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A century-and-a-half after a Norwegian woman soared 20 feet in the world’s first recorded ski-jumping event, female flyers were still fighting for international recognition.

At the first recorded event in history dedicated solely to ski jumping, one of the jumpers wore a skirt. Ingrid Olavsdottir Vestby probably left the ground for around six meters, or almost 20 feet—“past the point where many a brave lad had lost his balance earlier in the competition.” Spectators shouted bravos because “they had never seen a girl jump on skis and they had been more than a little anxious as she flew over their heads.” She jumped in Trysil, Norway. She jumped in 1862. She landed in obscurity.

Today the history of women’s ski jumping has just begun to be written. Only in the 1990s were women first allowed to fully participate in international jumping competitions. For more than a century after Vestby’s historic jump, the spectacle of woman soaring on skis was widely regarded as dangerous, unhealthy, immoral, unladylike and unattractive. Of course, there’s a good explanation for the latter: the horror of mussed-up hair. Austrian Paula Lamberg, the “Floating Baroness” who set a world record in women’s ski jumping at 22 meters, was given grudging admiration in her country’s Illustrierte Zeitung magazine in 1910. But the quote provides a glimpse into the on-again, off-again history of women’s ski jumping—and the stubborn prejudice with which the sport has long been forced to contend.

“Jumps of this length are very good, even for men. It is understandable that ski jumping is performed very rarely by women, and taking a close look, not really a recommendable sport. One prefers to see women with nicely mellifluous movements, which show elegance and grace, like in ice skating or lawn tennis…and it is not enjoyable or aesthetic to see how a representative of the fair sex falls when jumping from a hill, flips over and with mussed-up hair glides down towards the valley in a snow cloud.”

How embarrassing was that?

Women’s jumping were not on the schedule at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, but they will be in 2014 at Sochi, Russia.

In November of 2006, in response to a proposal from the Fédération International de Ski (FIS), the International Olympic Committee (IOC) ruled that there was not enough technical merit among women ski jumpers to allow them on the jumps, and then immediately stated that the decision had nothing to do with gender. “There is no discrimination whatsoever,” IOC President Jacques Rogge said.

With a quick look at history, it becomes obvious that women’s exclusion has everything to do with gender. The reason too few women have been able to develop enough technical merit for the IOC’s standards is because they have been actively discouraged from ski jumping, from 1862 until today.

Under today’s helmets, nobody’s hair gets mussed, so that can’t be the problem. Could there be another reason why women have been kept from this last fortress of manliness?

Ladies Can’t Jump

At the beginning of the last century, the infant sport of skiing was introduced to North America by immigrant Norwegian miners and lumberjacks. They had a name for their sport: Ski-Idraet, meaning the sport of skiing that showcased high ethics, courage, discipline and physical fitness. By contrast, they preferred their women sweet, pleasant and soothing—and safely tucked away at home.

“To keep women away from sports and primarily men’s sports, medical arguments were quite often used,” says Annette Hofmann in her paper, “Female Eagles of the Air: Developments in Women’s Ski Jumping,” published in New Aspects of Sport History in 2007. “Vital energy theory,” for instance, said that women were born with a limited amount of energy; as child-bearers their bodies were reduced to “a morbid state” and thus were at risk when performing jumps, said Norwegian Christian Døderlein in 1896.

By the 1920s, doctors and female physical educators began to understand the importance of physical activity for women. They encouraged them to get out in winter, and enjoy themselves with skating, snowshoeing and skiing. But jumping was still out of the question. The latest medical concerns focused on the jolt of landing or a possible fall; at the time, uterine stress was believed to cause sterility. “Ski-jumping is not good for the female organism,” declared Gustave Klein-Doppler in the 1926 Wintersports Yearbook.

“This might be physiologically explained by the different construction of this sex. At this time there is no need or reason to organize jumping competitions for the ladies. Because of this unanswered medical question as to whether ski jumping agrees with the female organism, this would be a very daring experiment and should be strongly advised against.”

Those that spoke out against women in ski jumping even included sports women, like Germany’s Alpine World Champion skier Christl Cranz: “Cross-country skiing and ski jumping are athletic performances…for which a lot of strength and endurance is necessary, more than women can give without harming themselves…Certainly no reasonably sporting girl would think about participating in a marathon or boxing, and that is how it is with us women skiers; there is no interest in running or jumping competitions.”

Spooked mothers kept their daughters off ski jumps for more than half a century. Those fears and excuses seem positively Jurassic more than eighty years later. Imagine someone today saying, for instance: “Ski-jumping is like jumping down from, let’s say, about two meters off the ground about a thousand times a year, which seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.”

Yet that’s what FIS and IOC official Gian Carlo Kasper said—in February of 2006. Meanwhile, women are participating in much more dangerous Olympic ski events, such as the downhill, in which racers are occasionally killed, and in the brand new skicross and snowboard cross, where four racers hurtle down a twisting, bumpy track at the same time.

At the 2006 Winter Olympics in Torino, Alissa Johnson sat on the sidelines and watched her brother slide down the inrun instead. “So far, we’ve been told every excuse in the book. That it’s too ‘dangerous’ for girls. That there aren’t enough of us. That we’re not good enough. That it would damage our ovaries and uterus and we won’t be able to have children, even though that’s not true. It’s so outdated; it’s kind of funny in a way. And then it’s not.”

To Make a Long History Short

Ingrid Vestby may have made a daring venture into ski jumping in 1862, but she certainly didn’t jump into any history books. She must have influenced a few of her fellow Norwegian women, however, because by 1896 there were enough of them to organize the first (unofficial) national ski-jumping competition for women.

The self-proclaimed Mecca of ski jumping, the mighty Holmenkollen, was built in 1892 to host the Norwegian national cross-country and jumping competitions, and Scandinavians held tight to their tradition. Even as they immigrated to North America, particularly the American Midwest, they set up their rickety scaffolding and continued to dominate the sport. Early men’s competitions literally put Norwegians in their own class to give newcomers a fighting chance at winning a prize of their own. Women didn’t have any class at all, on either side of the Atlantic. No woman would “diminish the allure of the sport” by being allowed to jump at Holmenkollen in Norway until 1978.

Official recognition didn’t stop them from jumping. In 1904, a Norwegian Miss Strang jumped 14.5 meters; Tim Ashburner’s History of Ski Jumping (Quiller Press, 2003) noted that the English Miss Hockin jumped “very gallantly” at the first British Ski Championship in 1911, landing seven meters without falling.

Probably the best-known woman jumper of the era—even of the century—was “the Floating Baroness” Paula Lamberg, from Kitzbühl, Austria. She set a record of 24 meters in the 1920s. By 1926, the Norwegian Olga Balsted Eggen had jumped 4.5 meters further.

The extent of the Baroness’ fame was obvious even in Canada in 1921. That year at an Ottawa jumping championship, the Montreal Star reported, spectators were shocked to see that the world title for ski jumping was going to be challenged by a woman. The flamboyant “Countess Alma Stang” soared off the platform, looking to set a new record—until her wig fell off and revealed her as a man in drag. It was a backhanded compliment to the Baroness.

Queens of the Skies

Before the 1990s, ski jumping for women probably enjoyed its biggest surge of popularity in the Roaring Twenties. When a new jump was built in 1922 in Brattleboro, Vermont, the first person to fly off it was the man who got it built, Fred Harris, founder of the Dartmouth Outing Club; the second person was his sister Evelyn. All over town, the local papers reported, “youthful interest manifested itself by the innumerable ski jumps built all over town by the boys and girls.”

It may have sounded like equal opportunity, but during the 1920s and 1930s women were kept off the official jumping programs. Norwegian stars like 14-year-old Hilda Braskerud and 17-year-old Johanne Kolstad matched the boys in their distances, but were regulated to jumping “outside” as “trail jumpers” during the breaks. After a decade of constant scolding by the Norwegian Ski Federation that “women’s cross-country skiing and ski jumping are not desirable,” Kolstad left for the USA. Re-christened the “Queen of the Skies,” she proved it by jumping a world record of 72 meters in 1938.

When women did go off the same jumps as men, they often went as “glider girls,” taking off while holding hands with a male partner—a trick that seems more dangerous than going solo.

One woman who didn’t want her hand held was Isabel Coursier. Born in Revelstoke, British Columbia, Isabel watched the boys leaping off the new jump there, but nobody thought to ask her to join them. Instead, at a winter carnival she entered the “ski-joring” competition, a race in which the skier is pulled behind a galloping horse. “She beat all the boys,” says Wendy Bryden in her book Canada at the Olympic Winter Games. That finally got her the invitation to jump on the “Boy’s Hill” on Mount Revelstoke.

By 1923 Coursier got on the big jump, and promptly bested the Baroness’ world record by jumping 25.5 meters (84 feet). She was the only woman on the jump that year to compete unassisted, and went on to soar from numerous jumps across North America. Her fame led to a jumping exhibition with men’s world-record holder Nels Nelson for then U.S. President Warren G. Harding.

Like Coursier, many other women were able to jump throughout North America, for the most part in winter carnivals. At Colorado’s Steamboat Springs, for example, “ladies and girls” had their own jumping events. One of the most notable jumpers was Beatrice (Bea) Kirby. Since 1993, a trophy in her name as been awarded to the best jumper.

Another exceptional (in every sense of the word) American jumper of the period was Dorothy Graves of Berlin, New Hampshire. After jumping with the Queen of the Skies at an indoor international meet at Madison Square Garden in 1938, she went on to a career competing with men in both Class A and B during the 1940s.

In 1924 at the first Winter Olympics (which weren’t given that title until a year later) in Chamonix, France, ski jumping was one of the original six sports. But despite all the proof of women’s skill and bravery in making world record jumps—despite the Floating Baroness, despite the Queen of the Skies, despite Isabel Coursier’s Presidential jumps—women’s ski jumping was banned from those first Games.

It would take the IOC until 1991 to rule that each event must have a female equivalent. They made an exception, of course, if the sport was “grandfathered” in without a women’s component…like jumping.

With such a lack of respect for their abilities, and without encouragement for future generations, women’s jumping soon faded into the background. Over the next decades even men’s ski jumping (with its high insurance premiums) lost popularity to slalom, downhill racing and ever more extreme sports. It took until 1972 for a woman to beat the 72-meter jump record of Johanne Kolstad. Anita Wold of Norway, who had started during men’s competitions and was the first woman to jump at Holmenkollen, jumped over 80 meters that year. Four years later, while trying to bust the 100-meter mark, she reached a world record of 97.7 meters in Sapporo, Japan. In 1981 Finnish jumper Tiina Lethola soared 110 meters. Then things got quiet again, until a girl who had begun ski jumping at six years old entered the scene and began to forever change the complexion of women’s ski jumping.

The First Competitions

A modern ski jumper slides onto a horizontal start bar. Beneath the skis drops a narrow strip of snow and ice 90 meters (300 feet) long, with two perfect tracks and only one way to go. As the light turns from red to green, the jumper shifts forward and commits to sliding down the track at 60 miles an hour. When the tracks end and the slope flattens at the take-off, the jumper springs forward, arms pinned to the sides, head just above the ski tips, splayed skis slicing the air.

And then, a few seconds later, they land back in reality.

In 1991, Austrian Eva Ganster and her friend Michaela Schmidt, who had both headed down those slick slopes since they were young girls, began ski jumping at competitions. Only there weren’t any competitions for women. They jumped at men’s events as pre-jumpers, or jumped against men, or if they were lucky, like Karla Keck in the United States, they jumped in junior competitions. At every turn, like most women before them, they fought against officials who did not want the girls to jump, no matter how successful they were.

But by the mid-1990s, both Ganster and Schmidt had secret weapons: their fathers. Dr. Edgar Ganster and Hans-Georg Schmidt saw no reason why their daughters were not allowed to compete.

FIS officials trotted out that century-old scare of the female uterus bursting upon landing, but Dr. Ganster was having none of it. He and Schmidt began to push towards getting women their own jumping competitions so their daughters would have a place to show their stuff.

It soon paid off. Eva Ganster made a pre-jumper appearance at the famed Viersschanzentournee (Four Hills Tournament) in Europe, and then in 1994 made a breakthrough by starting as a pre-jumper at the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway. She was 16 years old, and set a women’s world record of 113.5 meters at that event.

The FIS cautiously began to notice the girls, and in 1994 set up a group to study the possibility of accepting women. Meanwhile, in 1995 women were allowed demonstration jumps at the FIS Nordic World Cup in Thunder Bay, Canada, and again in 1997 in Trondheim, Norway.

By that time Ganster had set another record by being the first woman to jump on a ski-flying hill, designed for long jumps; she set a new women’s world record of 167 meters. Six years later fellow Austrian Daniela Iraschko would break the record with a 200-meter jump.

That summer of 1997, the first international meet for young female jumpers was held in Voukatti, Finland. It was a slow start; the competition was unofficial, the girls jumped in the men’s pre-program, and they were given no score. Not content with that, Dr. Ganster and Mr. Schmidt then organized a girls-only competition at the Junior World Championships in St. Moritz in 1998, hosting 17 jumpers from seven countries on a 90-meter jump. It was not sanctioned by the FIS.

With that minor success, the fathers put together a Ladies’ Grand Prix as a counterpart to the Four Hills Tournament for 1999. The 13-day tourney hosted 29 women from nine countries, with five different competitions. That year too, the US Ski Association included for the first time a women’s class in the US Ski Jumping Championships.

By the 2002-2003 season, the Ladies’ Grand Prix became the FIS Ladies’ Tour Ski Jumping; that summer a Summer-Tournee Ski-Jumping was established as well, and in the United States, FIS-sanctioned ski jumping competitions were held with five competing nations. But the USSA still refused women the opportunity to win prize money at the national level, even though they did so in all other skiing disciplines.

At the Nordic National Jumping Championships in Steamboat Springs, Colorado that season, coaches and parents pressured the USSA to get a prize together for the girls. The organization yielded, and a big deal was made of presenting a check so large three people had to hold it up. The amount first place winner Jessica Jerome received was $150. The men’s winner took home $1,200.

Thanks to Eva Ganster’s record-making jumps and her father’s history-making stubbornness, the Austrian Ski Federation became the first country to form a national female ski-jumping team in 2000, with its first members Ganster and Iraschko (Ganster retired in 2005). The next year, both Norway and Japan had national teams too, followed by Canada in 2004 and Germany in 2005. Although the United States had a team by 2004 (and a regular sponsor in VISA), the USSA accepted the American team in 2006. Since then, the Germans have ranked first in the world in women’s ski jumping, followed closely by the United States.

