Feature article

The Swann Galleries’ annual auction remains a treasure hunt for vintage-art enthusiasts.

The recent auction of vintage posters at Manhattan’s Swann Galleries offered up rarities, blue-chip examples, newly unearthed design gems and some downright oddities. The March 9, 2023, sale included posters from the earliest days of skiing, midcentury modern examples and masterpieces from the golden age of poster design in the 1930s. In total, there were nearly 60 posters from the United States, Switzerland and France, as well as from lesser-known sources like Chile and the former Czechoslovakia.

Thanks to lingering post-pandemic rules, the auction took place virtually (in-person auctions are likely to resume soon). Yet the interest was as heated as ever, with pre-bidding and bidding by phone and online remaining vigorous. The latter was abetted by the easy access afforded by companies like Invaluable, which enables users to bid digitally on sales at more than 4,000 auction houses worldwide. The days when you had to physically get yourself to an auction room are long gone, but, concurrently, the pool of bidders has grown that much wider.

One of the earliest posters up for sale at the Swann auction was “Gossensass/Wintersport,” by an unknown artist. The image was estimated to be circa 1910 and depicted a man and a woman on skis, each holding a single ski pole. The background is a valley where a fashionable wooden resort hotel can be seen, along with mountain peaks, toboggans and skaters. Situated in South Tyrol, near the Brenner Pass, the resort of Gossensass opened in the 19th century, counting playwright Henrik Ibsen among its most famous guests.

“I’ve looked at this poster a dozen times, and I’ve never seen some of these figures before,” said Nicholas Lowry as he closely examined the work during a preview of the sale. Lowry is president of Swann Galleries, head of the gallery’s poster division and a well-known appraiser on PBS’ Antiques Roadshow. “This is the Tyrol, and that’s the resort’s original Alpine hotel, circa 1910, based on the woman’s long skirt and use of a single staff,” he added. “When I see this, it looks like it was almost taken from a photograph, and the realism is almost there. But the color is very unusual, a kind of sunset orange.”

The poster was estimated to sell between $1,500 and $2,000, but it soared to $4,250 (including the buyer’s premium, 25 percent of the hammer price).

Another early poster, by artist Louis Tauzin, was titled “Les Vosges/Chemins de Fer de l’Est,” a railroad company’s advertisement for resorts in the Vosges mountains. The resorts there were ideal for family ski vacations, smaller and less challenging than those in the Alps. The poster shows a bobsled team that is avidly watched by skiers and sledders, with ice skaters on a lake in the background. Notably, the skiers depicted have already transitioned to double poles.

“The colors here are much more realistic looking than the ones in the Gossensass poster,” Lowry said of the 1912 image.” You know it’s pure advertising propaganda, but it is a slice of life.” The poster sold at its top estimate of $4,000.

The Swann sale offered some blue-chip classics, such as Herbert Matter’s photomontage “Winterferien-Doppelte Ferien/Schweiz,” showing a smiling woman superimposed over a stylized mountain landscape with miniature figures of photomontage skiers. It went for $3,250, above its $3,000 estimate. Martin Peikert’s “Pontresina/Diavolezza” highlighted the famous tram at this resort in the Engadin but it sold for $2,250, below its $3,000 low estimate.

“Yosemite Winter Sports” is from 1935 and was created by an unknown artist. It is an impressionistic image of a skier navigating the California slopes and sold for $3,750, within its $3,500–$4,500 range. “There are no black outlines in this poster; it’s all done with varying shades of purple,” Lowry pointed out. “Yet it feels so incredibly detailed. One nice little touch is the spray of powder from his skis. When you look at the angle of the skier, you know it was done by someone who knew all about skiing. It’s so accomplished in its simplicity.”

Several posters appeared at Swann for the first time, including “Ski Colorado” by Red Gates, circa 1957. The artist designed at least one other poster for Ski Colorado in the 1950s. This was a new one for Lowry, who has a near-photographic memory for ski posters. Showing a very stylized skier turning around his long skis, it’s a masterpiece of abstraction and went for $1,250, just above its low estimate of $1,200.

“This is classic midcentury modernism,” said Lowry. Indeed, the mountains look almost like mathematical graphs. Added Lowry, “Amid all the geometric abstractions, you also have the patterns on his sweater. It’s really amazing.”

He also pointed out two posters for Alberta, rarities that he had never seen before.

“Sunny Alberta/Winter Wonderland/ In the Canadian Rockies” is a photo montage of a blond skier in a red jacket that would make the Canadian Mounties proud. She’s superimposed over a map of the area’s ski resorts, and the poster was created to advertise the Intercollegiate Ski Meet, Banff Winter Carnival and Jasper Winter Carnival. The poster, circa early 1950s and designed by an unknown artist, sold for a bargain $812, barely over its $800 low estimate. A similar poster advertising the same events and dated 1952 illustrates a female skier and a smiling sun wearing sunglasses. This one jumped its high estimate of $1,200 and sold for $1,500.

“These two posters are super unusual, and that’s what I love,” said Lowry. “I am grateful to our clients for finding posters like these that I have never seen before.”

Another oddity was “Vive la Différence.” This poster advertising Mt. Snow shows “a dude in his ugly sweater and a woman in a bikini, both depicted from behind,” said Lowry. “It uses blue and green in shades that are midcentury modern, with ski slopes and a swimming pool. It’s charming and trying to be cool and hip, and it’s like it’s trying to be a French resort. I’ve never seen it before. It’s funky and unusual since so many ski posters are all about location, location, location.” The poster sold for just $562, well below its $700 to $1,000 estimate.

Yet another new poster for Lowry was “Mt. Spokane/Chair Lift/ Mt. Spokane State Park,” a midcentury gem reminiscent of the work of Sascha Maurer, who designed so many Vermont ski posters in the 1950s. Lowry, however, looked at the typography, the way that the word “SKI” was in three different colors, the design and details such as the Ray-Ban–like sunglasses, the position of the skis and the abstraction and saw something else. “The artist is unknown, but whoever it was had a complete understanding of European graphic design,” he explained. “They knew what they were doing, and they were using the styles of the masters. This is a good poster, and I would hang it on my wall.” The price was also right, selling for $750, estimated at $700 to $1,000.

