What can you say about a twenty-five-year-old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me.

That line, of course, is from the fabulous Love Story. I mention it because this week’s topic is ice hockey and my very first encounter with the sport came not from real life but from that film: Ryan O’Neal racing across the Harvard rink in the cold Boston air, blades scraping, the puck flying. It was pure cinema and the sum total of my hockey knowledge until Switzerland added its own chapter.

From Film to Rink
With the children enrolled in school here, skating replaced rugby on the sports curriculum. Ice skates were added to the inevitable school equipment list, with the specific request from our boys for the hockey, not figure, variety. In response we bought the adjustable plastic ones that you could make bigger as their feet grew. I suspect this was frowned upon by the teachers, but I’m nothing if not pragmatic.

A couple of hockey sticks and a few pucks soon joined the collection and the children would head down to the rink with their friends at weekends. It became a meeting point as much as a sport. They would turn up, see who else was there, and organise themselves. It was easy exercise and an easy decision. Fresh air, movement and a way to blow off steam that required very little planning beyond gloves and skates.

As they grew older, it never became serious, not like the young players you see in real matches, but they can hold their own in informal games. Even now, it remains one of those activities that fits naturally into life here and one I often suggest to other parents looking for a simple way to get children moving.

Under the Floodlights
Matches are regularly played on the Gstaad rink and you can often catch players practising. The sport is more dramatic up close than I ever expected. Even if you know nothing about it, there is an immediate excitement in watching. The pace, the noise and the scrape and rush of movement pull you in before you have worked out who is doing what.

We were walking home from dinner the other night when a team was training under the floodlights. Everything moved at speed. The shouts, the scrape of skates, pucks and bodies slamming against the barrier. It sounded painful, but there’s no doubting its energy, whether or not you understand the rules. After all this time I still find it hard to follow. The puck moves so fast it almost disappears and the players change direction before you know who has it. The goalkeeper is dressed like the Michelin man and stands in front of an improbably small goal, yet shots still find their way past. Though not always. One day I even found a puck on the opposite side of the Promenade.

Since those early days I have seen evidence that ice hockey is not only popular in Switzerland. Not long after our children started skating, I met a couple who were such enthusiastic fans of the sport that they named their son Vaughn. Not after a person or from a book of baby names, but after a wellknown ice hockey brand. That level of enthusiasm is reserved for Formula 1 in our house, though we never went as far as naming our children Senna.

And to think my understanding of hockey began with a single film. Ryan O’Neal gliding across an American rink in a romantic tragedy. I may not have seen him on the ice since, but I now know what the real thing looks like.

ANNA CHARLES