Another event in 2004 triggered more attention for the women jumpers. One of the best female jumpers of all time who had already won the Holmenkollen women’s title in 2004 and 2005, Norwegian Anette Sagen, was not allowed to jump K185, the Ski Flying platform in Vikersund. Torbjørn Yggeseth, FIS chairman of the ski jump committee, opposed Sagen, saying the jumping ability of women was not good enough to jump at international venues like this one. Media coverage was ferocious, and the debate led to an open battle over women’s rights in sports.

That same year, the FIS allowed the women the “B” category. The points won during the Grand Prix count for the Grand Prix and the total score of the Continental Cup, now the closest thing to a World Cup and “A” status for women jumpers. In 2006, women had their own category at the Junior World Championships in Slovenia.

All that was missing was their own World Cup, and inclusion in the Olympics.

The Real Fear Factor

By the mid-1990s, men’s ski jumping was in a deep crisis. Fabled Norway had more ski jumps than jumpers in the Norwegian Federation. Sexy and more dangerous sports like inverted aerials, skicross and snowboard cross were all over the place—and women were doing them. Those factors may have contributed to the FIS finally recognizing the first women’s ski jumping event on the eve of the new millennium. What took them so long?

There are a few theories, but it’s the way officials act towards the athletes themselves that gives the broadest clues. When FIS ski-jump chairman Yggeseth denied the “little girls” the right to ski fly, he said most jumpers were “doing something similar to sledding. They should stay on the small hills,” he counseled.

This kind of belittling of women jumpers happens, says Annette Hofmann, because “There is a hidden fear that women will be as good as men, and thus threaten men’s dominance.” A study published in the Journal of Biomechanics (commissioned by the FIS and IOC) proved that women jumpers could become “a real competitive threat,” thanks to their lower body weight. Both organizations introduced strict rules in 2004 to take away any weight advantage—men were already “dieting to the point of illness,” said an official in SKI magazine. Anorexia in men, traditionally a female disorder, has contributed to the fear that the sport (judged not only on distance but by mellifluous style as well) will be taken over by women. More concretely, there’s a real fear that women asking for a piece of the pie would cut into resources like contracts, prize money and positions.

Not in My Olympics

Nothing helped get women into the Olympics in 2010, including the fact that women’s ski jumping was a demonstration sport at the 2006 Olympics. Not even the historic decision on May 26, 2006, when the FIS accepted that women jumpers would have their own World Cup at the 2009 Nordic World Ski Championships in Liberec, Czech Republic. Or the FIS decision to let women have a team event at the 2011 World Championships.

The IOC’s decision to ban women from ski jumping in the Games (they had done it in 1998, 2002 and 2006 as well) were:

• Women’s jumping was still developing in its early stages

• It lacked a sufficient number of countries participating

• It didn’t meet the technical standards required

Also cited was the problem that two world championships had not been held. That rule seemed flexible—women’s cross-country skiing had its first world championship two years after it was accepted in the Olympics in 1952. Then one year after the IOC’s decision to disallow women, the rules were changed to a sport only needing one world championship.

“There are 80 women” ski jumping, IOC President Jacques Rogge said. “In any other sport you are speaking about hundreds of thousands, if not tens of millions of athletes, at a very high level, competing for one single medal. We do not want the medals to be diluted and watered down.”

Those in the sport come up with different numbers than the IOC. Jumpers claimed there were 135 elite female ski jumpers registered internationally, in 16 countries. To put that in perspective, snowboard cross had 34 female competitors in ten countries; bobsled had 26 women in 13 countries; and the new skicross had 30 women in 11 countries.

In 2006 Women’s Ski Jumping USA said that “there are more women jumpers worldwide, and competing on a higher scale, now than there were women competing in bobsled or skeleton at the time those sports were added to the Olympic program for women.”

A Legal Right?

American downhill and World Cup overall champion Lindsey Van is a fighter, and she’s hungry. She’s been jumping internationally since she was 13 in a sport that itself is fighting for recognition. She parties hard, she works hard at her sport, and she works hard at keeping her weight in line. “I’ve been hungry for twelve years,” she says.

In May of 2008, a who’s who of international women’s jumping stars filed lawsuit in the British Columbia Supreme Court against the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC), the host of the 2010 Olympics. Canadian taxpayers footed a $580 million bill, they claim, for facilities with a men’s only sign; lawyer Ross Clark said that the absence of a women's competition is a violation of Canada's equal rights law, which is guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights.

The plaintiffs included Lindsey Van, along with Americans Jessica Jerome and Karla Keck, Annette Sagen of Norway, Daniela Iraschko of Austria, Jenna Mohr and Ulrike Grassler of Germany, Monika Planinc of Slovenia, and retired Canadian Marie-Pierre Morin (who had earlier moved to the U.S. after facing discrimination in Canada). Seventeen-year old Canadian Zoya Lynch joined the lawsuit later, but has since resigned from the Canadian team “out of frustration.”

“We're not asking for a new sport,” said Jessica Jerome's father, Peter, the vice president of Women's Ski Jumping USA. “We're not asking for a new discipline. We're just asking that an existing Olympic event allow women to compete.”

Yet the protests of women ski jumpers  did not fly. “It’s not a human rights case,” says Dick Pound, the Montreal lawyer and chancellor of McGill University—and member of the IOC since 1978. “It’s a decision on the part of the IOC. And it’s not going to stand them in good stead to sue a bunch of grumpy old men.”

Pound is no stranger to controversy and protests, and may even include himself in the Grumpy Old Men category. He was a mediator on the Court of Arbitration for Sport, the Chair of the Anti-Doping Agency, and as the ethics watchdog for the IOC, the investigator of the Salt Lake City Olympic scandal.

“They’ve missed the mark,” he said of the plaintiffs’ suing VANOC for not letting women use a Canadian facility, “because women will use the jump before and after the Olympics.” (The Continental Cup for women took place at Whistler in the middle of December 2008.) Conversely, “The International Committee is using that facility for just one event.”

Instead, Pound says women jumpers should look to the real source of their problem: the FIS. “We looked at the proposal from the FIS [in 2006]. It was made without much enthusiasm. It was made with them knowing the IOC would refuse it. The FIS have not done their job in promoting women’s jumping.”

Do the Right Thing

The long struggle of women jumpers for recognition is not the first time the FIS has dug in its heels against new sports. There was that incident in the last century where an upstart and extreme version of skiing tried for recognition too, and came up hard against a “Scandinavian ski aristocracy.” The new-fangled thing—out of Britain, mind you—was slalom and downhill skiing, first raced in 1921. The FIS banned slalom and downhill from the first “international world ski championship” (only later called the Winter Olympics) in 1924 at Chamonix, as founding editor Morten Lund has written in these pages. Those new sports missed two more Olympics, those in 1928 at St. Moritz and in 19832 at Lake Placid, and Alpine ski racing’s acceptance into official world competition came only in 1936 at the Garmisch Olympics after having been “delayed at least ten years past the time when it was ripe.” There was, however, a plus side: At Garmisch, for the first time, women had their own slalom and downhill competitions.

Cold comfort for women ski jumpers, perhaps, but what else do they have to hold on to? Well, for one thing, perhaps the International Olympic Committee’s own mission statement and charter?

First there was the new equality rule of 1991 that called for each sport to have male and female components. That didn’t work. Then there was the announcement in 1996 that “The IOC strongly encourages by appropriate means, the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures, particularly in the executive bodies of national and international sports organizations with a view to the strict application of the principle of equality of men and women.” That from the IOC, an executive body consisting of 15 men and one woman.

And then there’s the part of the Official Mission and Role of the IOC that says the Olympics will:

6. Act against any form of discrimination affecting the Olympic Movement;

7. Encourage and support the promotion of women in sport at all levels and in all structures with a view to implementing the principle of equality of men and women.

Caption: North end of Gotthard Tunnel; train to Andermatt climbs away to the right.

Skiers have been following rails into the snowy mountains for 140 years now. 1868 was the year the Mt. Washington cog railway first hauled passengers to the summit. The cog railway didn’t run during the snowy months, because New Hampshire’s vicious weather made it dangerous to keep the tracks clear of snow. But that same spring, the first passenger train ran the route from Sacramento across Donner Pass into Truckee and on to Reno. The nine-hour trip cut 41 hours off Snowshoe Thompson’s best time. During the following winter, the train ran through snowy trenches dug out by hundreds of navvies and coolies. This was the heyday of long-board racing in the Sierra mining camps, and while we have no record of it, it would have been odd indeed if a Norwegian miner didn’t depart the train at Soda Springs or Donner Tunnel to ride his snowhoes down to Truckee. Thompson himself was probably one of them: during construction of the railroad, he’s known to have skied mail from the station at Cisco south to Meadow Lake, now a ghost town south of Kirkwood.

In 1920, Switzerland had enough hydroelectric dams to electrify all these routes (can you imagine riding behind a steam locomotive through a nine-mile tunnel?). One side-benefit of a high-alpine dam is that its construction – and the maintenance of the head-pipe running down to the generating station – usually required a funicular (cable-drawn) railway. Ernest Hemingway’s 1924 short story Cross Country Snow – perhaps the first evocative description of the ski bum life – begins with a couple of American skiers jumping from the baggage car of a Swiss funicular train for a powder run back to the valley.

The Canadian Pacific Railroad pushed across Rogers Pass in 1885, and Glacier National Park opened the following year. The railroad encouraged tourism, putting up alpine hotels and, in 1899, hiring the first of a team of Swiss guides who would help to pioneer alpine skiing throughout the region. Over a 35 year period, avalanches across the tracks killed 200 railway workers. In 1913 construction started on the five-mile Connaught Tunnel, and the surface tracks were abandoned.

The 20th century brought true wintersport tourism to snowbound towns served by railways. In 1909, Charles McGlashan of Truckee founded the town’s annual Winter Carnival, designed to lure tourists from San Francisco. At Hilltop, a knob overlooking the train station on the southeast edge of town, organizers built a toboggan slide. In 1910 some local genius rigged a steam donkey (a steam-driven winch) to haul the sleds up the hill. Skiers rode the rope, too, and thus was born North America's first mechanical ski lift (The first mechanical ski tow, powered by a water mill, was built in 1908 by Rober Winkelhalder at his hotel in Germany's Schwarzwald region). 

During the 1920s, as ski clubs grew, they rode trains into the Alps, the Laurentians, the Adirondacks, the Rockies, the Sierra. And when the Depression cut into railroad revenues, creative marketing men in New England and elsewhere hit upon the idea of special weekend excursion trains. According to John Allen (From Skisport to Skiing), the Boston & Maine ran its first ski train out of Boston to Warner, New Hampshire on Jan. 11, 1931, carrying 197 members of the AMC, Dartmouth Outing Club and Harvard Mountaineering Club. Over the course of the winter, the railroad ran 12 trains northward, carrying over 8,000 skier, experts and newcomers alike. Clerks and secretaries climbed aboard – many came not to ski but to party. Local innkeepers reopened for the winter weekends. In January, 1932, the Rio Grande Railway ran special trains from Salt Lake to Park City.

After Alex Foster set up his first rope tow early in 1933, the ski train business boomed. The Boston & Maine hired ski instructors and put in a stock of rental skis, racked in the baggage car. In 1935 the New York, New Haven & Hartford sent trains north from Grand Central Station. Averell Harriman, president of the Union Pacific, took note and began dreaming up Sun Valley. By 1936, John Allen writes, 70,000 skiers rode trains out of New York in January, February and March alone.

(Right: Canadian Pacific crosses Rogers Pass. Painting by Max Jacquiard)

The Colorado Ski Train

When the Colorado Ski Train glides out of Union Station at 7:15 a.m., its 14 heavy cars and 750 passengers are drawn by three 3,000 horsepower General Electric F40PH locomotives. Over the next two hours, the 16-cylinder diesel engines will turn at a constant 900 rpm as the train climbs 3,960 feet in 56 miles, to the Moffat Tunnel and Winter Park Station.

That’s the basic numbers. Here’s another one: It’s been 97 years since Carl Howelsen and his buddy Angell Schmidt turned the Denver, Northwestern & Pacific Railway into a ski lift – and started a revolution in Rocky Mountain skiing.

In 1902, Denver banker and railroad executive David Halliday Moffat, Jr. developed a plan for a six-mile tunnel under Rollins Pass. He pushed a temporary line over the pass, at 11,660 feet on Colorado’s Continental Divide. The Moffat Road would require a sizeable crew to shovel the tracks – in fact, 41% of the railroad’s expenses eventually went to snow-clearing – and so the company built a dormitory at the summit, dubbed the Corona Station. The DN&P business plan was to haul coal eastward from the Yampa Valley, and eventually to run the line out to Salt Lake City. In the meantime, Moffat’s main revenue stream came from tourism: He marketed the spectacular ride up Boulder Creek to the Top of the World, and expanded the Corona dormitory into a hotel.

(Left: Corona Station, located in a snow shed at the top of Rollins Pass, Colorado)

Within a year, Moffat was able to run his tourist traffic all the way to Hot Sulphur Springs, a spa town at 7,600 feet on the western slope. Hot Sulphur Springs had been developing as a mineral-baths resort since 1864. The railroad was a big deal for this town – it meant steady business right through the winter. To celebrate the opening of the line in September, 1905, a special excursion train carried 900 passengers over the top.

In the fall of 1911, Swiss-born hotelier John Peyer decided to promote his winter business in Hot Sulphur Springs by organizing a Winter Carnival, complete with skating and sledding. He scheduled it for final weekend of the year.

At 8 a.m. on Saturday, Dec. 30, 1911, a DN&P train pulled out of the North Denver station for the long climb to Corona. It carried a load of New Year’s Eve celebrants bound for the Peyer’s Winter Carnival. Among them was a Norwegian mason who happened to have been Holmenkollen combined champion in 1903 (and the 50k cross-country champ in 1902 and 1903). After helping to found the Norge Ski Club in Chicago, Carl Howelsen (originally Karl Hovelsen) had moved to Denver in search of some real snow. He found it.