The most exotic piece in the sale was probably “Chile/Alegria/ Nieve Y Sol/,” by the Chilean artist Isaias Cabezon. A woman stands ankle-deep in the snow, holding a snowball, while behind her are skiers and ski tracks in the distance. “It’s the 1930s and this poster of a very fashionably dressed woman is like an illustration from a fashion magazine,” Lowry said. “The colors are very different from other ski posters, and it’s all about happiness in the snow and sunshine.”

It was also the earliest Chilean ski poster he had ever seen, possibly from the first days of Portillo. It clearly pleased at least one collector, who paid $1,500, well above its $1,000 top estimate.

The star of the auction was no surprise: “Les Sports d’Hiver St. Pierre de Chartreuse,” by one of the great masters of poster art, Roger Broders. This work by the French artist and illustrator depicts the Alpine resort of Perquelin, where a group of spectators have gathered to watch a bobsled team fly by. Broders excelled at many aspects of poster design, including an ability to depict a crowd in a stylized, slightly abstract way that makes it look vibrant and alive. The scene shows a colorful group of onlookers, shouldering or holding their wooden skis. In the background, other skiers continue to navigate the slopes. Meanwhile, the bobsled team reaches out to handle the sharp curve in an artwork that’s alive and captures a snapshot in time.

“It’s in staggeringly good condition and is a staggeringly beautiful poster,” said Lowry. “Everything about this is great. The crowds, the action, the skier charging uphill.” This 1930 poster achieves what other posters of the time tried to do with various levels of success: showing multiple sports and the fun one could have in the snow, from bobsledding to tobogganing to skiing. “More than that, it shows you the people who came to the resorts,” Lowry adds. “This is not just an activity; this is a lifestyle event. You see someone wearing a beret, a fellow skiing in a tie and another in a bow tie, scarves nicely tied, women in fur coats and a sweater with piping. These were the beautiful people of the time.”

While the folds of the mountains, the shadows and the trees seem incredibly realistic, Lowry noted one unusual aspect. “It’s amazing how much empty space there is in this poster,” he said. “You don’t even realize it as you stare at it and don’t feel or see it. Yet you don’t feel like the artist missed something. That’s why it appears so realistic. The perspective is amazing.” The masterwork by Broders shot well above its $15,000 high estimate to close at $17,500. 

Swann’s next auction featuring vintage ski posters will be held in March 2024. Visit Swann Galleries at swanngalleries.com

New York–based travel writer Everett Potter wrote about Sundance, Utah, in the January-February 2021 issue.

 North American Ski Academies Look to the Future

In 1970 Warren Witherell and Finn Gunderson took in the view from a hillside in East Burke, Vermont, and envisioned the concept of a ski academy..The idea—a model that combined focused athletics and academics in an environment built around trust and community—spawned Burke Mountain Academy (BMA) and the imminent creation of Stratton Mountain School (SMS) and Green Mountain Valley School (GMVS). All benefitted from Vermont’s open-minded perspective on education and dense skier population. Decades before Covid, ski academies pioneered remote learning, combining it with midweek training that dramati- cally increased students’ time on snow to 100 days a season. With all the nec- essary pieces in place, academy skiers excelled nationally. 

Photo above: Courtesy Carabasset Valley Academy

As Gunderson describes, the ski academies’ early success was also their undoing. “As the academies dominated, other programs caught on,” he explains, adding that once snowmaking became ubiquitous in the West, the season there dramatically lengthened. With the ski academy model now proven, and demand growing, the youth market exploded.

HEALTHY COMPETITION

Soon the Big Three had company. In 1975 Vermont’s Killington Mountain School opened its doors. In 1982 Carrabasset Valley Academy (CVA) in Sugarloaf, Maine, came on the scene, as did Rowmark, an academy attached to Salt Lake City’s well-established Row- land Hall prep school. Resort towns like Jackson Hole, Wyoming; Sun Valley, Idaho; Squaw Valley, California; and Steamboat, Colorado, all offered ski racing options at public, private and charter schools. The Hellman family, who had started SMS, created a Western version in 1998, the Sugar Bowl Ski Academy. In 2007, Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy became the first public ski academy, dramatically decreasing the cost of mixing school and ski racing, and increasing accessibility to the ski academy experience.

Meanwhile, in the East, where more than half of U.S. Ski and Snowboard’s racer population resides and where these youth can access a full range of competitions within a few hours’ drive, traditional prep schools like Proctor Academy, Holderness School, Gould Academy and Northwood School beefed up their ski programs.

In all, 27 schools now identify as ski academies across the country, with options that broaden accessibility and, therefore, the potential talent pool. This growth has allowed more ski racers to pursue the top level, increasing competition and challenging the original model. While ski racing remains the central focus, the demands for excellence in everything else—from academics and college placement to extracurricular options and standard of care—has dramatically increased. And as they have from the start, the academies adapted.

ADJUSTING THE GOALPOST

Just as expectations have changed, so, too, has the motivation to attend academies. With more athletic competition from across the country, and a longer development track in the sport, making the U.S. Ski Team in high school is now an unlikely outcome—but it’s also less of a priority. Burke headmaster Willy Booker, himself a BMA graduate, can’t pinpoint when that attitude shifted but notes that in the interview process, few kids men- tion the Olympics or the U.S. Ski Team as a goal. Most focus on skiing for a good NCAA Division 1 school. “When I came to Burke, college placement wasn’t even a thought,” Booker recalls.

At the same time, getting into the most desirable schools has also become more competitive: In 1997 students applying to Dartmouth—an Ivy League school with a top NCAA ski team— had a 25 percent chance of getting in. This year, the acceptance rate was less than 8 percent of applicants. As colleges have gotten more selective, high schools that offer a proven pathway in, as well as character-building values, are highly coveted. Successful college-placement outcomes now include not only the 20 schools with NCAA ski teams, but also the 175 schools in the USCSA that offer a wide range of academic and athletic options.

Ski academies stack up favorably against their prep-school peers on tuition, and what they lack in diverse academics and general athletic facilities, they make up for in specialized staff, pro- gramming and venues. “You can’t make an apples-to-apples comparison,” says Booker. “The athletics are worlds apart.”

