After ending his tennis career, Andy Murray tried his hand at skiing. This resulted in an embarrassing story.
With a tennis racket in his hand, he was one of the best players of his generation, winning Wimbledon twice and Olympic gold, among other things. On skis, however, Andy Murray cut a less impressive figure. The Briton, who retired last year, revealed this in the podcast “Sporting Misadventures”.
There he talked about a skiing vacation he recently took with his family. “The first two days were shocking,” Murray said. At the beginning, he couldn’t even get up from the ski lifts. “My wife refused to take the lift with me because it was just embarrassing. I just couldn’t get up,” the 37-year-old continued. So he had to take the lift with strangers who lifted him off the lift.
“I was stuck on the mountain”
But things got particularly embarrassing on the slopes: “On the first day, I was stuck on the mountain,” said Murray. At the end of the first day, the lift that was supposed to take him back up the mountain had already closed. However, there was another lift a little further down the mountain. So he and his brother-in-law decided to continue to the next lift. “I can’t ski, and I didn’t know how to stop yet,” Murray emphasized again. At first, they were on a slope for beginners, but at the end of it, they continued on to slopes for advanced skiers.
“We skied about 400 or 500 meters and arrived at the lift. But it was also closed. The guy operating the lift said the only way to get ahead was to ski down the mountain,” Murray described the dilemma. He pointed out that he couldn’t ski, but the employee just repeated what he had said.
Murray tried to slide on his buttocks
“We asked him how much further it was and he said it was about three kilometers to the bottom,” Murray said. Since it was already late in the day, the slope was already icy. “I had no idea how to stop. I had driven 500 meters down a narrow slope and I thought that if I tried to take a turn, I would drive off the side of the road. So basically, I just drove straight down the mountain,” Murray described his adventure.
“I was racing past my brother-in-law, who can ski a bit, and just shouted, ‘I’m in trouble here. I don’t know how to stop,’” said the former tennis champion. ”I just threw myself on the ground and then tried to slide down on my ass, which didn’t really work. I finally arrived at a restaurant after picking up my skis and walking.“
”It was a bit embarrassing”
He then had to be rescued by rescuers on a snowmobile. It was an extremely unpleasant situation for him: “The rescuers are annoyed because it’s usually drunk Brits at the end of the day who get stuck on the mountain,” he reported. “They’re supposed to be helping people who are injured, not some idiot who thought he could make it down the slope at the end of the day. So it was a bit embarrassing,” said Murray.
The ski vacation did have a happy ending for Murray, though. He was even able to enjoy skiing at the end of the trip, and his kids had a lot of fun.
