Ads Past: Henke and Schranz, 1969

Henke, the Swiss bootmaker, ran this ad in the September 1969 issue of SKI magazine. The skier is Austrian Karl Schranz, taking the last of his four victories at Wengen (1959, 1963, 1966, 1969). Schranz won his first international classic at age 18, in 1957, taking the Arlberg-Kandahar downhill and combined trophies at Chamonix.

He retired in 1972, after being barred from the Sapporo Olympics on the grounds that ads like this one made him a “professional.” The ad mentions neither Schranz nor any specific victory, but it was common knowledge that top skiers were paid by their equipment suppliers—recognizable here are Kneissl skis, Henke boots and Marker bindings.

That was enough for International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage, who called Schranz “a walking billboard.” Brundage had been banning athletes—including swimmer Eleanor Holm and track star Babe Didrikson—for a variety of reasons since becoming president of the Amateur Athletic Union in 1928. In 1948, Life magazine’s Roger Butterfield wrote that “Brundage became celebrated as a tyrant, snob, hypocrite, dictator and stuffed shirt, as well as just about the meanest man in the whole world of sports.”

Brundage retired after the terrorist attack on Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. For his part, Schranz made a half-hearted stab at the World Pro Skiing circuit, then built a hotel in St. Anton. Henke athlete Roland Collombin won the silver medal in downhill at Sapporo, but a year later the company’s plastic buckle straps failed and the brand went under. 

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