COST: THE COMMON ENEMY

During the 2022 Beijing Olympics, one article not about Mikaela Shiffrin grabbed the public’s attention—a Wall Street Journal piece entitled “U.S. Alpine Ski Racing’s $500,000-per-Kid Problem.” It highlighted the “financial doping,” from a young age, that is narrowing skiing’s Olympic pipeline.

The number is not an exaggeration, especially for kids attending private ski academies. Lost in that headline, however, is the fact that kids are also getting a private school education at a small boarding school, learning the values those schools hold dear and then getting into top colleges. Demand for that avenue to success will likely remain strong and thus maintain the viability of academies, each of which already offers more than $1 million annually in financial aid and scholarships. The academies work hard to build their endowments in order to broaden accessibility. Furthermore, the aggregation of facilities and staff at state-of-the-art venues greatly benefits the full spectrum of the ski racing com- munity, from junior to post-graduate.

More critical to ski academy survival than tuition is the viability of the entire sport. The two most challenging issues ski racing faces are snow and cost. The quest for snow, a diminishing resource, is increasingly expensive. Keeping costs in check is a universal theme of ski programs looking to survive and includes initiatives like snow farming to extend the ski season into spring and reducing off-season travel. Nevertheless, as Booker says, “For the immediate future, we see travel as part of the necessity of what’s going to happen.”

That travel comes from the desire to increase days on snow, which puts Eastern academies at a geographical disadvantage. As winters grow warmer, the original gold standard—100 days on snow—that con- ferred such an advantage to ski academy athletes, is now harder to achieve in many venues. Moreover, 100 days of on-snow training is now deemed inadequate. With improved snowmaking in the West, Colorado athletes can log 150 annual days on snow with minimal out-of-region travel, while Eastern skiers can still only rely on those 100 days at home and must travel significantly for the rest.

With the added prices of lane fees, lift tickets and lodging, it is often less expensive for Eastern skiers to travel to Europe for training than to Colorado. Plus, the cost of ski equipment, and the amount needed, has also risen dramati- cally, while gear sponsorships—nearly ubiquitous for all academy racers a generation ago—are now exceedingly rare.

The other major contributor to cost in all ski clubs, but especially at academies that now require specialized employees in both academics and athletics, is staffing. Covid initiated a mass migra- tion of remote workers to mountain towns, especially in the West, driving up property values and rents. GMVS and Burke have both acquired adjoin- ing land and structures to expand their campuses and offer more staff housing, but it remains an ongoing challenge.

This not only affects staff, but also drives out the local mountain families with homegrown athletes who traditionally took advantage of financial aid at ski academies and factored heavily into the talent pool. No amount of financial aid will help if families are priced out by real estate, equipment and travel, and can’t get into the sport in the first place.

SOLUTIONS, FROM THE GROUND UP

One way in which academies hope to remain competitive is by growing their talent pool right at home, building lifetime miles on snow when kids are young. Then by the time kids are of ski academy age, they will already have the basics in place to optimize further development. “By the time skiers are U16 they might be 200 days behind,” says GMVS headmaster Tracy Keller. “We are looking behind the pipeline to offer more midweek skiing for younger skiers.” Academies have robust feeder clubs that capture local skiers. Burke’s junior program is run by Olympic gold medalist and BMA alum Diann Roffe, with the idea that building the right fundamentals into kids’ skiing is a key for future success.

On the other end of the age spectrum, all academies provide high-level post-grad programs to help top athletes, who at age 18 are still years away from realizing their athletic potential in the sport, continue elite development towards collegiate or national teams.

PARTNERSHIPS AND COOPERATION

Burke has forged a partnership with Baerums ski club in Norway to help defray the costs of off-season camps by sharing equipment and staff in each place. GMVS has explored a relationship with Apex 2100 academy in France. SMS’s ground-breaking partnership with the T2 Foundation created a home base for post-grad Nordic skiers. Since 2013 SMS T2 athletes have won world championship medals at every level (U18, World Juniors, U23s and the World Championships themselves).

In season, academies also work closely with their home mountains to optimize access. “We are mindful that the Rockies are offering a longer season,” says SMS headmaster Carson Thurber, “but we still find plenty of days on snow.” Stratton Mountain guarantees SMS access to the first trails open early season, while the academy also takes advantage of Eastern resorts like Sunday River, Maine, that get early sea- son snow and are more cost- and time- effective than traveling to Colorado.

One benefit of Covid was increased collaboration among ski academies, which banded together to work with the state of Vermont in order to have any kind of competition season. As Thurber explains, “Everyone is willing to be a good partner and neighbor, and that was not always the case.”

This new spirit of collaboration could help academies control costs by working with each other, and also enable them to use their combined voices to influence changes for a more sustainable future. Recently BMA hosted a sum- mit for Eastern academies with Sophie Goldschmidt, the new CEO of U.S. Ski and Snowboard. The academies formed a coalition to advocate for more resources in the East. Their influence could also urge the national governing body toward policies to support the sport’s long-term health, such as minimizing travel at younger ages, reserving out-of-region trips for necessary competitions and scheduling important races later in the season to reduce the advantage gained by those who can afford early-season travel.

EMBRACING THE SPECIAL SAUCE

On the topic of academies, Kirk Dwyer is both an expert and an optimist. He came to GMVS in its second year and stayed for 25. He next served as headmaster at BMA for 16 years and then as executive director at Ski and Snowboard Club Vail for six years. In 2021 he returned East as Alpine program director at CVA. The biggest challenge for all of the academies, he says, is attracting more kids to the sport and retaining them. He points out that the new norm of excessive travel carries not only financial costs but also opportunity costs, leaving Eastern acad- emies less time to exploit their natural strengths. As Dwyer says, “Success comes when you are the best you can be, not when you try to be someone else.”

Rather than simply racing toward more days on snow to emulate their Western peers, Dwyer believes Eastern academies should embrace their advan- tages in everything from independent academic calendars to co-ed training to the region’s dense competitive landscape. Less travel would allow them to leverage their unique cultures, which breed cre- ativity, physical strength, independence, innovation and community.

