moritz that sort of vulgarity would simply not be tolerated and besides, the crowd seemed to be far more focused on what everyone else was wearing and who was with whom; as if it were more an excuse for a social gathering than the serious race meeting that it was. White Turf in fact is one of the most important racing fixtures on the European calendar.

The first trotting event was much like any other, except the gigs were reclining, skeletal chariots balanced precariously on skinny aluminium runners.

Again it was a fast-paced event run in almost complete silence, with the plush hotels and stately chalets of Europe's oldest ski resort looming high in the background, cosy places where a round of four beers could lighten your credit card by up to $110.

Champers and celebs

But the highlight, for anyone actually interested in the races, was the skijoering event run over 2700m. It takes guts to don skis and a cricket box to protect the vitals against flying ice and buckle up to a riderless, galloping, slobbering and frequently wind-emitting racehorse at any speed. At 50km/h and surrounded by 10 others it borders on insanity.

According to Credit-Suisse, one of the major sponsors of the event along with BMW, there was an abundance of this affliction in St Moritz in 1906, when a horse race with jockeys on skis was first staged in the Engadine as a handful of intrepid pioneers dashed from St Moritz to Chamfer and back in what turned out to be the invention of skijoering.

Now, in the only skijoering race in the world, the competitor who amasses the most points over the three Sundays is dubbed King of the Engadine. At the end of each race day spectators who pay the $50-$60 for grandstand seats could be awarded with a lucky draw prize such as a luxurious holiday in Qatar or Mauritius or a VIP trip to Valencia to take part in the preliminary decision of the 2009 Americas Cup.

White Turf St Moritz is, in more ways than one, an exceptional event.

Sipping champers, slurping oysters, celebrity-spotting and watching the sun reflect off the nearby mountain-tops, pristine in white and dotted with tall pine trees, as the horses sprint around the lake circuit is an extraordinary experience, even if you never watch a race.

Taken from the Sunday Mail