Opening paragraphs..................

 I know I'm in trouble on the run down towards Shuttlecock, but I am laughing—I don't care.

     I am once again riding in a Grand National, the first time in nearly eight years, but this isn't the four-and-a-half-mile steeplechase over the thirty fences of Aintree Racecourse.  This Grand National is a different type of race altogether—a never-jangling, teeth-rattling, buttock-clenching, roller-coaster ride sown the three-quarter-mile long ice chute—the Cresta Run in the Swiss town of St. Moritz.

-Felix Francis, Iced: A Dick Francis Novel