He also suggests that academies could use their shared voice to advo- cate for the sport’s sustainability. “We could agree that we’re going to try to limit, especially in the East, how much we race because we have fewer days on snow,” says Dwyer, who describes how over-racing detracts from the valuable days on snow. By fully exploiting all the resources, facilities and days on snow at home, then supplementing them with necessary camps, “you start to really bend the cost curve,” says Dwyer.

Finn Gunderson has seen how the positive impact of ski academies goes beyond racing and into life overall. “We created something different, and skiing was the vehicle,” he says. “The whole idea that these kids in the fall will carry wet hay bales up the training hill—that stuff changes you.” Gunderson has since moved from ski to soccer academies.

When he considers the future of ski racing, though, he thinks big picture: a paradigm change to boost participation and accessibility; regional development centers and additional fundraising to pro- vide free training and travel for kids.

When thinking of the possibilities, he harkens back to his memory of standing in a field with Warren With- erell, with no plan and no money but a vision. “To people who say, ‘You’re a dreamer,’ I say, ‘You should have been at Burke in 1970.’” 

Olympian Edith Thys Morgan is a regular contributor to Skiing History. The first part of this article ran in the July-August issue.

 The slalom world champion and Olympic bronze medalist has won her second term in Australia’s parliament, as a Green/Blue independent. 

Photo above: A pioneer throughout her career, Zali Steggall became the first Australian woman to win a World Cup event in Alpine skiing, a 1997 slalom in Park City, Utah. She also won Australia’s first Olympic Alpine medal and first FIS World Championship title, both in slalom.

What does one do for an encore after winning a World Cup race, a World Championship slalom title and an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing?

If you’re Zali Steggall, you get a law degree while raising five kids, beat a former prime minister for his seat in the Australian Parliament, get elected to a second three-year term and take up ultra-running—all by the age of 48.

Somewhat miraculously, the four-time Olympian and slalom specialist found a moment to chat shortly after Australia’s most recent federal election in May 2022. She phoned from Warringah, the district she represents, which encom- passes Sydney’s north shore and lower northern beaches. It’s a three-and-a-half hour drive from the capital city of Canberra, where members of Parliament sit for about 22 weeks a year, from Monday to Thursday, so she returns regularly to her electorate. It’s the same district that Tony Abbott represented for 25 years (including as prime minister from 2013-15), un- til Steggall, an independent, defeated him in 2019 by a 14.4 percent margin, after all the votes for the less popular candi- dates were re-allocated. (When voting, Australians must rank each candidate in order of preference.)

This May, Steggall won her second term, with a 22 percent lead over the Liberal Party candidate. She viewed this increased margin as a positive sign that her old critics were wrong when they said that the only reason she won as an independent in 2019 was because she’d taken on Abbott, regarded by some as a toxic personality who weaponized cli- mate policy in Australia. Once he lost, their logic went, voters would go back to traditional party lines.

“The criticism is always: What can an independent do be- cause I’m not part of a big-party machine?” she says. “I think I really showed that I can be very effective in pressuring the government and putting forward sensible solutions, especially around climate.” She is not alone. This year, six women were elected as “teal independents” for their blend of green (pro-environment) and liberal-leaning (blue) politics.

When Steggall retired from ski racing after the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics, she wasn’t hellbent on politics. All she knew was that her life’s pinnacle was not her 1997 slalom vic- tory in Park City (the first World Cup win by an Australian woman) nor the 1998 Olympic slalom bronze she captured in Nagano (Australia’s first Olympic Alpine medal) nor her 1999 World Championship title in Vail (another Aussie first). When asked to identify the highlight of her life at her final press conference, she said, “I’m 27, and I certainly hope I haven’t had it yet.”

“That [statement] really epitomizes my philosophy,” she says now. “It doesn’t matter what you achieve, it’s important to keep setting new goals and keep challenging yourself in new ways. For me, a satisfying life is a challenging life.”

NO STRANGER TO CHALLENGE

When she was 4, her parents took Steggall and her older brother, Zeke, to live in Morzine, France, for 10 years. She spoke French in school and English at home, and trained with the French junior ski team. Had she continued, the deal was that she would have to represent France when she turned 18. Instead, the Steggalls returned to Australia in 1988 and absorbed tremendous expenses to finance their daughter’s coaching, equipment and travel in a nation that had a grand total of four World Cup podiums in Alpine skiing.

The road to the 1992 Albertville Olympics was even more fraught, because Australia only received two Alpine berths. Steven Lee was likely to take one, and a half dozen men in their early 20s on the Europa Cup or World Cup level expected to vie for the other. Says Steggall, “I was a 17-year-old upstart who said, ‘No, the two spots should go to the best-ranked skiers with the best prospects.’” She quit her final year of high school to train full-time, improved her FIS ranking and snatched the second spot. “It meant a lot to me because those Olympics were in France, and I’d grown up in France,” she says, “but also, I was training with Annelise Coberger from New Zealand. To watch her win the silver medal in slalom there was huge, the first-ever Alpine medal for the southern hemisphere. She proved it could be done. It was pivotal.”

By the 1994 Lillehammer Games, Steggall still didn’t have the resources to compete with the top nations and she was ski- ing five events—although she pared it down to slalom, GS and combined for the Games. Still, she had to pay her own excess baggage fees to get six to eight pairs of skis, gates and other equipment to the Olympics. She laughs about it now but after Lillehammer, she says, “I had to make a strategic decision. I felt my best shot was to become an absolute expert at slalom.”

Around that time, the Grollo family, who owned Mount Buller, got behind Alpine racing. They started the Australian Ski Institute, paying for Steggall’s coaching and providing her with a proper program. But she still needed a world-class training group, so by the 1997–98 Nagano Olympic season, Steggall was working with the German women’s technical team. At 23, she had already been racing for 10 years. “It was crunch time,” she said. “Ei- ther crack the top seed of World Cup or do something else because I was going into my third Olympics.”

As it turned out, she put together the two best seasons of her career.