At noon, the train pulled into Corona Station. Howelsen and his friend Angell Schmidt climbed down, put on the their skis and began the long exhilarating run down the west slope of the Rockies. They descended 3,100 feet to Fraser, about 16 miles, following close to the railbed because of all the fallen timber in the woods. They then ran another 18 miles to Hot Sulphur Springs, the last four miles all downhill. They langlaufed into town at about 9 p.m., at the height of the party.

The crowd was happy to see them. In the morning, they shoveled snow into a small ski jump on the hill behind Peyer’s house. Before the day was out, Peyer and his winter sports club were planning another carnival for February, and the Norwegian pros were invited back. Thereafter, the Hot Sulphur Springs Winter Sports Carnival was an annual event. Hundreds of Denverites rode special trains to the event. The following winter, Howelsen settled in Steamboat Springs and began teaching the local kids to ski and jump, and in 1914 Steamboat launched its own Winter Sports Carnival. Howelsen and his Norwegian friends were busy teaching skiing – and building jumps — from Denver north and westward to the end of the line in Craig. Top Norwegian jumpers like Ragnar Omtvedt and Anders Haugen traveled from the Upper Midwest to visit little Colorado towns and set records on their big jumps. The Winter Carnivals formed a circuit of ski racing and ski jumping events that could support a crew of athletes through most of the winter. As in the Midwest, a jumping meet was the occasion for most of a town’s population to climb on a train and follow their champions across a couple of counties.

The train schedule was not dependable. Despite the huge budget thrown at snow removal, despite the adoption of steam-driven rotary plows, sometimes the weather simply shut the pass down for weeks at a time. Weather forced the railroad into bankruptcy in 1913, and again in 1917. The route was taken over by the Denver & Salt Lake Railroad, the D&SL.

North American ski trains took a break for World War I, when Moffat Road locomotives were busy moving coal and oil for the war effort. Work began on the Moffat Tunnel, under the pass, in July, 1923, and the first freight train hauled 12 cars of lumber eastward on Feb. 24, 1928. The following morning, passenger train service began.

During the intervening years, trains had usually been able to get over the top to Hot Sulphur Springs and Steamboat Springs for their Winter Carnivals. With the tunnel open, access was guaranteed, even as the Depression deepened.

In February of 1936, Denver’s Rocky Mountain News sponsored an excursion train to the 25th Annual U.S. Western Ski Tournament and Winter Sports Carnival at Hot Sulphur Springs. The D&SL charged $1.75 for round-trip fare and admission to the carnival. The response was huge, and the railroad ended up sending three trains with over 2,200 passengers. Another train with 500 passengers ran down from Steamboat Springs. Among the Steamboat crowd were 50 local jumpers and the 42-piece high school marching band. Some 7,000 visitors found their way to Hot Sulphur Springs for the carnival. According to Patterson and Forrest, writing in their book The Ski Train:

The winter carnival kicked off at 8:30 a.m. with a snow shoe race, followed by a three-legged race, then a novelty race – one ski and one snow shoe. Ski races, sled races and toboggan raced preceded a hockey game, figure skating and barrel jumping. There was even a skijoring jump with automobiles. The afternoon had an impressive line-up of nine ski jumping events on that part of Bungalow, Dean or Maggie Hill dubbed “Howelsen Hill,” concluding with with slalom and what was then called “down-mountain” races by Arlberg Club members.

A week later the News ran a Pullman sleeper train overnight to the 23rd Annual Winter Sports Carnival at Steamboat. Before long, other businesses – the Denver Post, Montgomery Ward, Safeway Stores — ran trains to Aspen or Gunnison. And the News Snow Train became an annual event.

Meanwhile, skiers could ride regularly-scheduled trains up to snow country on any winter day. The easiest trip, of course, was to the West Portal of the Moffat Tunnel – just two hours out of Denver. This was the site of the prosperous Fleming Bros. sawmill, which had produced all the railroad ties and shoring lumber for construction of the tunnel and approach track. The logging trails offered good skiing upward to timberline and the open bowls above. Members of Denver’s Arlberg Club had built a few private cabins and in 1933 cut the first dedicated downhill ski trail near the old Mary Jane mining claim. In 1937 George Cranmer, a club member and Denver’s manager of parks, talked the city into spending $30,000 on a rope tow. Winter Park opened as a municipal enterprise with a three-day carnival at the end of January, 1940, and of course a series of special trains hauled the celebrants. Meanwhile, in 1939 local skier Frank Bulkley had founded his Eskimo Ski Club and loaded up to 300 kids on the regular D&SL train to West Portal each weekend morning in winter.

After World War II, skiing and ski trains resumed. Winter Park acquired four Army-surplus rope tows from Camp Hale, and built three Constam T-bars. The Denver & Salt Lake merged into the Denver & Rio Grande. In 1947, the new railroad entered into a 40-year partnership with the Eskimo Ski Club and Winter Park. Bulkley, along with Gordy Wren, launched the Winter Park Ski School. Bulkley showed the D&RG management how to set up special trains to handle hundreds of skiers, equipping baggage cars with ski racks, and providing one car with a snack bar.

In the early days, kids paid $3 for the round trip. At its height in the mid-‘60s the train ran with 22 ancient cars, most of them built in 1915. This was the practical limit, because the cars were heated with steam lines from the locomotives, and that was about as far back as heat would carry. In theory the cars seated 80 each – that’s almost 1800 kids – but there wasn’t always room for everyone to sit. In a big winter, trains hauled as many as 30,000 passengers, most of them under 16.

More or less unsupervised for the two-hour ride, some of the passengers grew obstreperous. Water-pistol fights were common, occasionally aided by the discharge of a fire extinguisher. A favorite stunt was to vandalize the lights so the car would go dark for the trip through the tunnel. Teenagers began smuggling booze aboard. The railroad resorted to putting three sheriff’s deputies aboard, but they couldn’t patrol 22 cars at once. A couple of generations of Denver kids learned to ski in the rowdy culture of the D&RG train, which may explain some of the doings at Colorado’s ski resorts (and in the ski industry) in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.

By the late ‘60s, like most railways around the country, the D&RG wanted out of the passenger business. Concerned about passenger safety and the vandalism of its cars, the railroad began scaling back the service. First they dropped the snack car, spurring dozens of young entrepreneurs to haul suitcases full of candy bars aboard for sale to their peers. Then the railroad terminated Sunday service, and finally reduced the string to just eight 70-year-old cars, limited to 30 mph because of their ancient trucks. Frank Bulkley fought for a few years to keep the ski train running. The gasoline shortage of the mid-70s gave the train a new lease on life, and the much-reduced ski train chugged on through another decade. But the Eskimo Ski Club relied on a fleet of buses to haul kids over Berthoud Pass.

In 1983, what remained of the D&RG passenger service was absorbed into Amtrak. In November, 1984, the railroad was purchased by Philip Anschutz, a Denver-based billionaire who had made his money in oil, railroads, telecommunications and entertainment conglomerates. Anschutz had an instinctive love of trains and railroading. He saw in the ski train a chance to recreate an earlier era and culture. He sold the creaky old coaches to an outfit that ran wine trains in Napa Valley, and bought 17 lightweight, high-speed cars from Canada, where they’d served the Montreal-Toronto run.

Anschutz had the Tempo cars fully refurbished and painted in the Rio Grande colors, gold and silver with black trim. Today the ski train, operated by Ansco vice president Craig Meis and general manager Jim Bain, is a luxurious experience, with three classes of service and elaborate dining facilities. For the 69th season of the Denver Ski Train, beginning Dec. 27, passengers will pay $59 in coach and $85 in the club car, with plush lounge seating. Corporate groups can reserve a deluxe observation car, parlor car or sleeper/dome car. It’s a long way from sharing your brown-bag lunch with 80 screaming 13-year-olds.

Ski Trains Around the World

Today, the D&RG Ski Train is unique in North America, the only dedicated train that delivers skiers directly to a ski hill. Out in California, a skier can still ride from Oakland to Truckee via Amtrak’s California Zephyr, and catch a cab up to Northstar, Squaw Valley or Alpine Meadows. For that matter, you could catch the Zephyr from Chicago and change at Denver’s Union Station for a regular Amtrak train that follows an hour behind the D&RG Ski Train. There’s still a ski train out of Boston to Wachusett (but the last few miles are by van).

Japan still runs regular trains from Tokyo north to ski country, and the Glacier Express runs across most of the high country in Switzerland. The slickest modern ski train, for my money, is the 8-hour overnight Eurostar run from London’s Waterloo Station to Bourg St. Maurice, via the Channel Tunnel. From the Bourg station, passengers stroll directly onto the aerial tram for a 7-minute ride to Arc 1600 and the high-alpine skiing of the Tarentaise.

This story is based largely on accounts by Steve Patterson and Kenton Forrest (The Ski Train), Leif Howelsen (The Flying Norseman), and John Allen (From Skisport to Skiing). 

From pine pitch to perfluorocarbons, ski waxing has come a long way since the days of Scandinavian ski-sport and Sierra longboard racing.

During the Vancouver Olympics in February, skiers contended alternately with slush and bumpy ice—basically, refrozen slush. The shifting weather was especially brutal during the men’s 20 kilometer biathlon on February 18, when skiers starting midfield, during a snow squall, had no chance to ski fast or shoot accurately, and during the first run of the women’s giant slalom on February 24, when late starters got soft, wet snow and limited visibility.

Rapidly changing snow conditions have always been the bane of ski waxers. Very warm and very cold weather provokes a kind of silent panic among the ski-tech reps, the people who wax the skis. When the weather can’t be predicted, reps go nuts. They pore over old notebooks, looking for a similar combination of humidity, temperature and elevation, hoping to find a combination of wax and base structure that works. For downhill and Super G, they need a solution that can accelerate out of the start and slide quickly across a flat section 2,000 vertical feet down. For a long cross-country race, they need a combination of kick and glide that will work over a two-hour weather change and resist picking up dirt along the course. At Vancouver, even the freestyle events required a specific wax solution: the snow at Cypress was so soggy that puddles formed in the troughs before the kicker ramps, and skiers needed to splash through the wet spots without slowing down, which could throw off their timing in the air.

Photo above: Coach Bob Beattie waxes Buddy Werner's Kastles at the starting gate of the 1964 Innsbruck Olympic slalom. Note that Buddy hasn't even stepped out of his long-thong bindings. It was a simpler time. Joern Gerdts photo for Sports Illustrated.

I saw this wax panic up close during the 1989 World Championships in Vail. In the week before the downhill, temperatures dropped to minus 40 overnight. No one had ever seen a ski race run in that kind of cold, which gripped the 11,000-foot elevation of Beaver Creek’s summit. No one knew how to wax for it. Alpine waxers resorted to superhard “polar” nordic waxes, and some even used hardwood floor wax. In the end, the weather moderated for the race and the medalists – Hans-Georg Tauscher, Peter Muller and Karl Alpiger – apparently used “conventional” waxes.

We’ll never know, really, because at the World Cup level, wax gurus don’t give away their secrets. Outside the locked waxing rooms, where snooping reporters are decidedly unwelcome, we had no way of knowing that the tuners were already experimenting with fluorinated waxes, which would hit the market a year later. Waxing had become a sophisticated pseudo-science, practiced with the secrecy of classified weapons development.

Waxing: It Goes Way Back

Ski waxing long predates the development of alpine skiing. It arose naturally, in the early days of Scandinavian ski-sport, from the happy coincidence that waterproofing wood also helps it to glide on snow.

Wood is designed by nature to soak up water. Trees transport water from soil to leaves, through the cellular structure visible to us as wood grain. Any wooden structure exposed to water needs to be protected from drenching. Whether you’re building a ship, a roof or a ski, you need to apply a preservative to wood to keep it from absorbing water. The earliest known preservative was pine tar, often called pitch. There’s no way to tell when the practice began, but God Himself told Noah to use it in Genesis 6:14: So make yourself an ark of cypress wood; make rooms in it and coat it with pitch inside and out. The Phoenicians certainly used it for sealing amphorae, among other things. The stuff was produced by distilling scraps from the lumber trade—often the roots—in a pit covered with peat, or in a funnel-shaped kiln. A ton of wood, burned slowly in a nearly oxygen-free container, produced about 250 pounds of charcoal and about 50 gallons of mixed turpentine, pitch and rosin. The pitch was pine tar.

The earliest literary reference to ski preparation found by the Norwegian historian Jakob Vaage was a history of Lapland written in Latin by Johannes Scheffer and published in English translation in 1674. Scheffer reported that Sami skiers used pine pitch and rosin.

That recipe is pretty good for running on the flat. For good glide, the important issue is that the wood repel water. The technical term for water repellency is “hydrophobic” (the opposite is hydrophilic, or perhaps wettable). Pine tar glides on snow because it’s insoluble in water. Water beads on it nicely, forming droplets instead of sheets. This means that at a microscopic level, the ski glides not on a sheet of water, nor on hard-point snow crystals, but on the equivalent of tiny liquid ball bearings, mixed with a lot of air. That’s good because air is about 99 percent less viscous, and therefore a lot faster, than water.

At the same time, pine tar on wood isn’t perfectly smooth, so when you kick back the surface links up mechanically with the snow surface to provide traction.

It’s this combination of qualities—durable wood preservative, with good kick and decent glide—that made pine tar the standard choice as a permanent base treatment for several centuries. One of the first skills you learned as a new skier was to boil pine tar without burning it, and to paint it onto a hickory base. As a running surface, pine tar was supplanted only in the late 1940s, with the development of celluloid surfaces, and then in the mid-1950s by polyethylene. As late as the 1960s, when I started skiing, a good ski shop still reeked pleasantly with the sharp resinous scent of boiled pine tar, because we were still using it on the wood cross-country skis of the era.

If all you were interested in was glide, pine tar could be improved with a temporary coat of some waxy substance. California’s longboard racers, who invented a form of straight-line downhill racing during the 1850s to pass the time during long snowbound winters in Sierra gold camps, didn’t need kick. They sought faster glide, and that meant improving the water-repellency of their pine-tar bases. By 1868, they were trying anything they could find that seemed slick: glycerin, whale oil, kerosene, candle wax and, famously, spermaceti, the waxy goop harvested from the heads of sperm whales. They mixed these into fragrant combinations called “dope.” Each ski club had its own continually-evolving formula, and some were packaged and sold under brands like Greased Lightning, Skedaddle and Breakneck.

