“Retirement, for what? Go to other countries? See how people are? Here I see people from all social classes, from all countries, whom I would never have met if I hadn’t been a monitor. At 73, 54 of whom teach skiing at the Ax-3-Domaines resort, Jean Louis Fugairon is not about to hang up his spatulas and poles.
Not by ideology. The pension reform does not leave him indifferent. “At my age, I could give a damn, but no. I understand some professions, there are very tough jobs that deserve to leave earlier. Because if it’s to retire at 64 and go straight to the hospital, it’s not worth it, ”says the dashing Ariégeois without mincing his words. However, he cannot bring himself to do so. It must be said that for seven decades, the Pyrenees have been anchored in its genes. His valley too, where he learned to ski around the age of five on a single wooden spatula, sharing with his brother the pair that his parents had paid for them. Descending the snowy slopes of Bonascre that had to be climbed on foot, at a time when the resort was not yet born.
“I don’t see the day passing”
But if he still puts on his skis every morning, despite problems with the arteries that could have slowed him down, it is above all because he is passionate. “If I continue it is because I love teaching. Where I’m most happy is with beginners, that’s where you see the progress. As with someone who has never seen snow and who knows how to descend a green run two hours later. I don’t see the day pass, I do 8 hours and I don’t even realize it, “he says with a smile, his sparkling eyes, brightening up his tanned face from weeks spent on the snowy peaks. .
Sitting opposite him, Florence and her two daughters, Margot and Mila, with whom he has lunch, agree. For years, he has been teaching them to descend the slopes, to improve their sliding, “the most important movement in skiing”. And each year, it is Jean-Louis that these faithful students ask for their private lessons taken within the French ski school of Ax. A school that he directed for a time and to which he remains attached. “I started red, I’m going to die red”, he jokes in reference to the so specific color of the ESF.
If in his prime, his schedule was full every day of the season, today he has reduced the sails a little. Willingly, unwillingly. “I am in what they call the intergenerational pact. At 62, you are told that you have to slow down to make room for young people. When this measure passed, it creaked. But, in the ski schools, during the holidays there is work for everyone anyway, outside the holidays, we manage, ”he assures. Hours that supplement a little the small monitor pension of 456 euros per month that he already receives.
Fisherman, hunter, mountaineer, mushroomer
But Jean-Louis is not just a ski instructor. Out of season, he ran a large café in the center of the village for thirty-three years with his parents, was president of the departmental fishing federation. And since 1977, almost without interruption, he has been elected by the municipality of Ax-les-Thermes, delegate “to the resort”. So when he takes a step there, he always bumps into someone he knows. At the restaurant, we know his habits by heart, his little pleasure at the end of a meal, a crepe with Nutella.
And when he is not on his boards in winter, he walks the hiking trails of his valley. “I am a fisherman, hunter, mountaineer, mushroomer, I love nature. I’m not a traveler, I don’t know what to do on vacation. My vacation is here, in these mountains. In the summer I do fishing activities for the little ones. In September it is the opening of the hunt and in the spring the morels ”, enumerates this bachelor without children, far from the image of Popeye played by Thierry Lhermitte in Les Bronzés font du ski.
Jean-Louis looks a little more like Fernand Bonnevie, who played Jean-Claude Dusse’s ski instructor, made famous by his famous line “flexion, dive of the pole, extension”. This native of Val d’Isère, who registered the planting of the stick in the pantheon of the profession, retired at 80 years old. Jean-Louis remembers having met him a long time ago, during a challenge for instructors. Today, these national competitions are over for him. But not its regional version of the Pyrenees. He already has 50 participations to his credit and he does not plan to retire on that side either.