At the World Cup opener in November 1997, a clear, crisp day in Park City, Utah, everything went according to plan. She won the first run—the bane of a slalom skier. “Shit,” she thought. “Can I do it a second time?” She did, becom- ing the first Australian woman to win a World Cup race. But Ylva Nowén of Sweden won the next four slaloms, and Steg- gall went back to Australia for 10 days leading up to Nagano. “Those years were pre-internet, pre-Facebook, pre-mobile phones,” she recalls, “so you’re quite disconnected. I was quite lonely, living on my own in Europe for months on end. Com- ing home meant you spent 24 hours on a plane travelling, but you really got a lift emotionally, mentally. In January, it’s mid- summer, warm.”

As a result, she missed both Nagano’s opening ceremony and her brother Zeke’s event. (Zeke was competing in the Olympic debut of snowboarding, 11 days before Zali’s race.) Upon arrival, she stayed with the German team on the moun- tain, away from the drama of the Olympic Village.

At the time, Australia had exactly one winter Olympic medal, a 1994 bronze in the men’s 5,000-meter short track speedskating relay. At Nagano, everyone expected Australia to win its first individual medal, most likely in aerials because Kirstie Marshall was the 1997 world champion and Jacqui Cooper was ranked second in World Cup aerials. Both failed to make the finals, however, and the short track team didn’t medal, either.

“All of a sudden, the whole Australian contingent at the Winter Games turned to me because I was the last prospect,” Steggall says. “Two days before the end of the Games, the whole team is facing criticism. ‘We haven’t progressed from the bronze relay medal. What does this mean for Australia at the Winter Olympics?’ I was incredibly nervous. It was in- sane. There was so much on the line.”

After the first run of slalom, Steggall and her training partner, Hilde Gerg of Germany, were third and second, re- spectively, behind Deborah Compagnoni of Italy. The course- setter for run two was their German coach, Wolfgang Grassl. Between runs, Steggall spent a couple of hours talking to her brother in the athletes’ tent. “All I can remember is talking about everything and nothing,” Zeke says, “not concentrating too much on skiing.”

By the end of the day, Gerg had won gold and Steggall collected bronze.

“You can’t underestimate what [that Olympic medal] did for winter sports funding in Australia,” she says. The Austra- lian Institute of Winter Sports was formed after Nagano. (In 2001, it was renamed the Olympic Winter Institute of Aus- tralia, or OIWA.) “That was the launch of the whole proper professional winter program in Australia,” adds Steggall “Fi- nally, everything I had dreamed it would be, was. I had good coaches, good equipment, a good program, good sponsors, sufficient funding to have a world-class program.”

A year later, at the 1999 World Championships in Vail, Steggall took another trip home during the lead-up to the event. Once again, her coach set the slalom course for the second run. This time, it was Helmut Spiegl, and he set it across the hardest section of Pepi’s Face. “Hellie decided to go straight over the top and straight down the steepest section, and that’s where I made up my whole race, basically,” Steggall recalls. After the first run, she was tied for sixth with Pernilla Wiberg of Sweden but, says Steggall, “the last 10 turns down the steep is where I won it. I was not intimidated, and I nailed it.” Australia had its first world champion in Alpine skiing.

At the time, Australia was gearing up to host the 2000 Sydney Olympics, so when Steggall came back with the Olympic bronze from Nagano and a world title, she was a star—especially in her hometown of Manly, a beach suburb, where she would later carry the 2000 Olympic torch on its fi- nal leg around town, across the ferry and up Sydney Harbour by the Sydney Opera House. “It was as close to a home crowd celebration of sport as I was ever going to get because I was never going to have a World Cup [race] in Australia,” she says.

By then, Steggall had married an Olympic rower from the 1996 Games, David Cameron, but he had retired from the sport, and their time apart took a toll. She was far from home and had trouble sleeping before races. She caught glandular fever and tried to compete through it because she was a team of one with two coaches. Also, the top athletes had switched to shaped carving skis during the European summer and Steg- gall had missed the changeover. “It’s just the tyranny of being southern hemisphere and isolated from the rest of the Alpine community,” she says. And then, while she was training in New Zealand, terrorism hit the United States on September 11, and Steggall wondered if she shouldn’t do something more substantial than racing.

“Any good thing is going to come to an end at some point,” she says. “The question is: ‘How?’ By the time I got to the 2002 Olympic Games, I didn’t miss a single season, didn’t take a single break for injury. I was mentally and emotionally exhausted.” Her career ended with a first-run DNF in the Olympic slalom.

Steggall had finished her college degree while competing, but she had always been keen to study law. “So for the next four years [2002–2006], I studied law, had my two kids and worked part-time,” she relates. “I turned up for lectures with my [younger] son, Remy, in the Baby Bjorn and cut out to change his nappy. I multitasked my way through my law degree. I worked for my dad as a solicitor. Ultimately, I really wanted to be an advocate, or a barrister, who goes to court,” she says.

Doing so required additional exams, and by the time she was done in 2008, she had divorced, remarried and gained three stepdaughters. She donned the iconic 17th-century uniform of Commonwealth courts: a powdered wig and black gown. Compelled to make a difference, Steggall became a legal expert in land environment, native title, commercial, equity, family and sports law. In fact, as a member of the international Court of Arbitration for Sport, Steggall attended a fifth Olympics, in 2018; as part of the court’s ad hoc division, she helped dismiss the last-ditch appeals of 47 Russian athletes and coach- es to participate in the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

After 11 years, Steggall left her profession as a barrister to become a politician. “By late 2018, I was really focused on climate,” she explains. “Our climate policies have been very dysfunctional for 10, 15 years. The previous member of my seat in Warringah, Tony Abbott, was incredibly destructive. There was a strong movement to have an alternate choice. Newspaper articles talked about how the best candidate to take on Abbott would be a professional female, 35 to 50, ideally, with a profile and professional experience. I thought, ‘I can do this.’ I turned to my husband [Tim Irving] and said: ‘What if I give this a go? It took off, and we had a very intense campaign for five months.”