Meanwhile, in Europe…

Until around 1890, ski meets held in Norway and elsewhere in Europe required a competitor to jump on the same skis that he used for cross-country. Then, as jumps became longer and cross country skiing faster, skimakers began building narrower, lighter running skis, while jumping skis grew straighter, wider and heavier. Looking for higher take-off speeds, jumpers began painting their bases with a variety of hard water-repellent shellacs, and in wet conditions might paint on a thin layer of paraffin.

Peter Østbye, born near Lillehammer in 1888, was a pretty good cross country racer. In 1913 he patented Østbyes Klister. The word is of German origin and means glue or adhesive; it was a mix of paraffin, pine resin, venetian turpentine and shellac, packaged in tubes and meant specifically to improve kick in wet snow. With his klister, Østbye beat favorite Lauritz Bergendahl to win the 18-kilometer race at Holmenkollen in 1914.

Klister was a sensation. Østbye sold it for 2 kroner per tube, roughly 30 cents at the contemporary exchange rate, but it looked like a fortune in those hard times. Gunnar Kagge, writing in Aftenposten in 2003, recalls that during the Depression he and his friends cooked up their own klisters using beeswax, resin, melted phonograph records and bicycle innertubes, and occasionally blew up a kitchen.

On the alpine side, in 1922 a new wax factory in Stuttgart introduced candles and shoe polish products under the brand Loba. At the same time it introduced a durable ski-base coating labeled Holmenkol-Mix—it was a season-long varnish rather than what we would recognize as a daily wax. In 1933, a competing leather-wax company in Attsätten, Switzerland, launched its own Ski-Gliss base varnish, followed in 1940 by a rub-on alpine wax called 1-3-5. The brand name was Toko. By World War II, North American firms had begun packaging rub-on ski waxes, usually put up in metallic tubes. The 10th Mountain Division was issued waxes for three or four temperature ranges, each imprinted with the warning that they should not be applied with heat. The waxes were clearly the byproducts of industrial processes: One of the manufacturers had, as its main business, the production of torpedo fuses.

A breakthrough in ski wax technology came in 1943, when the Swedish chemical firm Astra AB hired Martin Matsbo, 1937 winner of the Holmenkollen 18-kilometer race and bronze medalist in the 1936 Winter Olympic Games and 1935 and 1938 World Ski Championships 4×10 relay, to develop a commercial ski wax based entirely on controlled, synthetic waxes. By that time synthetic waxes were predictable, stable, plentiful and cheap byproducts of petroleum refining. Paraffin sold for pennies the pound, and was widely used in hundreds of consumer products, including cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and even baked goods (it was used in place of pricey butter to make baking pans slippery). By mixing paraffin with microcrystalline waxes to make harder and more flexible formulas, Matsbo produced a series of three hard waxes and two klisters designed to provide a good combination of kick and glide across the entire range of cross-country snow conditions. A new company was founded in 1946 by Börje Gabrielsen and began producing waxes in Skåne county in Sweden and at Fjellhamar, near Oslo, under the brand name Swix, a blend of the words ski and wax.

Because synthetic waxes were colorless, tasteless and odorless, Swix added pigments, with warm reddish colors for warm wet snow and cool blue-green colors for cold dry snow. The principle was simple enough: soft waxes, with low melting temperature around 110°C, were very hydrophobic and worked well for wet snow, especially when the snow crystals had gone soft and round; hard waxes, with melting temperatures around 140°C, were less hydrophobic but resisted penetration by the hard sharp corners of cold snow crystals. You could blend the soft and hard waxes to cover intermediate conditions. The brand quickly grew popular and inspired competition; in time for the Helsinki winter games in 1952, a group of young Finnish chemists established the Rex brand and gained wide acceptance.

The concept caught on quickly amongst alpine skiers, too. Both Holmenkol and Toko produced their own color-coded synthetic alpine waxes beginning in 1948. Because the materials were cheap and available worldwide, the new color-coded waxes inspired worldwide competition. In North America, dozens of skiers who had taken high school chemistry were able to brew their own wax lines. Naturally, every major distributor wanted its own brand of wax, too. Thus were brightly-colored boxes of paraffin, and even spray bottles, marketed under the labels A&T Blue Streak, Austro, Fall Line, Faski, Fastex, Hoffer, International, Jack Rabbit, Poly-Fin, Merix, Northland, Quick, Scia, Skee, Ski Spree, Ski-Z, Sohm’s, Speed Ski, St. Lawrence and Tip-Top.

Beginning in 1955, alpine skis were sold with polyethylene bases branded as Kofix, P-tex or something similar. By one scientific measure (droplet surface angle), high-density polyethylene (PE) was roughly 40 percent more hydrophobic than pine-tarred wood, and in fact a good-quality paraffin based wax couldn’t improve its repellency very much. Racers continued to wax because even a two or three percent improvement could be the margin of victory—one percent on a two-minute course means 1.2 seconds.

In 1964 Swix moved its entire production to Norway, and in 1978 it was fully acquired by Ferd AS, a Norwegian company.

Waxing Goes Downhill

Waxing for alpine glide speed was still a black art. As late as 1964, despite the advent of polyethylene bases, slalom racers often applied melted wax with a paintbrush, the better to fill up the screw holes on their segmented edges. Over the next couple of decades, the European ski factories and alpine ski teams embarked on expensive research projects to improve glide speed. For instance, it was theorized, and possibly proven, that at downhill racing speeds the heat of friction under the base created more water. A downhill racer might therefore need a slightly softer wax than, say, a GS racer in the same snow conditions.

Waxroom progress wasn’t a strictly scientific, peer-reviewed process, because even small improvements were kept secret. It cost millions of schillings, francs and kroner to send vanloads of waxing technicians scurrying about the World Cup venues every winter, on top of the pool fees required by the national teams—an alpine supplier of skis, boots, poles, goggles, helmets, clothing or waxes typically paid more than $50,000 per national team per winter just to have access to the racers. This level of investment made incremental knowledge very valuable. It could produce victory, which produced sales not only of skis and boots but of wax, too. Despite the universal adoption of “no-wax” polyethylene bases, ski wax remained a viable consumer product. Figures from Snowsports Industries America show that in recent years, retail sales of ski wax in the U.S. alone averaged about $5 million annually. A rule-of-thumb projection suggests that the worldwide market is about $25 million.

In search of improved glide speed, World Cup waxing technicians experimented with additives derived from more modern chemistry: graphite powder, silicon liquid, various metal powders for lubricity, and “plasticizer” additives like ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) to produce “polar” waxes useful in temperatures down to minus 20°F. These materials provided small but important performance improvements, especially as track-setting by increasingly heavy machines hardened the surfaces of cross-country racecourses. There were many experiments with miracle ingredients like Teflon (a solid fluoride plastic called polytetrafluoroethylene, or PTFE), but the stuff has such a high melting temperature —more than 200° C—that ironing it in often destroyed the ski base. Graphite additives seemed to work, but no one knew why: They didn’t really improve hydrophobic performance, and scientists scoffed at the idea that carbon’s electric conductivity could have any effect on glide speed.

By 1974 fiberglass construction and plastic bases had arrived at the top of cross country racing, thanks largely to Kneissl and Fischer. The Austrian factories successfully promoted fiberglass race skis to top competitors, among them Thomas Magnusson, who won the 30k race at the Falun World Championships that year. The design engineers in Austria had learned their craft in alpine racing, and they naturally tested their skis with alpine glider waxes at the tip and tail, resorting to a softer kick wax —even a klister —in the camber “pocket.”

Because World Cup technicians don’t share their secrets to success, much waxing lore has the apocryphal character of folktale. I got a glimpse of the secrecy-shrouded world of alpine ski waxing during the lead-up to the Olympic downhill in 1984. American Billy Johnson had an astonishing run of victories on soft-snow and “glider” courses that season, thanks in large part to a few pairs of blazing-fast Atomic skis prepared by tuner Blake Lewis. Lewis protected those skis from tampering and even inspection by stashing them under his bed when he slept. Like his competitor tuners, he refused to discuss what might be in his wax mixtures. He once showed me his collection of waxes: a tray of small pots, each filled with a plain white wax and each labeled with a numerical code. “There you go,” he said. “Know any more now than you did five minutes ago?”

However, two big advances in ski wax chemistry—surfactants and fluorocarbons—took place more or less out in the open, and well away from the alpine World Cup circus.

Terry Hertel was a recreational skier from the San Francisco area. He had made some money during Silicon Valley’s computer boom and in 1972 introduced a cute little electric waxing drum for home use. To go with it he created a line of waxes. As a Lake Tahoe skier, Hertel was fascinated with the problem of glide in very wet snow. In 1974, on the advice of UC Davis chemistry professor Tim Donnelly, he added a surfactant to his paraffin wax to produce a universal wax he called Hot Sauce. A surfactant is a wetting agent, the exact opposite of a hydrophobic agent. It shouldn’t have worked. But the stuff Hertel used, sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS), is an odd columnar molecule with a hydrophobic end. It's commonly used in toothpaste, shampoo and shaving cream as a foaming agent. Suspended in wax, SDS molecules clump into spheres, called micelles, with the hydrophobic end out, each sphere acting as a water-repellent ball bearing. Hertel said his surfactant ingredient was “encapsulated.” Super Hot Sauce earned an insiders’ reputation for great glide in heavy snow. Town racers liked it. Hertel could never afford the fees to join the U.S. Ski Team supplier pool, let along send a technician to Europe, but he says he sent some surfactant wax to Europe with the team and is convinced it was an ingredient in the Diann Roffe and Eva Twardokens medals in GS at the Bormio World Championships in 1985.

At around that time, Hertel started looking for a “Spring Solution,” something that would work in very wet snow but repel the pine pollen, diesel exhaust particles and other dirt that darkened the ski slope snow in April and May. He tried polypropylene glycol, a food-grade antifreeze used to keep ice cream from melting, and it worked. But he also talked to Rob Hunter, a chemist at 3M, who mentioned that the company sold a liquid fluorocarbon to the cosmetics and paint industries—it dried to a smooth, glossy surface. Hunter thought the liquid fluorocarbon would work well in a ski wax, but warned that at $1,000 per pound, it was far too expensive.

Hertel wound up buying the 3M perfluorocarbon (PFC) liquid in five-gallon drums, mixed it into a high-strength candle wax called Paraflint, and in 1986 introduced a hard block wax he called Racing 739. It was very hydrophobic, and very fast. (Perfluoro means that all the lateral links in the polymer chain, not just some of them, are capped with fluorine atoms.)

Meanwhile, at Swix, chief chemist Leif Torgersen was also looking for something to repel dirt. A hard glide wax was essential to last throughout a 50 km race or a ski marathon, but the softer kick wax picked up pine pollen and other dirt, slowing the ski progressively through the course of the race. So he sought a form of PFC that could be ironed into the base. In Italy, he found it: Enrico Traverso at Enichem SpA, a state-owned industrial giant, had a PFC powder with a melting temperature of about 155°C. High-density polyethylene typically melts at about 130°C, but if you had a really good sintered base and kept the iron moving, you could apply the powder without destroying the ski base. Enichem had no other commercial customers for the material, but were willing to produce small, expensive lots for use in ski waxes. Swix began experimenting with the stuff on both cross country and alpine race courses and found that it improved glide by about 2 percent over the best non-PFC waxes. In 1990 the company introduced a commercial version called Cera F (cera is Italian for wax). The price: $100 for 30 grams. The parents of young racers screamed in agony: Apparently you couldn’t win without it. Fortunately, a little went a long way. Speed skier C.J. Mueller remembers waxing his skis with the scrapings from another competitor’s skis.

In the meantime, in 1988, Swix had been contacted by engineers at Salomon. The French company was developing its first alpine ski, and had spent a great deal of money to improve the quality of the base and edge grind. It wanted a broad-temperature wax that could be applied without heat in the factory or on the hill. Swix proposed a liquid form of PFC diluted into a thin paste. It could be applied with a paintbrush or with a sponge applicator. Named F4 for the Salomon ski, it was introduced to the market by Salomon and grew widely popular.

Belatedly, it occurred to the various parties in this technology race to patent their products. On March 2, 1990, Enichem applied for an Italian patent on a “ski lubricant comprising paraffinic wax and hydrocarbon compounds containing a perfluorocarbon segment.” On the same day, Hertel filed for a U.S. patent on a “ski wax for use with sintered-base snow skis,” containing paraffin, a hardener wax, roughly 1% perfluoroether diol, and 2% SDS surfactant. “That’s not the full formula,” Hertel cautioned me. “I’ll never tell anyone what else is in there.”

These were the two earliest patents for PFC ski waxes. Later patents were granted to Dupont and to a New York chemist named Athanasios Karydas.

Hertel claims his perfluorocarbon Racing 739 product quickly found its way into the waxing kits of World Cup technicians, and was used in a number of medal-winning performances. However, because he never joined the national team pools, he has never been able to publicize or even document the use of his products in FIS racing. Swix, Toko, Holmenkol, Briko, Maplus and Dominator, the large European wax companies who comprise the supplier pools for ski wax, don’t talk about the advanced technology they may be using on World Cup skis.

The end of fluorinated waxes

PFC molecules don't break down in nature, and when they get into groundwater can accumulate in plant and animal tissue. That reality led large industrial users of PFCs (manufacturers of Teflon, for instance), to scale back their use beginning in 2006. Ski waxes used tiny doses of PFCs, and much of it is scraped off in the ski-tuning process, so it was long assumed that the amount of PFC going into the snowpack was insignificant. However, fluorinated hydrocarbons, when heated above 250 degrees Celsius, are unsafe to breathe. The wax companies that used PFCs long warned waxing technicians against burning the wax and most waxing irons are set at a maximum of 140 degrees C.  Nonetheless, in 2011 researchers in Norway and Sweden found elevated levels of  PFC derivatives in the blood of cross-country ski coaches and waxers. Then, in 2016, the U.S. Congress amended the Toxic Substances Control Act, requiring the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to control chemicals deemed harmful to human health. As one result, starting in early 2018 the EPA notified all companies using fluorocarbons in their products to document the specific chemicals and amounts used. For ski wax manufacturers and importers this meant reporting all chemicals – dyes, scents, waxes, hardeners and fluorines, retroactively. Most  wax companies couldn’t afford the testing and reporting procedures and quickly withdrew PFC waxes from the market. During the following two winters, ski tuners relied on stocks of PFC waxes already in hand. The European Uniorn planned to ban he most common industrial PFCs starting in July 2020. In this context, in 2019 the International Ski Federation (FIS) announced in October, 2019 a ban on all PFC waxes in all forms of ski competition, beginning with the 2020-21 season.

