We set off NW from Sarajevo and Paul was carrying the torch through Banja Luka famous for the ‘Banja Luka Incident’, this being the first ever NATO combat engagement in the skies above in February 1994. https://youtu.be/WevXTsed_oc this link tells the story. Paul wins a blue Tely 10 long sleeved shirt for his modern history knowledge. At Kostajnica we crossed the border from Bosnia in to our 6th country, Croatia. Georgia was our torch bearer here. Georgia wins a Valley Harvest long sleeve orange shirt for her efforts.
The Balkans, aside from Sarajevo, are somewhat short on Olympic history so we pressed ahead to Harmika and crossed into Slovenia. Rick suggested we stop a while by the spellbindingly beautiful Lake Bled and enjoy a well earned coffee and vanilijevi kifeljčki (crescent cookies). Rick was so taken by the cookies that he grabbed the recipe https://sloveniankitchen.com/blogs/desserts/slovenian-vanilla-crescent-cookies and Rick is likely to bring some to a future STARRs event! This is certainly worthy of a prize of a(nother) Valley Harvest long sleeve orange shirt. (Courtesy of yaska.si and sloveniaalps.com for the photos.)
From here our path becomes much more Winter-Olympic-like, as we begin the steady climb into the Julian Alps. Kari suggested we stop a while in the ski resort of Kranjska Gora, which is on the World Cup circuit for slalom, giant slalom, ski jump and the Nordic events. What a beautiful place, and also the hometown of the LA Kings Captain and Centre Anže Kopitar. Kari wins a prize of her choice of book.
Just a short distance from here we climbed Mount Dreiländerec/ Peč/ Forno which is the border tripoint between Austria, Slovenia and Italy (hence the 3 names). Here we need to make a decision to go straight to Cortina or head off on an Olympic themed Alps detour. We checked in with Sid our driver and he was very relaxed about the schedule as, after all, the 3 foot short Olympic hockey rink isn’t even finished yet! So it was Leslie Ann, who wins a prize of a Paris Olympics 2024 tote bag for suggesting we head to Innsbruck, home of the 1964 & 1976 Winter Olympics. Why twice, why so close? Originally, Denver won the 1970 bidding for the 1976 Winter Olympics, but the Citizens of Colorado voted 60/40 in a 1972 State referendum to decline (for environmental and cost reasons)! The IOC then asked Whistler to fill the slot but the looming 1972 Federal election prevented Canada from committing. Ultimately, Innsbruck agreed to step in.
We didn’t quite get to Innsbruck this week so stopped at the tiny Italian mountain ski town of Sesto Sexten. This is the hometown of the of the Italian 2008 Giant Slalom aged 7 and under ski champion, who went on to have a promising youth career as a soccer player, and eventually swapped sports again and became…… the world’s number 1 tennis player, Jannick Sinner!
17 days in Sid, our chauffer advised us the odometer read an impressive 726 km for the week and 1,892 km overall. Well done team, already we have visited 4 Olympic sites and 9 countries!