The campaign wasn’t the only thing she was running. A week after Steggall declared her candidacy, she learned that she and her ultra-marathon training partner had won the lot- tery to enter the Tour de Savoie, a 145-kilometer (90 miles) race with 9,100 meters of elevation gain. Eight months later, with less-than-perfect training, she pulled out after 113 kilo- meters (70 miles). “It’s the only event I’ve quit,” she says. “I want to go back and complete either that or the Ultra-Trail du Mont-Blanc.” Also on her bucket list: the Western States 100 in California, the world’s oldest 100-mile trail race.

“I’m not afraid of a challenge,” says Steggall, who went from winning 50-second slalom runs to racing 20 hours non- stop and designing government policy for an entire continent. 

 The Austrian mountain guide shot four Olympics, four Himalayan expeditions and countless scenes around his Vermont home.

Photo above: “At the downhill, I got frostbite on my nose from pressing the camera too long against my face. Next morning, I wiped the skin away.” [Photo taken by Dick Needham at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.]

Hubert Schriebl grew up climbing and skiing in Austria, then apprenticed as a saddle- and harness-maker. He moved to Innsbruck, the nation’s mountaineering hub, in 1955, at age 19. “I worked at the Kohler Sports factory, making leather grips for ski poles and the like,” he says. “I loved skiing the steep Nordkette runs on the north side of town, on the Seegrube lifts.” He became a certified ski and mountain guide, and in 1961 joined a German survey team mapping in the Himalaya. The work entailed photography. It was the first of his four trips to Asia.

“In 1964, while preparing to lead a Dutch expedition to Nepal, I met Emo Henrich in Igls,” Schriebl recalls. In 1961, Henrich had been named director of the new Strat- ton Mountain ski resort in Vermont. Says Schriebl, “He asked what I planned to do when I got back and invited me to Stratton. I had been thinking of guiding out of Lech, but thought I’d try one winter in America.” In late October, Schriebl led the first ascent of 23,000-foot Manaslu North. He arrived in Stratton two months later, on Christmas Eve.

In addition to shooting at Stratton, Schriebl landed choice assignments from SKI and Skiing magazines, Sports Illustrat- ed, Time, Newsweek and Vermont Life. He photographed four Winter Olympics—Innsbruck (1964 and 1976), Lake Placid (1980) and Sarajevo (1984)—and captured mountaineering expeditions in the Arctic, Africa and Mexico. He’s climbed Mont Blanc nine times and climbed Monte Rosa on his 70th birthday. --Seth Masia

“It was 1965, shortly after I arrived at Stratton. I was amazed at all the complicated equipment, especially the bindings. American skiers had Cubcos, Looks, Markers, all the differ- ent cable bindings, plus Head and Hart skis, and colorful boot brands. All I’d seen in Austria were the local brands, Kneissl and Kästle.”

"In 1968, Hermann Goellner came to Stratton and showed us what he could do in the air. One of our instructors, Kasi Lindlebauer, had incredible reflexes and always landed on his feet—I called him the Cat. He tried to do a flip, like Hermann. Believe it or not, he landed this one. He stuck it!”

“This one is Emo Henrich, showing how it’s done, around 1973. Of course, you couldn’t get away with locking the feet together all the time. He took some exciting spills on hard snow!”

“This is the young Canadian skier Brooks Read, overpowering his own gear in 2019.”

“The skiers are Alfred Trinker, Karl Gegenschatz and Hansi Brantner. This was a set-up. In the early 1970s I didn’t yet have a motor drive, so I needed to get off a single shot. I needed them to ski very clean.”

“Franz Klammer greets fans at the St. Anton World Cup in January 1981. He was 27 and would win the World Cup Down- hill title once more, in 1983, before retiring.”

"Here are the Canadian women at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck, with 20-year-old Nancy Greene in the middle."

“This is Margaux Hemingway, skiing pow- der in 1981 at Gerlos, near Hintertux. She was a lot of fun to ski with.”

“In 1968, I was in Nepal. We were doing cartography work along the bor- der with Tibet—in fact, this ridgeline on Rolwaling Himal, at 5,900 me- ters near Cho Oyu, forms the border. My partner is Dr. Klaus Göurtler. The evening before we had climbed the opposite side of the valley from our camp at 6,000 meters, and here we are looking at our own tracks.”

“In 1981, Phil Mahre won his first overall World Cup title, largely based on the combined trophies earned at Morzine, Oberstauffen and, in this photo, at St. Anton. He later beat Stenmark in three technical events [slalom and GS] that season.

“It seems Phil won almost every time I shot him. At the end of the 1982 World Cup season, I shot him winning the slalom on March 26, in Montge- nèvre, France, wrapping up his second overall World Cup championship. John Fry urged me to get to the Dolomites the next day, where Bill Koch had the chance to win the cross country overall World Cup. So I drove Fry’s car through the night, about 330 miles across northern Italy, and the next morn- ing shot Koch winning the 15k at Castelrotto, and the overall championship.”

"Ingemar Stenmark at the World championships in Vail, 1989. He would win his last World Cup race, the GS at Aspen, the following week, and retire at the end of the season."

“At the 1976 Olympics, the ski jumps were held at Patscherköpfl. I had not much experience shooting jumping. I learned a bit about panning and got lucky with this shot.”

“Today, Andre Arnold is something of a for- gotten name, but he dominated World Pro Skiing, winning the championship in each of its last four seasons—more pro champion- ships than anyone else had ever won.”

“By 1984, the Mahre brothers were at the top of their game. Here’s Phil in the first run of the Sarajevo Olympic slalom. Steve won that run by .7 sec- onds, but Phil took the second run by more than a second for the gold. The race might have been even more exciting: Stenmark was barred from the Olympics that year for a spon- sorship violation.”

“At the Lake Placid Olympic downhill, in 1980, Leonhard Stock was a last-minute addition to the incredibly deep Austrian squad. The top of the downhill course was cut just for this event, and a temporary poma extended a few hundred feet above the top of Skyward Lift. That’s all gone now. From the top of the poma, I shot off to the left and crawled through the woods to a steep pitch at the big orange safety fence. I had to cut an illegal hole through the mesh and stuck my 300-mm lens

through it. I didn’t have much movement and was so close that each racer just filled the frame—this shot is uncropped. Sports Illustrated had a small army of photog- raphers there and their own lab. They asked if they could process my film and look at it. The next morning I was told, ‘Great shot, Hubert!’ It was the only shot they published, either of Stock or the downhill.”