But now there are rumors of a “nano wax.” Maybe it’s marketing horse-hockey. It’s fun to think it might contain those submicroscopic carbon spheres called buckyballs. I have my own concept for a quantum wax: its antimatter particles would repel both ice crystals and air molecules. The ski would therefore levitate into its own micron-thin and entirely frictionless vacuum. Investors should write to me directly.

Thanks to Mike Brady, David Lampert, C.J. Mueller and Terry Hertel for help with this article. Some technical data was derived from an academic thesis by Leonid Kuzmin.

Pine tar: Skis, ships and sailors
Viking shipwrights and house builders used oakum soaked in pine tar to seal the joints between planks. They mixed pine tar, linseed oil and turpentine to make a preservative. Shipwrights applied the stuff liberally on the inside of a new hull and watched to see how it infused through to the outside. That told them where the planks needed better sealing. Then the outside could be stained. Scandinavian stave churches built of wood last for centuries because they’re stained black with pine tar.

In different parts of the world, different species of pine produced pine tar of varying qualities. The shipbuilders of Northern Europe considered that the world’s best pine tar came from the forests of Scandinavia, and specifically from northern Sweden. Beginning in 1648, the Wood Tar Company of Northern Sweden had a royal monopoly to export pitch, and its biggest customer was the British Royal Navy. When a Russian invasion of Sweden cut off the source of supply around 1705, the Admiralty turned to the American Colonies, and by 1730 pine forests in Georgia and the Carolinas provided about 80 percent of the pitch used to waterproof His Majesty’s warships. Hence the term Tarheel for North Carolinians, not to mention the reference to any British sailor as a Tar.

This article first appeared in Skiing Heritage magazine, June 2010 (page 42). It has been updated several times.

A 19th century Rennaissance Man—and yes, eccentric—this Austrian’s extraordinary achievements were largely responsible for the sport we know today.

If modern skiing owes its development to one extraordinary individual, a singular pioneer, it is Austria’s Mathias Zdarsky. Painter, sculptor, teacher, philosopher and health guru, Zdarsky was also an eccentric inventor who developed the steel binding—the first to hold the foot in a stable position, the basis of all ski bindings today. His step-by-step ski instruction method with the introduction of a stem turn, his founding of a mountain Torlauf (gate race), in 1905, and most of all his insistence that skiing could and should be enjoyed in mountains—as opposed to merely foothills—all attest to his right to be called the “Father of Alpine Skiing.”

Zdarsky was born in the German-speaking area of Moravia in 1856 and settled in 1889 near Lilienfeld, a little over two hours by train west of Vienna. He had an extraordinary, inquiring mind, a trained gymnast’s body, a practical facility with his hands, a capacity for determined work, and a dogmatic certainty that he knew best about most things, certainly about skiing.

He was “a crazy cockerel,” according to Wilhelm Paulcke,(1) one of a number of influential skiers with whom he had a running fight lasting over a quarter of a century. To Austria’s army leadership, on the other hand, Zdarsky was a “private scholar in all areas of current human knowledge, [with] exemplary unselfishness, rare openness and integrity, and cool and brave in danger,” as the 3rd Corps Command evaluation put it to the Austrian War Department headquarters in 1907 after he had taught army units how to ski for three years.(2)

Zdarsky was the youngest of 10 children, attended local schools, and then a teachers’ training course in Brno before taking up positions in Vienna, Elsenreith, and in the Stein prison. He broadened his education in Munich (arts) and Zürich (engineering). He traveled to the Balkans and to North Africa. A number of his oil paintings from his travels are held in the Lilienfeld museum, which is almost entirely devoted to Zdarsky and houses his archive.

Zdarsky has been described as a “talented autodidact,”(3) was given an honorary membership in the Ski Club of Great Britain in 1904,(4) and has been featured in poems and doggerel:

Pfützen, Schlamm auf Schritt und Tritt Doch wir bringen Zdarsky mit! (5)

[Puddles, mud with every stride We’ll bring Zdarsky as our guide!]

He has been labeled “the Jahn of the skisport”(6) (referring to Turnvater Jahn, the most important 19th century German nationalistic gymnastics leader), “the Newton of Alpine skiing,”(7) “the father of Alpine skiing”(8)—take your pick. And he made of Habernreith—the house he designed and built near Lilienfeld—“a skier’s mecca,”(9) as the newspaper Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung described it. Along the way, he constructed a more efficient wheelbarrow, invented a cement mixer, supplied his swimming pool with a thermo-designed heating system, all the while working in self-designed clothes. In moments of repose, he made his tea on a self-invented quick-to-boil cooker that would be used by the military, as were his light rucksack and 6-man tent.(10) We are talking truly of a Renaissance man. Where he got the money for such things as travel and buying the land for his home remains a mystery.

American ski historians—indeed most others interested in skiing’s history—know him primarily as the founder of the world’s first slalom competition, in 1905. Before looking into that event, Zdarsky’s teaching, his writings, the disagreements, some even leading to challenges (both on skis and calls for real duels), his service to the military—all of them in some ways connected—need analysis to give some idea of the wide and deep range of interests and contributions of this extraordinary man.

Zdarsky saw his first pair of skis—Lapp skis—in a traveling show in 1872. Fifty-six years later he could still remember that they were 120 centimeters long, 6 centimeters wide and 4 centimeters thick with a foot platform near the middle and two straps.(11) It seems stretching belief that this 16-year-old would have noted such details, but he was who he was and so it is possible. This first recognition of skiing produced no impact. Fifteen years later, he read a newspaper report of two Norwegian students ascending the Brocken (Germany’s story-laden mountain in the Harz) on skis and after that, occasional articles on Fridtjof Nansen’s intended Greenland crossing. After the news of Nansen’s successful crossing of Greenland’s icecap in the late summer and early fall of 1888, ski developments in Austria began in Graz and Mürzzuschlag in the 1890s. These local skiers followed Norwegian businessmen, engineers, and students working and studying in Austria and Germany, skiing on skis with primitive bindings and, when they could, copying the Norwegian telemark turn while using one pole as they got out and about on mini-tours, climbed the local mountains and organized races.

Snowed in at home during the winter of 1890-91, and with Nansen’s recently translated book Auf Schneeschuhen durch Grönland (Across Greenland on Skis) in hand, Zdarsky ordered a pair of skis from Norway and over the next six years experimented with shorter skis and—so it is said—200 bindings, resulting in the patenting of the Lilienfeld ski and binding in 1896.(12) Since Norwegian skis were the only known quality skis in the 1890s, Zdarsky listed “nine faults” of Norwegian skis and, punching the point home, added “the Lilienfeld ski has none of these faults:” Snow balling up under the feet; sideways slip of the heel off the ski; inhibited lift of the heel; foot injuries resulting from the poor lift of the heel; frequent breaking of the ski; requirement of specially designed boots (or at least special straps); complicated to put on; impossible to ski on steep terrain; poor qualities that make learning to ski difficult.

By this time, Zdarsky had formulated his stem turn and the skiing principles that remained the same throughout his life: to achieve no-fall skiing, the ability to handle all terrain, and the skill to manage all obstacles.(13) In the same year, 1896, Zdarsky’s book, initially titled Lilienfeld Skilauftechnik (Lilienfeld Ski Technique), was published in November by Richter of Hamburg, the same publisher who had had such great success with Nansen’s account of his Greenland crossing. There were eventually 17 editions of Zdarsky’s book, which had the first title change in 1903 to Alpine (Lilienfelder) Skilauftechnik, obviously capitalizing on Zdarsky’s and others’ desire to enhance the “alpine” skiing they were promoting. In 1908 there was a further change—to Alpine (Lilienfelder) Skifahr-Technik. And here we enter the realm of translators’ difficulties. Zdarsky wanted to change Skilaufen (running on skis, even on the flat) to Skifahren (going along on skis downhill); he was much more interested in promoting safe touring skiing than he was in racing. As we shall see in the 1905 slalom, Zdarsky wanted people to ski according to his three principles. Racing was not one of them.

It has long been assumed that Zdarsky’s book was the first instructional book. This is not true. Instruction had been available from the publication of Max Schneider’s Der Tourist from 1892 on. Although this was a monthly newspaper published in Berlin, it had a far wider impact because parts of it were copied in various places, such as the Österreichische Sport-Zeitung.(14) Freiherr von Wangenheim had also come out that year with a booklet and, in 1893 Georg Blab, Fritz Breuer, Theodor Neumayer, O. A. Vorwerg, and Max Schneider all published small instructional books. The real competition came from Henrik Etbin Schollmayer’s 85-page book Auf Schneeschuhen: Ein Handbuch für Forstleute, Jäger und Touristen (On Skis: Handbook for Forestry Personnel, Hunters, and Tourists).(15) Oberleutnant Raimond Udy also produced a book on skiing for the military in 1894.(16) There were, then, at least a half-dozen instruction manuals before Lilienfeld Skilauftechnik appeared.

But Zdarsky’s book was detailed, logical in its insistence on steps in a progression of turns. From an exact and required stance, to moving forward and, most famously, to the stem turn, Zdarsky detailed how to move through any terrain. One chapter he devoted to hills of 50 to 60 degrees steepness—terrain Norwegians would not even consider for skiing. His emphasis on secure skiing in all terrain was made possible by the continual support of a single pole. No wonder critics, especially those for whom speed was essential for enjoyable skiing, would describe Zdarsky’s method as gymnastics-ossified in its insistence on the step-by-step progression. The Englishman Vivian Caulfeild in How To Ski and How Not To objected to the deliberate use of the pole for turning, braking, and stopping. To become a “zigzagging crawler is a very simple matter,” he added.(17) Part of this critique was based on British notions of “dash”—an imperial ideal which implied speed, courage, and a certain flair when doing things—so important in late Victorian and Edwardian times.

In 1897, Wilhelm Paulcke, mentor to many Schwarzwald (Black Forest, Germany) skiers, took Zdarsky to task for his skis, which were only good for slopes steeper than 30 degrees, his single long bamboo pole, and his questioning the value of goggles. Wrote Paulcke, “I don’t want to be squinting for five days.”(18) Zdarsky fired back by giving the advantages of his ski—that he had used a bamboo pole for six years that was “indestructible if one knows how to use it,” implying that Paulcke didn’t. Zdarsky never answered Paulcke’s criticism of skiing with no goggles—all the more surprising because in his youth Zdarsky had had his left eye put out of commission for a couple of years by an explosion. With the immense number of hours on snow, he must have had trouble with snow blindness. The editor of the Österreichische Sport-Zeitung suggested that Paulcke meet Zdarsky and get to understand the Lilienfeld method.(19) To Dr. Baumgartner, Zdarsky was belligerent and complained that he had never witnessed Lilienfeld skiing, even though he continued to criticize. “How devastating!” wrote Zdarsky, “For me?”(20)

These arguments were part of a simmering uneasiness among Zdarsky and Norwegians and their followers. They developed into increasingly abrasive public accusations in journals and newspapers. News of all this soon reached Norway’s skiing leadership, who knew themselves to be the guardians of all things having to do with skiing, and especially so since skiing by 1900 had become the nation’s birthright and not something to be tampered with. So when Zdarsky and his followers started tinkering with Norwegian skis and with the way that Norwegians skied, it was not something to be taken lightly, and it almost spawned a diplomatic incident. One of Zdarsky’s followers actually traveled to Christiania (as Oslo was then called) to calm matters down. Zdarsky, however, had already issued a challenge in 1899 to anybody using Norwegian bindings and technique for a contest on a 35-50-degree hill with many obstacles.(21)

By 1904, the challenge became seriously organized, with 17 stipulations, and permitted competition only from Norwegian or Swedish nationals. A committee of influential skiers was formed to oversee the contest on a hill with a 1,000-meter vertical drop. A rucksack had to be carried with at least six kilos (13 pounds) in it. Zdarsky was determined to force a confrontation. And when Rickmer Rickmers added a 3,000-Kroner wager to any Norwegian beating Zdarsky,(22) the stakes heightened and the Norwegians decided that they had better find out what the Austrian was doing to “their” skiing.

The Norwegians did not accept the challenge because the course would be downhill only and Norwegians considered uphill work an integral part of skiing, but they delegated Lt. Hassa Horn to investigate. The meeting was set for January 6-8, 1905, and a special train was laid on from Vienna to Lilienfeld.

About 60 skiers came to witness the duel between their Meister and their visitor. First, Zdarsky skied down a 400-meter drop at fast speed. The skiers who followed were slower but no one fell, even though some carried rucksacks—all to show that Zdarsky was not interested in speed but in training for touring. After an extremely social evening in the Schwarze Adler in Puchberg (a neighboring village), the weather turned bad but two days later cleared and, with new snow, Zdarsky and Horn skied down a steep slope. Horn sometimes took it straight, sometimes in curving telemark turns. Zdarsky skied with no falls and with elegant long curves. “It was a gripping picture, to observe two masters as they increased their speed and each doing his own technique,” as the event was described in the Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung.(23) Indeed, by the end of the exhibition, that was the conclusion: when skiing over a 20-degree incline it was evident, wrote a knowledgeable eye witness, that Zdarsky was superior, while under 20 degrees the honors went to Horn. What made the difference were Zdarsky’s shorter skis. On the last day, Zdarsky explained to Horn how he taught skiers, and Horn judged his method for teaching beginners to be excellent. They exchanged skis by way of symbolizing the end of the controversy.(24)

Horn had been impressed. In a public letter to Zdarsky’s club, he rationalized that “since your alpine terrain would be disregarded in Norway, your skiing is bound to have a different character than ours.” He considered Zdarsky “with his unusual personality… a skier like no other in Austria,” and went on to say how excellent Zdarsky was in steep terrain. But Horn had shown that he was more efficient in flatter country. He did find major fault with Zdarsky’s use of one long pole.(25) To his own Norwegian Ski Association, Horn gave a report which ended, “It should be the duty of every Norwegian skier to drop the old ideas and so contribute to friendly and better understanding.” (26)

One of the ways Zdarsky wielded so much influence was by his founding of ski clubs. He had started in 1898 with the ski club in Lilienfeld but broadened its base two years later to become the International Skiverein headquartered in Vienna, publishing its own journal, Der Schnee. This weekly journal provided him with an outlet for his thoughts and arguments on the philosophy and psychology of skiing and skiers. As he refused to join the Austrian Ski Association, two centers of skiing and administrative power emerged in the first years of 20th century Austria. In 1906, the Austrian Ski Association listed 14 clubs with a total of 870 members, whereas Zdarsky’s International Skiverein had 539 members alone. By 1908, the Austrian Ski Association’s membership of 25 clubs stood at 2,438 members, and Zdarsky had 1,005.(27) Though smaller, it was Zdarsky’s association that was successful in arranging for skis to be carried on Vienna’s trams. It also got reduced fares for its members on the railroad to Lilienfeld and had its own training ground in the suburbs of Vienna. It was lighted at night, and the nearby Villa Elsa set aside a room for members to change their clothes.(28) Not only that, but Zdarsky was invited to teach in Vienna, Murau (Austria), Garmisch-Partenkirchen (Germany) and Brasov (the eastern region of Austria-Hungrary). At Mariazell, Austria, in 1909 he had an international clientele including Austrian, Belgian, Brazilian, German, Polish, and Czech skiers.(29) If we look at his February 1907 visit to Kronstadt, today’s Brasov in Rumania, we get an idea of his teaching program.(30) The evening he arrived, he lectured to an audience of 50, including several military officers. The next day, 40 were on the hill with another 30 watching. The local newspaper was thrilled, proclaiming it is “a new era—the ski era has begun with us.” After Zdarsky had departed, the paper reported that people had not only learned how to ski because the instruction method had been easy to follow, but that ski touring possibilities had opened up.

