In each semester, the course in sports education includes a further sporting discipline in addition to WingTsun – and during the winter semester this is naturally a winter sport, namely skiing. Even though – or perhaps even because – one or the other WT student had never even considered sliding down a snow-covered hillside perched on two long, slim boards, everybody assembled at the Best Western Hotel in Oberwiesenthal in excited anticipation of what was to come. No wonder, for after the positive experience of the practical week in Kiten, Bulgaria last summer, they were all confident that even total beginners would soon achieve good progress in the hands of the experienced instructors. Apart from this, half the students were already experienced skiers who were simply looking forward to a week of fun on the slopes.

Listening to the Professor’s lecture in the morning and trying to put the instructions of the (water) ski instructor into practice in the afternoon – this theoretical/practical split had already proved successful in Kiten, and had by now become routine for the students. After all, they were no longer freshmen! This time the lectures in sports psychology were given by Professor Kaikov and those in sports education by Professor Jordanova.

Having introduced the students to general psychology during the summer semester, Professor Kaikov was now able to build on this basic knowledge and move on to sports psychology. This is Professor Kaikov’s area of specialisation, and he is among Europe’s most experienced scientific researchers in this discipline, whose object is the study of the human mind under the most extreme stresses.

Professor Kaikov completely fascinated his students with his remarks on one of his other specialist areas – psychodiagnostics – to the extent that he was once obliged to continue his lecture well into the evening. After all, which of us would not like to recognise the inner state of an opponent merely be interpreting his facial expressions and body posture? Nonetheless, it quickly became clear that a great deal of experience and practice is needed before this skill can be developed to the level of accuracy shown by Professor Kaikov.

Ms Jordanova, a Professor of sports education, was a new addition to the teaching body for the WT course of study. Ms Jordanova introduced the central topic of the entire course, namely sports teaching itself.

Thanks to her outstanding, systematic preparation of the teaching content she was able to present this enormously wide topic area in very clear form. While subsequent, practical implementation of their knowledge is of decisive importance for the WT students, as it is for all educationalists, Professor Jordanova was quickly able to show that well-founded theoretical knowledge is an indispensable basis for this.

Education science is a research topic is enormous dimensions on which there are countless publications. Certainly a severe challenge for any correspondence course student. However, it proved advantageous for the WT students that almost all of them had years of practical teaching experience, i.e. applied education science, to fall back on.

It was a good thing that the entire afternoon was available for the practical part. For as interesting as the morning explanations by the Professors were, a course in sports education means that sport comes first and education second, as the term implies.

So after a hearty lunch the students were off to the slopes, where they were soon divided into two groups – beginners and advanced – and allocated to a ski instructor. The beginners were shown their first movements by, while Gisela did her best to teach the advanced students something new as well.

They all set to work with a will, for Professor Margaritov had already announced that the first examination would take place on Thursday, i.e. after just three days of preparation. Amazingly, this confident expectation proved to be fully justified and all the participants were able to meet the requirements when the time came. Naturally the beginners were not expected to deliver an outstanding performance, however they had to be familiar with the basics of skiing. And they all managed it! The only factor that dampened a wonderful week of study and skiing was the weather. While the piste operators were forced to contend with a worrying shortage of snow for the first few days, the snow never seemed to stop falling during the second half of the week. But somehow that is as much part of skiing as button-lifts and après-ski.