“It was 1959, and I was earning my mountain guide certification in Austria.”

Patrician attitudes initially dominated 20th-century sports.

In the late 1800s, professional sports attracted high-stakes gambling. The potential for bribery and extortion led to a general sense that paid athletes were corruptible and competitions untrustworthy. While betting on amateur events was common, a deep divide emerged between “pure” amateurs, who were said to compete for the love of the sport, and professionals, who competed for money in the form of cash prizes or other remuneration. The distinction often boiled down to so-called gentleman-athletes, who had private fortunes, versus working-class athletes, who had to earn money to live and train. Sport governing bodies consisted almost exclusively of gentlemen, who often preferred not to compete with working people.

Photo, top of page: Ski jumping became a spectator sport, drawing huge crowds. Ski clubs sold tickets, and athletes wanted appearance money. Thus was born, in 1929, a professional ski jumping circuit. Photo courtesy Washington State Dept of Transportation.

When Baron Pierre de Coubertin revived the ancient institution of Olympic competition in the 1894 Paris Congress, two governing subcommittees were created: the Olympic committee and the Amateurism committee. The word amateur was defined very loosely; nonetheless, de Coubertin gave it a strong ideological tie to the Olympics that proved very difficult to strip away.

Any participant who accepted financial benefit for any performance was considered professional, and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) acted quickly to disqualify athletes found to have done so. Olympic sport thus claimed to be untainted by the culture of cheating and scandal that was presumed endemic to professionalism. Avery Brundage, the IOC president from 1952–1972 and a staunch supporter of amateurism, said in 1955: “We can only rely on the support of those who believe in the principles of fair play and sportsmanship embodied in the amateur code in our efforts to prevent the games from being used by individuals, organizations or nations for ulterior motives.” This amounted to pure hypocrisy: Brundage himself, when he was president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, was complicit in the Nazi use of Olympic sport for political purposes.

Participation in the first modern Olympics in Athens, in 1896, was limited to gentlemen and military officers (who were granted automatic “gentleman” status). Professionals and the working class were excluded. The tradition continued when the Winter Games began in 1924. It became a flash point because skiing originated as a working-class sport, pursued by hunters, farmers, herders and common warriors from prehistoric times.

Especially in North America, the strictures on working-class participation in sport couldn’t stand. But the rules still favored those wealthy enough not to have to make a living from sport. Amateur athletes could not teach or coach sports for money, receive remuneration for participating in sport nor use their victories and reputations to promote any product.

Conflicts over Amateurism in Skiing

Harold “Cork” Anson, in Jumping Through Time: A History of Ski Jumping in the United States and Southwest Canada, described how skiing developed in North America as Scandinavian immigrants brought ski jumping to Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin. It became the “thrill sport of winter,” he wrote. Jumps were built on hills with enough vertical to provide good landings. By the end of the 1890s, Michigan had more than 30 ski clubs centered around jumping.

A trend developed during this period that was inconsistent with the Norwegian principle of idraet, the philosophy that an individual develops strength and manliness through exercise. In theory, a person jumps because of the love of the sport, not for reward. But for ski clubs, jumping was a spectator sport. To draw paying crowds, some clubs worked to attract top athletes who could provide the longest, most thrilling jumps. Clubs gave cash prizes to winning jumpers (based on both distance and style points) and for the longest jumps (regardless of style). The size of jumping hills was increased to set new distance records, “compromising the grace and beauty of well controlled flight,” and clubs offered top jumpers local employment as a recruiting tool.

In 1905, the National Ski Association (NSA) was formed in Ishpeming, Michigan, to promote skiing, standardize competition rules and ski jump design, and to establish standards of amateurism. In 1906, on the principle that money corrupted idraet, NSA decided there should be no cash prizes in competitions. It took 10 years for those prizes to disappear, however. Some ski clubs paid the expenses of outstanding jumpers to participate in their tournaments. Professionals found they could demand, and receive, appearance money. Separate distance records were kept for amateur and professional ski jumpers.

In 1927, at the annual meeting of the NSA in Red Wing, Minnesota, 30 “leading riders of America gave the group an ultimatum,” according to the Seattle Times (February 4, 1927). Either they be allowed to receive cash awards or they would establish their own association. The paper reported that “Crockery, silver-ware, medals, cash and professionalism were more animated subjects of discussion ... than the outcome of the various championship events.”

Thus, in 1929, a number of Norwegian ski jumpers broke away from NSA and formed the Western American Winter Sports Association. WAWSA organized a professional ski jumping tour to compete around the United States in tournaments and exhibitions. Its members used tournament prize money to pay for travel. The group included Alf Engen, his brother Sverre, Sigurd Ulland, Lars Haugen, Einar Friedbo and others. Some of the country’s best jumpers did not join the tour, including Roy Mikkelsen and George Kotlarek, to preserve their amateur status so they could compete at the Olympics.

In 1932, the Cle Elum Ski Club in Washington asked Engen about appearing in its tournament. Engen replied that if “satisfactory terms” could be made, he would attend the event. “I am a professional and have arranged to jump in several tournaments this winter which offer some very attractive monetary rewards but, should you, however, make an offer which will make it worth my while to come to your city, I shall be very glad to jump upon your hill.” It appears the right offer was not made, as Engen was not one of the contestants in 1932.

Engen set a new world professional distance record in 1931 by jumping 247 feet at Ecker Hill near Salt Lake City. Over the next several years he repeatedly raised his own record. Engen won five National Professional Ski Jumping Championships from 1931 through 1935 and set three world professional jumping records.

Open Tournaments Permitted Ski Instructors to Compete

As Alpine skiing grew in popularity in the 1930s, and ski schools hired paid instructors, new issues relating to amateurism arose. In Europe, the International Ski Federation (FIS) ruled that ski instructors were amateurs and eligible to compete in FIS races. This did not fly with the International Olympic Committee. Olympic Alpine events were scheduled for the first time at the 1936 Winter Games in Garmisch, but the Nazi-run German team had a problem: their men had been shut out of the medals at the FIS World Championships in 1935. The IOC responded to pressure from Germany and excluded from the Garmisch Alpine events all the Swiss and Austrian men, on the grounds that they had worked as ski instructors. This opened a path for German skiers to win medals at the Olympics, while the Swiss and Austrians dominated the FIS Alpine Championships, held concurrently in Innsbruck with no Germans present.