These courses were given for no payment. This was not unusual. Other well-known skiers who did not ask for payment for instruction were Rickmer Rickmers and Georg Bilgeri.(31) It has been estimated that Zdarsky taught nearly 20,000 people how to ski.(32) “Although he taught a bad style,” wrote Arnold Lunn in his book Ski-ing, “he persuaded thousands to take up skiing.”(33)

Some of those thousands were military men—officers as well as enlisted men. Zdarsky gave his first course to the Austrian army in 1903 and continued until 1911, then again during World War I until 1916, when he was caught in an avalanche, which he survived with 80 dislocations, fractures, and broken bones.(34) His contributions inspired the Emperor Franz Josef to present him with a gold service medal.(35) Many officers took the courses, some of whom became influential themselves, especially Lt. Hermann Czant, Theodor von Lerch, and Hauptmann Rudolf Wahl, with whom Zdarsky wrote a military manual.

Not only did army skiers use Zdarsky’s Lilienfeld skis but also his bindings. The regulations that were issued and printed in 1897 were influenced by Zdarsky’s methods.(36) By 1907 the Lilienfeld binding was standard army issue.

Zdarsky’s courses were more tests of endurance than any particular military maneuvering. And that was basically a problem about which no one ever came to a final conclusion: Just what were troops on skis supposed to do? In the peace before the war, military expertise on skis was equated with marathon marches, particularly by the Austrians, Germans, and French. There was occasional criticism, by far the biggest coming from an officer who built up a ski detachment of the 14th Corps stationed in Innsbruck, Georg Bilgeri.

Bilgeri recognized that Zdarsky’s technique was an innovation for alpine skiing. But he objected to the use of the single pole because it provided a “support technique,” whereas he developed skiers with a “balance technique”(37) made possible by using two poles. Bilgeri “improved” Zdarsky’s binding, then wrote a book, Der Alpine Skilauf, published in 1910. There was no love lost between the two.

Matters came to a head when Zdarsky claimed that Bilgeri had copied his binding, then manufactured it as his own in his military workshop, and called it the “Army Binding.” Bilgeri had already received 3,000 orders, and another 8,000 were ordered two weeks later.(39) Bilgeri wrote in his book that it was the first work on alpine skiing—which was not true. And Zdarsky critiqued Bilgeri’s technique with a feistiness guaranteed to bring on a quarrel. “In an age of Siamese twins (referring to the two bindings) there is an abnormality to be found. There is in the Austro-Hungarian army a four-legged officer which I couldn’t have believed possible (Bilgeri had referred to the hind leg in explaining a turn). So Bilgeri must ski with four skis and, what a surprise, there are only two poles, not more.”(40) Bilgeri was honor-bound to challenge.(41) Both were persuaded to back down, and the military brass posted Bilgeri to Komorn in Hungary, well out of the Lilienfeld orbit.

Still, by 1912 it has been estimated that 75 percent of Austrian ski troops were skiing on Bilgeri bindings (they became official army issue in 1913) and with two poles.(42) Both Zdarsky and his followers taught ski troops during World War I and so did Bilgeri and his protégés, besides others, like Hannes Schneider, who were waiting in the wings.

Not nearly so divisive was the beginning of modern slalom. A post-1945 polemic has developed over the claim as to who started modern slalom. On one side are the supporters of Mathias Zdarsky and his March 19, 1905 Torlauf (gate race); on the other side are Arnold Lunn’s followers, who consider his slaloms from 1922 the real beginnings. An Austrian and an Englishmen were both laying claim to slalom—a Norwegian invention and word. But the key, in fact, is not the word slalom, it is modern slalom, i.e. alpine slalom.

Norwegians had a variety of laam—tracks. There was Kneikelaam (run with bumps), Ufselaam (run off a cliff), Hoplaam (run with a jump), Svinglaam (run with turns), and a daredevil run combining all the obstacles, the Urvyrdslaam or Ville lamir (wild run).(43) The Slalaam was a descent around natural obstacles, to prove that the all-around skier was capable of twisting and turning. This event appeared on a race program in Norway in 1879.(44) The race had not been a success, but was reintroduced in 1906 to counter the emphasis that young skiers had begun to give to jumping. This was, reported the 1906 Ski Club of Great Britain Year Book, “a forest race, down hill all the way, the course winding among trees and rocks, and all curves being taken at top speed.” In spite of the emphasis on speed, the competitors’ style while negotiating the obstacles placed at difficult sections of the course was taken into account by judges.(45)

When Norway’s skiing influence spread to Europe, races were devised specifically to include obstacles. In Germany, slalom was first introduced in the Harz in 1906. Before then, races were often called obstacle races (Hindernislaufen), sometimes skill races (Kunstlaufen), sometimes both, indicating clearly the skill required to avoid natural or man-made obstacles. In other races, it was stipulated that poles were not to be used hobby-horse style for braking.(46) Each of these varied races received some support, but it remained debatable which of these experiments was the true test of a good skier. The British experimented with “Bending” races where competitors skied around the outside of 12 poles. No points were given for style. The Black Forest races run between 1902 and 1906 provide an example of the experimental nature of early turning races. In 1902, a Kunstlauf was run. The next year it was called a Kunst-oder Hindernislauf. In 1904 there was a Stilgemässes Laufen (style-point race), which required a run down a steep slope with turns and swings. In 1906, for the same Stilgemässes Laufen, specific swings were required and speed was not a consideration. Poles were not allowed.(47)

The Norwegians, Zdarsky, and Lunn believed, in different ways, that a slalom would test a skier’s capability to avoid obstacles. For the Norwegians, they were obstacles that might be met on a tour over field and fell. For Zdarsky, a slalom would prove the ability of a skier to avoid obstacles on all types of terrain, with speed being no consideration. For Lunn, slalom came from his mountaineering background. In descending from a peak, the skier would run “downhill”—hence “downmountain races”—until he reached the woods. There the skier would have to thread his way through the trees.

Slalom was introduced as a practice for “tree running.” The Lunn race came to be divided into two parts, the first on hard snow, the winner then getting first run on the second course on soft snow. Ten-second penalties were added to those falling down deliberately at the flags. But, as noted earlier, the British equated “dash” with excellence—and speed was a factor. So into the discussion came questions of suitability of terrain, equipment, style of skiing, rules, professionalism, and honor. All this caused such a rumpus that challenges were thrown down in 1905 and again in 1993.(48)

The facts are these: Zdarsky mounted a Torlauf, an 85-gate run dropping almost 500 meters on the Muckenkogel outside Lilienfeld. He wanted it designated as an alpines Wertungsfahren —a judged alpine run—but his club members were adamantly against that and insisted on its being a race, a Wettlaufen. Zdarsky managed to get the event title changed to Ski-Wettfahren,(49) i.e. to replace the laufen with fahren indicating that the running (laufen) was replaced by skiing along (fahren). Zdarsky designed the course as a test for his club members, who were “tourists,” not racers. Hence it was to be a Prüfungsfahren, a testing run more for technique than for speed. Eight rules governed the event. The first had to do with climbing the Muckenkogel “in the usual tourist tempo.” Most notable was Rule 8: “Each fall will count. A fall is judged when sitting or lying on the snow or when the knee rests on the snow.”(50)

Twenty-four competitors between the ages of 17 and 52, including one woman, climbed the Muckenkogel, and down they came watched by 14 gate keepers.(51) Everyone fell—one competitor 24 times—and the least falls counted was one.

Following the event, there was virtually no publicity. The director of the Zdarsky archive, Franz Klaus (now deceased), told me it was simply because Wallner was not a Zdarsky acolyte. He did not use the master’s bindings and was the only competitor to carry two poles.

In 1987, Friedl Wolfgang wrote that “so difficult was the course that no one ran it without a fall, the winner counted six falls but still came down in 12.34 minutes; the best single-poler was Franz Kauba in 16.35 minutes.”(52) Horst Tiwald in his book Spuren von Mathias Zdarsky (Mathias Zdarsky’s Tracks) hardly mentions the 1905 Torlauf at all.(53) This effort to, so to say, disembrace the winner rests more with those who have a stake in the “firsts” syndrome, than it does with Zdarsky, although he had written in 1900 that a race was “the last proof of the school, how the individual has done” and felt that if he didn’t race then the competition is merely a “bit of circus stuff.”(54) Indeed, a year later, Zdarsky had been both competitor and judge in a race whose course had been changed at the last minute because of bad weather. The course was designated by Zdarsky’s own tracks. There was little that was satisfactory about the race and it led to acrimonious accusations between Zdarsky, who claimed to be the winner, and a young Josef Wallner. But it made no pretense to be a slalom.(55) I have found reports of only two other “slaloms” after the 1905 “first.”

Almost exactly a year later, another Skiwettfahren was announced as a Prüfungsfahren(56) with 35 gates for 51 competitors that included six who had run the 1905 slalom, plus eight women. The rules called for stopping after each of three stem turns. From a standing position on a steep slope, the skier had to ski “in the direction of flowing water”—the fall line—and stop with a “quarter circle turn” (whatever that was), then had to accomplish several snaky swings on the way down. Those who don’t pass, Zdarsky admonished the group severely, “ought to be more attentive during training.” Zdarsky made a pre-run of 5 minutes 50 seconds. During the descent, he purposefully stopped and turned around. Later he stopped and blew his nose. These were the sort of things that anyone on a tour might do, and his time of 5 minutes 50 seconds was defined as the standard. The winner would have to beat that time. Not one of the no-fall participants reached the time requirement, so there was no winner. End of slalom No. 2. But not quite. There were objections, a few complaining that the track was too cut up. So Zdarsky returned to the top and ran down faultlessly in 2 minutes 30 seconds.(57)

The last of the Zdarsky slaloms was held for 44 competitors, including 10 women, in 1909.(58) There were 15 no-falls over the 32-gate, 300-meter-vertical course. The standard time was 16 minutes 6 seconds. Wilhelm Wagner, a 1905 veteran, won with 10.57.

Nobody appears to have paid much attention to this. And that, in itself, is interesting. Skisport—skiing for pleasure, recreation, health, or whatever non-utilitarian reason inspired its devotees—was part of the industrial revolution’s quest for speed. Spiel und Gefahr, speed and danger, these were the desires of the true man, trumpeted Friedrich Nietzsche. Speed, in the words of another pioneer, was der Schrei der Zeit—the cry of the times—and even something as static as a trunk was sold as a Vitesse (speed) model.

But Zdarsky clung to his system. On his 80th birthday in 1936 (he died in 1940), he gave a radio talk in which he described how he had stoutly defended his system for 40 years, one that did not advocate speed for its own sake, but with the use of the single pole insured safety on steep terrain as on undulating meadow. But he had lost the battle.(59) He refused to acknowledge that speed on skis, a two-pole technique accompanied by a fast stem leading to a stem christiania was the future. The trouble was that for all his curiosity and inventiveness, his inexhaustible fitness and proficiency, Zdarsky had become a prisoner of his own system.

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Notes

1. Wilhelm Paulcke cited by Theodor Hüttenegger in letter to Otto Lutter, Mürzzuschlag, 18 April 1950. HMS copy in Wintersportmuseum, Mürzzuschlag, File: Pioniere Section L.
2. Letter, k. u. k. 3. Korpskommando, Gurk, 21 September 1907 to k. u. k. Reichskriegsministerium, Wien. HMS in Zdarsky Archive, Lilienfeld, File: Wahl.
3. Felix Schmal, Skisport in Österreich. Wien: Friedrich Beck, 1911, 31.
4. Announced in Jahresbericht des Alpen-Skivereins 1904, 11. The Ski Club of Great Britain’s Year Book first appeared in 1905.
5. “Übungsfahren in Hohenberg am 25. und 26. Dezember 1910,” Der Schnee (31 December 1910): 4. Another example in Norsk Idrætsblad (5 April 1905): 124.
6. Frank Gerlach, “50 Jahre alpine Skisportentwicklung…1935-85,” 1. TMS Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, Seminararbeit 1986-87.
7. W. R. Rickmers, cited in Wolfe Kitterle, 75 Jahre Torlauf. Wien: Kitterle, 1979, 25.
8. Arnold Lunn, cited in Ibid.
9. Allgemeine Sport-Zeitung (1 February 1903): 112. Hereafter AS-Z.
10. The Bezirksheimatmuseum and Zdarsky Archive in Lilienfeld have a number of his inventions on view and documentation for others.
11. Mathias Zdarsky, “Es war einmal,” Der Schnee (10 November 1925): 10-12.
12. Registered in 1896, Patent 31.366 was granted in 1899. Karl Engel of Lilienfeld held Zdarsky’s patents and his inventions. Hüttenegger, “Duell-Forderung wegen eine Skibindung,” Ski + Tennis/Windsurf (January 1988): 36.
13. As he enumerated in various articles. See, for examples, AS-Z (25 December 1898): 1518; Der Schnee (19 March 1906): 1 and (10 November 1925): 12.
14. See also Ekkehart Ulmrich, “Max Schneider: Genialer Vordenker und Wegbereiter des Skisports—oder kommerzieller Scharlatan?” FdSnow 6, 1 (1995): 33-45.
15. Wilhelm Freiherr von Wangenheim, Die Norwegische Schneeschuh. Hamburg: Aktien-Geselschaft, 1892. Georg Blab, Anleitung zur Erlernung des Schneeschuhlaufens. München: 1895. Fritz Breuer, Anleitung zum Schneeschuhlaufen. Todtnau: Skiclub Todtnau, 1892. Max Schneider, Katechismus des Wintersports. Leipzig: J. J. Weber, 1894. O. A. Vorwerg, Das Schneeschuhlaufen. Warmbrunn: Selbstverlag, 1893. See also Der Wanderer im Riesengebirge and Mitteilungen des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpen-Vereins. Theodor Neumayer, Praktische Anleitung zur Erlernung des Schneeschuh (Ski-) Laufens für Touristen, Jäger, Forstleute und Militärs. Hamburg: 1893. Henrik Etbin Schollmayer, Auf Schneeschuhen. Ein Handbuch für Forstleute, Jäger und Touristen. Klagenfurt: Joh. Leon, sen., 1893.
16. Raimond Udy, Kurze praktische Anleitung über den Gebrauch, die Konservierung und Erzeugung des Schneeschuhs für Militärzwecke. Laibach: Udy, 1894.
17. Vivian Caulfeild, How to Ski and How Not To. 3rd edition. New York: Scribner’s, 1912, 15-16.
18. Paulcke, “Über Ausrüstung bei Skitouren im Hochgebirge,” Österreichische Alpen-Zeitung (27 May 1897): 147.
19. Zdarsky, “Über Ausrüstung bei Skitouren,” Österreichische Alpen-Zeitung (22 July 1897): 185. Editor, Österreichische Alpen-Zeitung (20 January 1898): 123.
20. AS-Z (18 March 1900): 233.
21. Ibid. (5 February 1899): 138.
22. Ibid. (13 November 1904): 1426.
23. J. M., “Die Puchberger Tage,” Ibid. (15 January 1905): 37.
24. E. C. Richardson also reached this conclusion in a letter to Ibid. (29 January 1905): 89. See also his article, “Ende des Lilienfelder Zwists,” in Ski (Swiss) (13 January 1905): 11-12, and “The End of the Lilienfeld Strife,” Alpiner Winter-Sport II, 11 (27 January 1905): 153-154.
25. Letter, Hassa Horn to Alpen-Skiverein, Christiania, 31 January 1905 in AS-Z (12 February 1905): 142.
26. Heinz Polednik, Glück im Schnee. Innsbruck: Amalthea, 1991, 36.
27. Erich Bazalcka, Skigeschichte Niederösterreichs. Waidhofen/Ybbs: Landesskiverband Niederösterreich, 1977, 30.
28. Deutsche Alpenzeitung II, 19 (First January issue 1903): 192-193.
29. Mitteilungen des Deutschen und Österreichischen Alpenvereins (31 May 1897): 122; AS-Z (15 February 1903): 162; Der Schnee (28 November 1908): 2, (23 January 1909): 1-3, (31 December 19009): 2.
30. For what follows, see Siebenbürgisch-Deutsches Tagblatt (20 February 1907), Kronstädter Zeitung (15, 16, 25 February 1907), cited in Fritz Gött, Der Kronstädter Skiverein…1905-1930. Kronstadt: Kronstädter Skiverein, 1930, 58-60.
31. The first professional ski instructor in Austria was probably Reinhard Spielmann (Semmering), but the economic ski school found its style with Hannes Schneider after the Great War.
32. Polednik, Glück im Schnee, 38.
33. Lunn, Ski-ing. London: Eveleigh Nash, 1913, 11.
34. See the two doctors’ reports in Erwin Mehl (Ed.), Zdarsky Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag des Begründers der alpinen Skifahrweise 25 Februar 1936. Wien, Leipzig: Verlag für Jügend und Volk, 1936, 22-27.
35. Jens Kruse, “Die Bedeutung von Mathias Zdarsky für die Entwicklung des modernen alpinen Skisports,” Deutsche Sporthochschule Köln, Diplomarbeit, 1991, 6. TMS.
36. Anleitung für den Gebrauch der Schneeschuhe und Schneereifen. Wien: K.u.k. Hof- und Stadtsdruckerei, 1897.
37. Georg Bilgeri, “Erfahrungen mit Ski im Hochgebirge,” Die Alpen III (1928): 2.
38. Bilgeri, Der Alpine Skilauf. München: Deutsche Alpenzeitung, 1910.
39. Gudrun Kirnbauer, “Georg Bilgeri (1873-1934): Persönlichkeit, Berufsoffizier, Skipionier.” PhD dissertation, Institut für Sportwissenschaften, Univ. Wien: 1997, 88-89. TMS. This dissertation is now a book, Gudrun Kirnbauer and Friedrich Fetz, Skipionier Georg Bilgeri. Feldkirch: Neugebauer, 2001, but was unavailable to me at the time of writing.
40. Cited in Kirnbauer, “Bilgeri,” 89.
41. Wiener Mittagszeitung (14 January 1910) cited in Lutz Maurer, “Duell in den Bergen,” in Bruno Moravetz (Ed.), Das grosse Buch vom Ski. Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe, 1981, 40. Zdarsky was not new to challenges. In 1899 and later there were two in 1910 against Gomperz and Wördl, Der Schnee (18 May 1912): 1 and Der Winter (10 February 1912): 246.
42. “Stand des militärischen Skilaufes in der österreichisch-ubgarischen Armee,” Der Winter (17 October 1912): 30.
43. Names of races varied from district to district in Norway and Sweden. Einar Stoltenberg, cited in Olav Bø, Skiing Throughout History. Translated by W. Edmond Richmond. Oslo: Norske Samlaget, 1993, 53-54. Artur Zettersten, HMS, 29-31 in Svenska Skidmuseet, Umeå, Sweden. John Weinstock, “Sondre Norheim: Folk Hero to Immigrant,” Norwegian-American Studies XXIX (1983): 347-348.
44. Faedrelandet No. 20 (1879), cited by Jakob Vaage, Skienes Verden. Oslo: Hjemmenes, 1979, 132.
45. “Holmenkollen Races,” Ski Club of Great Britain Year Book (1906): 31.
46. AS-Z (19 March 1911): 305 and (2 February 1913): 114. Willi Romberg, Mit Ski und Rodel. Taschenbuch für Wintersportlustige. 2nd ed. Leipzig: Leiner, 1910 (?), 97-98, Letter, Commander J. H. W. Shirley, Oxshott, 15 January 1956 to editor, Ski Club of Great Britain Year Book (1956): 103.
47. F. Klute, “Kunst- oder Hindernislauf?” Der Winter (28 April 1911): 342-343. See also Ibid., (2 June 1911): 357.
48. For Zdarsky’s challenge to the Norwegians, see Alpiner-Winter Sport II, 11 (27 January 1905): 153-154. In 1993, at a meeting of sport museum directors held at the Olympic Museum, Lausanne, 3 September, the Director of the Swiss Sports Museum, Dr. Max Triet, was challenged over his interpretation of the beginning of slalom by Franz Klaus, the Director of the Zdarsky Archive. Following the incident, there was a flurry of correspondence in various newsletters.
49. Letter, Mathias Zdarsky to Erwin Mehl, Marktl im Traisentale, 3 February 1932. Zdarsky Archive, Lilienfeld. HMS.
50. Wettfahr-Urkunde, reprinted 2000, 5.
51. Ibid., 12. For Wallner’s account of the race, see Josef Wallner manuscript (10 November 1950), 3-4. TMS Wintersportmuseum, Mürzzuschlag.
52. Friedl Wolfgang, Mathias Zdarsky: Der Mann und sein Werk. Lilienfeld: Bezirksheimatmuseum, Zdarsky Archive, 1987, 2nd ed. 2003, 57.
53. Horst Tiwald, Auf den Spuren von Mathias Zdarsky. Hamburg: Institut für bewegungswissenschaftliche Anthropologie, 2004. For a damning critique of the book, see Open letter, Ekkehart Ulmrich to the Zdarsky Association, Planegg, 1 July 1993, and letter, Ulmrich to Hans Heidinger, Planegg, 11 March 1996. TMSs copies.
54. Zdarsky, “Nicht primitives Wettlaufen,” AS-Z (4 February 1900): 108.
55. Letters Mathias Zdarsky to the Austrian Ski Association, Habernreith, 5 March 1901, Emanuel Bratmann to editor of AS-Z, Wien, 7 March 1901, Josef Wallner to President of the Austrian Ski Association, Sonnwendstein, 5 March 1901; and V.S. [Viktor Silberer, editor] in AS-Z (17 March 1901): 229-230.
56. Zdarsky, “Prüfungsfahren am 25. März 1906,” Der Schnee (30 March 1906): 6.
57. Letter, Zdarsky to Mehl, 3 February 1932. HMS in Zdarsky Archive.
58. Zdarsky, “Wettfahren in Lilienfeld am 14. März 1909,” AS-Z (27 March 1909): 2-3
59. Radio talk, “Das Naturgesetz der gegenseitigen Hilfeleistung,” published in a pamphlet 150th Anniversary of Zdarsky’s Birth. “Lost the battle” is quoted in Letter, Otto Lutter to Hüttenegger, Graz, 24 March 1950. HMS Wintersportmuseum, Mürzzuschlag, File: Briefe Pioniere Section L. HMS.

Although the spiritual roots of “modern” skiing are found in the 19th century in Norway, it was the British, fascinated by the image of the naturally virtuous mountain folk and the alpine scenery—described among others by Jean-Jacques Rousseau—who pioneered alpine sports. They arrived in the Alps in the 18th century and from 1850 to 1865, were the first to have climbed more than 30 Swiss mountain peaks.

As for winter sports, Johannes Badrutt, owner of the Engadiner Kulm Hotel in St. Moritz, was a key figure. In 1864, he told his English summer guests that winter was even more beautiful and that he would pay for their lodging if they didn’t love it. Four aristocratic families came back for Christmas and found the winter wonderful. As a result, the station welcomed some years later more visitors in winter than in summer. The British liked, besides whiskey and betting, sports and competition. It all started with the “Lake Run” for sledges in 1872, followed by the “Village Run” in 1873, curling in 1880, artistic skating in 1882, the “Cresta” toboggan for sledges in 1885, Canadian snowshoes in 1886, Bandy (the forerunner of ice hockey) in 1887, skeleton in 1888, bobsleigh in 1889, the “Alpina Ski Club” in 1903, the oldest international Christmas jumping in 1904, skijoring in 1906 and the White Turf in 1907.

Pioneers

Organized skiing in Switzerland can be dated as of 1893. Before, skiers are recorded in Saas-Fee (Pastor Johan Joseph Imseng – 1849), St. Moritz (1859), Glarus (Konrad Wild – 1868), Davos (Carl Spengler – 1873), St. Bernard hospice (1873), Airolo (Giocondo Dotta – 1879, who learned to ski in the U.S while searching gold, fabricated a ski in order to supervise his cows when the traditional snow shoes where of little use because of extreme snow conditions), Arosa (Otto Herwig – 1883), Les Avants (Louis Dufour – 1890), Adelboden (Peter Oester – 1890), Meiringen (Knocker – 1890).

Interestingly, ski development did not start in St. Moritz or in another well-known mountain resort but in Glarus (a small town located halfway between St. Moritz and Zürich). 1893 was the year: born were a Ski Club, a ski factory, skis put at disposal to postmen in Davos as well as to militaries at the Gotthard and thirteen ski tours recorded. A key figure was Christof Iselin (1869-1949), from Glarus. At the age of 22, probably inspired by Fridtjof Nansen’s book “The first crossing of Greenland”, he had made his own skis. Not happy with the results, he arranged the following winter for two Norwegians, Olaf Kjelsberg (a relative of the writer) and Ja Krefting, to come with three pairs of Flickfeld & Huitfeldt skis, equipped with cane/leather bindings, to instruct him and some colleagues. The single bamboo sticks were 210 cm long with small steel disc close to the bottom and weighed 1.5 kg.

To demonstrate the ability of skis, Iselin, a Lieutenant, later a Colonel in the army and Jacques Jenny climbed in January of 1893 from Glarus to the Schilt Mountain (5 hours for a height difference of 1820 m). End of the same month, Iselin organized a race from Glarus to Schwyz to prove that skis were faster than snow shoes (at the time used by farmers, alpinists and military). With Kjelsberg, Naef and von Steiger, latter with snow shoes, they went over the Pragel pass (up to 5 hours for the 10 km with a difference in elevation of 600 m). The skiers were slower uphill, faster in flat sections and obviously much faster downhill. Iselin was also the initiator of the first Swiss ski race, the one of the “Ski-Club Glarus” in 1902 from Glarus to Untersack (8.5 km cross-country with 500 m altitude difference; 14 participants), preceding by 3 weeks the “Erstes Grosses Skirennen” in 1903 at the Gurten close to Bern (10 km cross-country, 1.4 km downhill with altitude difference of 200 m as well as jumping). He was also originator of the first jumping competition of the Swiss Ski Federation in 1904 (with already 15 clubs and 700 members) as well as the first Swiss Championship in 1905 (by the way attended by 10,000 onlookers) which Iselin won. Latter also developed the “Iselin-Bernina” snow shovel which of duralumin weighted only 350 g; the shovel was used worldwide and some models could even be coupled to a ski stick or an ice axe.

Ski manufacturers

The man behind the above mentioned ski factory was Melchior Jacober, a carpenter, also from Glarus. As of 1893, he fabricated Telemark and Mountain skis, latter shorter (180 to 200 cm) and wider (10 to 12 cm) of ash and elm, all branded with his name, one called “Glarona”. The bindings were made by his cousin, Josef Jacober, a saddler of the same town. At the end of the season, Melchior had sold close to 100 pairs, the following year 300 at a price of 20 Swiss Francs compared to 30 for Norwegian skis – the cost of two days full board in a good hotel!