In the United States, NSA considered paid instructors to be “FIS amateurs” who could not compete in amateur tournaments. When Sun Valley opened in December 1936, Averell Harriman set out to make his new resort an international destination and the country’s center of ski racing. He sponsored ski tournaments that attracted the best skiers in the world, and publicist Steve Hannagan made sure newspapers provided extensive coverage of the events. In his autobiography, Dick Durrance said Harriman “was determined that Sun Valley would match anything Europe had to offer.”

Harriman hired some of the best ski racers from Europe to teach in the Sun Valley Ski School, although as ski instructors, they were not eligible to compete in amateur ski races in this country. Harriman decided to host “open” ski tournaments, welcoming both amateurs and professionals, so his ski instructors could show off their skills.

In spring 1937, Sun Valley hosted its first International Open tournament, which would become known later as the Harriman Cup tournament. “The ski instructors are generally considered superior to the average American amateur” and were not permitted to race against true amateurs, according to coverage in the Seattle Times. The Sun Valley International Open was “the No. 1 tournament of the year, because it numbered all the skiing greats in its entry list.” Two championships would be awarded, for open and amateur, and ski instructors were eligible only for the open title, while amateurs were eligible for both. Separate prizes were awarded to the winner of each category. Forty-four of the best European and American skiers entered: eight ski instructors who were eligible for the open championships and 36 amateurs in “the greatest field of foreign and resident skiers ever assembled in North America.”

Seattle’s Peter Garrett, one of the Northwest’s best racers, later lamented that amateur skiers had to compete with better-trained professionals, “who ski seven days out of the week and make skiing their living.” He called for a new system in which pure amateurs and pros would race in their own divisions.

Skiers Faced Discipline Over Amateur Issue

Engen immigrated to the U.S. from Norway in 1929 and became a U.S. citizen in 1935. Hoping to represent the U.S. in the 1936 Winter Olympics, he applied to be reinstated as an amateur. NSA ruled that an athlete could regain amateur status by proving he (or she) had not taken a sport-related payment for a full year. Engen did so, then out-jumped the competition at the Olympic trials and was named to the Olympic Team. However, Brundage, then president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, threw Engen off the team because his picture had appeared on Wheaties boxes (the “breakfast of champions”), along with those of basketball star Bob Kessler, hockey player Mike Karakas and speed skater Kit Klein. This made him a professional athlete, according to Brundage.

In late 1941, NSA revoked amateur status for Dick Durrance, Gretchen Fraser and Engen (again). Durrance was head of the Alta Ski School; in addition, both he and Engen endorsed Groswold skis. The NSA said that endorsing skis was allowed but that “use of a title and a record” made Engen a professional. The ski association said that Engen might be reinstated for open competition if changes were made to the advertisement, but it depended on whether the title and his record were used with his permission.

Fraser had been paid to double for Sonja Henie in skiing sequences in the 1940 movie Thin Ice and in Sun Valley Serenade in 1941. NSA ruled that she “will be a professional, eligible only as a F.I.S. amateur.” To address this issue, Northwest delegates to the NSA meeting were instructed to propose that all U.S. tournaments be open events under FIS rules.

In December 1941, NSA cleared Durrance of violating its rules. A skier could continue to be an amateur even if certified as a ski teacher, so long as he did not teach for money. Open-class competitors could endorse ski equipment “so long as titles were not thereby exploited.” In February 1942, Fraser and Engen each had their amateur status reinstated. The ski association determined that Engen endorsed Groswold skis but had not authorized the use of his record in any advertisement.

In 1936, both the winter and summer 1940 Olympics were awarded to Tokyo, Japan (to the surprise of many), making it the first non-Western city to win an Olympic bid. After the second Sino-Japanese War broke out in July 1937, doubts were raised about whether Japan should host the Olympics. Japan formally forfeited the Games on July 16, 1938, and the IOC awarded the Summer Games to Helsinki, Finland, which had been runner-up in the original selection process. St. Moritz, Switzerland, was named as the new host of the 1940 Winter Games.

St. Moritz’s willingness to host the Winter Olympics was threatened when a dispute arose over the eligibility of paid ski instructors to participate in the Games. While FIS insisted that instructors were amateurs, the IOC ruled that they were professionals and ineligible. As a result of this conflict, the IOC eliminated skiing as a regular event from the 1940 Olympics, making it an exhibition sport.

Switzerland refused to host the Games at St. Moritz unless skiing were changed back to a regular event. The IOC refused to do so, and the Winter Games were transferred to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, the host of the 1936 Olympics. Of course, both the 1940 and 1944 Games were eventually cancelled due to World War II.

After the war, the Winter Olympics resumed at St. Moritz in 1948, where Fraser competed as an amateur and won gold and silver, the first American to win an Olympic medal in Alpine skiing. Engen served as co-coach of the U.S. team with Walter Prager. Prager, a two-time World Alpine champion, Lauberhorn and Hahnenkamm victor and Swiss Nordic champion, was one of the Swiss ski instructors who had been barred from the 1936 Olympics. So he departed that year for America, to the benefit of Dartmouth College and the 10th Mountain Division.

As IOC chairman, Avery Brundage would campaign to exclude so-called professionals from “amateur” sports until his death in 1975. In his most notorious confrontation, he threw Karl Schranz out of the 1972 Olympics for signing endorsement contracts. In 1984, World Cup champions Ingemar Stenmark and Hanni Wenzel were banned from the Sarajevo Olympics for taking sponsorship money directly, rather than through their national teams. The IOC finally dropped the amateurs-only rule in 1986, permitting all athletes to deal openly with sponsors. 

John Lundin has won four ISHA Skade Awards for books on the history of Pacific Northwest skiing and Sun Valley. He wrote about Sun Valley’s Ruud Mountain in the March-April 2022 issue of Skiing History.