As apparently there was more money in skis than in bindings, Josef Jacober began producing skis from 1896 on (until 1967). He launched a ski branded “Gotthardsoldat” (soldier of the Gotthard mountain range) in 1900, which became so successful that several armies as far as Chile, Persia and Russia purchased them. Josef was very productive: after 20 years he had sold over 250,000 pairs.

Already the year before (1895), the brothers Rudolf & Christian Ettinger founded the “Wagnerei & Skifabrik zur Mühle” (cart making & ski factory to the mill) in Davos-Glaris. Rudolf opened a sport article shop and moved the business to Davos Platz in 1906 where he also made all kind of carts and sledges, among other the Canadian rescue as well as the famous “Davos” sledge. During World War I, they sold yearly over 10’000 pairs of skis to the army. Likely with some of the proceeds, Ettinger acquired in 1919 a ski factory from Herald Smith (founded in 1912), located in Diessenhofen. Andreas, one of Rudolf’s sons managed the center which took over the ski production and added to the assortment wooden wheels for cars. The skis were then sold under “R. & Ch. Ettinger”. Jack Ettinger, the youngest son, was member of the Swiss National Ski Team and slalom champion of 1936. Two years before, he developed the “Jack Ettinger” edge. Later he headed for 25 years the Ski School Davos and founded in 1939 the first Swiss Ski School in Argentina. Jack Ettinger also suggested end of the 30’s to Ernst Constam, the inventor of the J-bar ski lift, to use T-bars. The Ettinger family still own three sport article shops in Davos.

At the turn of the century, Switzerland had at least three ski factories: the two Jacober cousins and Ettinger. After the WW1, the industry boomed to a point that at the end of the 30’s there were at least 40 manufacturers such as Amrein & Weber, Attenhofer, Authier, Badan, Beerle, Beusch, Brangs, Britt, Daffry, Erba, Ernst, Firn, Grässli, Gribi, Homag (which Duplex model was a sophistically laminated ski, raced among other by Edy Rominger, who won 7 medals at World Championships of 1936, 1938 & 1939), Inglin, Kaufmann, Kuehler, Mathys, Müller (# 1 re cross-country skis), Murgenthal, Nidecker, Rebell, Robert-Tissot & Chable, Roth Frères, Säntis Forrer, Scheller, Schenkel, Schraner, Schwendener, Seiler, Siegenthaler, Skissa, Smith, Spozio, Staub, Stöckli, Streuli Frères (which sold among other, learning sets to ski schools to start with 120 cm length, than moving up to 130 cm and finally to 160 cm, Sutter, Swiskis, Test, Thorens, Tödi, Toko (cross-country skis only), Valaiski, Wanderswo, Weber, Wehrli (which “NO-SPLIT” model of 1938 sold as break free due to the small layer celluloid between the upper ash and the lower hickory part), Wiesmann, Wisa-Gloria, Zogg (which launched around 1930 a 130 cm glacier ski which as a particularity had two grooves) – besides most likely several others. In 1934, Schraner patented a folding ski (CH144392) for touring and at the New York World’s fair of 1939 and unknown manufacturer exposed an all metal-bottom ski.

Alfred Badan began manufacturing skis in 1908 in a shop located between Bursins and Gilly, close to the lake of Geneva. The low cost skis were of ash, the expensive ones of hickory. In the 30’s they also produced laminated wood, some with celluloid edges and base.

Alfred II, the son of the founder, developed an alpine ski with an entire green celluloid fish-scale pattern base, called “SAHY” – which allowed moving uphill (patent CH189670 and CH19326, both of 1936). He also experimented with aluminum skis. They manufactured alpine, racing, cross-country, jumping as well as water skis – and exported even to the U. S. During World War II Badan diversified into sledges, carts and even military barracks. Because of lacking business they stopped production in 1948.

The big manufacturers were Authier, Attenhofer and Schwendener.

In 1910, John Authier opened a shop for the manufacture of wooden articles for farmers located in the village of Bière, close to Geneva. Anticipating a ski boom, he built a factory there in 1927. Their first models featured the name of Swiss mountain peaks: “Matterhorn”, “Diablerets” and “Muveran” and all carried the logo “Suiskis” (Suisse skis) with three fir trees and the armories of the town of Bière.

Authier’s first racing success was at the prestigious Arlberg-Kandahar downhill race in 1935. With the model “FIS-Super”, Swiss champion Willy Steuri won. During the war, they changed the logo to a patriotic and Swiss quality symbol: the crossbow with on top of it, Authier and on the bottom the armories of Bière. In 1948, Authier launched the “Vampire” (named after the first jet airplane of the Swiss army, made by the British De Havilland factory). Alfred Ueberschlag, head of manufacturing, had the idea to insert loose stainless steel laminates of 1 mm thickness, 60 cm long and 2 cm wide at the front of the ski and of 40 cm x 2 cm at the rear, leaving open parts in the middle.

The Vampire was great in races and commercially. As the ski was already well placed during the Olympics of St. Moritz (1948), the officials of the Swiss team selected the “Vampire” for the World Championship of Aspen (1950). With it, Georges Schneider won Slalom gold, later silver in Banff, then again gold at the Harriman’s-cup in Sun Valley. Madeleine Berthod won a gold medal in the downhill and the combined at the Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo (1956). After the 5th medal, all of them were reproduced on the top of the “Vampire”.

“The golden Vampire book” with all results obtained with that ski. At about Swiss Francs 100 (which represented around 100 hours of a workmen’s salary), it sold for three times less than a Head “Standard”, even though it was a much better ski – except in deep snow.

In 1960, the “hayfork factory”, named so by the village people, burned down. The same year, Authier built a new factory equipped with the latest technology for metal, synthetic material and wooden skis, the biggest in Switzerland. Authier introduced in 1962 the anti-break guarantee and began also producing water skis for Britt as well as ski-bobs. Neither successful was their “Lilliput”, a full wooden, inexpensive short ski – it came 10 years too early!

In 1968, Authier sold 46,000 pairs sold (70% metal, 20% fiberglass, 10% wood), number one in Switzerland before selling the business the year after in1969 to Olin Corporation, a U.S. chemical firm which wanted to diversify. After building its own ski factory in Connecticut, Olin decided at end of 1972 to sell the Stans factory to Rossignol & Haldemann. Rossignol, the world market leader, invested in what would be Europe’s most modern ski factory with a capacity of 65,000 pairs annually. Racing skis were made under the Rossignol brand, those for world speed records were labeled Authier. With an “Authier-Compétition”, Pino Meyer, an Italian racer realized over 194 Km/h in 1975; two years later they broke the record with almost 196 km/h – with 2.5 meter long skis.

Rossignol, which had collaboration with Lange and Killy, reached an agreement to manufacture Lange skis at the Stans factory. Nonetheless Rossignol & Haldemann announced the close of the factory in 1988 and to transfer the production to France and Spain. Authier/Stans was bought by Pierre-Alain Blum of Ebel Holding Finance (owner of Ebel watches, movie production, medias and golf tournaments) with participation of MBD (Marc Biver Development – sport sponsoring). They diversified in mountain-biking, snowboard, sport clothing and invested heavily in sales, marketing and research. In view of the coming 80 years of Authier, a modern replica of the “Vampire” was launched – with on top its logo with 5 medals.

The Authier brand belongs presently to AEFFE, a leading Italian multi-brand fashion and luxury group (see www.Aeffe.com for a résumé with some pictures of Authier). They bought it in 2006 from the Mazzotto group, another Italian fashion company which had bought it in 2002 from Arabian.

Henri Nidecker began ski manufacture in 1912 at Etoy, close to Lausanne. The skis were of ash and hickory until 1946 when the company also offered laminated wood. In 1962, they introduced metal and in 1963 fibreglass skis. In 1982 Nidecker launched the first mono ski, an instant hit in France and Switzerland. From 1984 on, they specialized in snowboards and were # 2 behind Burton.

Adolf Attenhofer won the Swiss Championship in 1917 while working for Ettinger where he developed skis. He also elaborated a method to determine the place of the toe iron in relation to the skier’s ability. From 1915 to 1957, Attenhofer patented many inventions regarding skis, bindings, edges, even clothing. In 1925, he quit Ettinger to start manufacturing skis in Zumikon close to Zürich. Besides skis, Attenhofer offered also folding skis as well as among other a fast red base called “Temporit”, harder than hickory. In the 30’s, they acquired the Alpina bindings. The firm was particularly famous for their laminated wooden skis introduced in 1936 (license of the Norwegian “Oestbye Splitkein”). In 1947, Attenhofer merged to form A.K.A. (Allais, Kandahar, and Attenhofer). At the Olympic Games of 1948 in St. Moritz, a large number of medals were won on Attenhofer – at the time the Rolls Royce of skis. Among other, Swiss champion Karl Molitor, 11 time winner of Lauberhorn races between 1939 and 1948, slalom and combined medals winner at the Olympics of 1948 – incidentally with the same, 220 cm long pair of full hickory skis, at that time an obligation of the Olympic Committee. In the 50’s the company introduced the “A15” metal ski, in the 60’s the “Kurzski” (170 cm long, 9/8/8.5 cm wide). After Attenhofer’s death late 50’s the factory inclusive brand was acquired by Emil Preisig who sold it in the 70’s to a manufacturer of plastic belonging to the FIAT automobile group.

Schwendener, an apprentice carriage-builder in that resort, opened a shop in Buchs (close to Austria) in 1931. The first year, they produced 74 pairs, in 1942: 1,500, in 1950: 10,000, in 1968: 100,000, many of them exported to U.S. (as of 1936, Sears as biggest customer), Canada (Eaton), Australia, Austria, Belgium, Chile, Finland, France, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Italy, Netherlands, Norway and New Zealand. The US army placed in 1970 a large order for their Alaskan troops.

In 1971, the sons of the founder, Hans and Fritz, build a modern factory with a capacity of 100,000 pairs in 2 shifts at a cost of Swiss Francs 3,000,000 (over USD 5,000,000 at today’s value). During the bad years of the 70’s (oil crisis, little snow, fall of the USD), they cooperated with Kneissl to produce skis in Austria at a lower cost. As sales did not improve, the business stopped in 1979.

Schwendener’s most successful skis were the “Touring” (1953) as shown on the left, a wooden ski with a metal base, excellent handling in all kind of snow and the “Caravelle” (1954) their first metal ski, a sophisticated construction with a rubber layer between the steel edges and an aluminum plate for shock damping.

Hans (John for his many U.S. friends), the salesman, had memories of skiing and stories of places like Crystal Mountain, Washington, Colorado and Alberta as well as close to hundred stations in Europe. Unfortunately, his only son, Jean-Luc, died 2003 in an avalanche in the Canadian Rocky Mountains. Hans died in 2004, Fritz in 2009.

Josef Stöckli began fabricating ash skis in the family’s carpentry shop in 1935 in Wolhusen, close to Lucerne, selling the same year 50 pairs of ash. By 1945, the Company also offered laminated wood, some with celluloid edges on top, by 1957 metal, by 1965 fibreglass skis. In 1967 Stöckli started to retail bindings, poles, ski boots, cross-country skis as well as accessories. At the same time, they changed its vending practice to selling directly to customers; as a consequence they were excluded from the “Swiss Ski Pool” (an association of specialised shops) with the result that they could not supply the Swiss racing teams (until 1994). In the 60’s they patented (CH407 836 &CH408 734) covering steel crampon respectively skis with inclined borders.

The first Stöckli skis raced in the World Cup were in 1991 by Marco Büchel, member of the Liechtenstein Ski Pool. Meanwhile, they won many international races with the “Laser” SL, GS, SG & DH models with Didier Plaschy, Urs Kaelin, Ambrosi Hofmann, Andrej Jerman, Fabiene Suter, Alois Mani, Mike Smith, Ashleigh McIvor (CAN), Tina Maze (SLO), Audun Gronvold (NOR) including 2 medals at the World Ski Championships in Garmisch-Partenkirchen (2011) and 5 at the Olympic in Vancouver (2010). In 1998, Stöckli launched the “Stormrider”, their first Freeride ski, developed and promoted with Dominique Perret, who at Mount Alberta, Canada, established a world record negotiating 120,000 m difference in elevation within 14 hours. In 2000, the company founded the “Stöckli Bike Team”, highly successful in Marathon, Cross-country, XTerra, iXS and Triathlon. They won their first Downhill World Cup ski race in 2007. The same year, the company changed to “Stöckli Swiss Sports AG” and the logo to . At present, they have 14 chain stores in Switzerland and are represented in 31 countries.

After World War II, the Swiss manufacturers were able to produce at full capacity whereas their alpine neighbors, Austria, France, Germany and Italy had to rebuild their factories. Between 1960 and 1995 however, most Swiss ski factories closed as production cost, because of the high salaries, were too high to be competitive. Only Stöckli remained as a large manufacturer.

However, new business appeared at the turn of the century: RTC (Ready To Carve) in 1995, AK (Aldo Kuonen), in 1996, Movement in 1999, Faction in 2002, Birdos, Zai in 2003 (priced up to $10,000!), Core in 2004, Blackcrows, Kessler and SCHUETZSPORTS, all three in 2005. As a particularity, SCHUETZSPORTS offers custom made logo and/or design – and even sold 500 pairs to the Russian elite army), Heidiskis in 2007 (with a branch in Sun Valley). All are expensive high-tech skis, produced in small quantities and sold exclusively through specialized shops.

A word on the most successful ski developed and made in Switzerland, the Rossignol “Equipe Suisse”. Besides many downhill and giant slalom races, it helped to win at the Olympic Games of Sapporo (1972), gold (Bernard Russi and Marie-Thérèse Nadig), silver (Roland Collombin and Marie-Thérèse Nadig) and bronze (Werner Mattle)

Bindings

Mueller developed in 1903 a binding with pivoting toe irons, each with a spring pushing the shoe down to the ski.

Jules Sessely (patent CH38425 of 1907) had automatic adjustable toe irons with an interlocked spring in front to which a flexible cable was attached to leather straps around the shoes. The binding allowed easy up and downwards movement of latter as well as removable toe irons, this without any tool. Mueller developed in 1903 a binding with pivoting toe irons, each with a spring pushing the shoe down to the ski.

Eduard Beetschen (patents CH47968 of 1909, CH62886 of 1913, CH118245 of 1925, CH159185 of 1932, CH172106 of 1934) consisted of a hook screwed on the front bottom of the shoe which was engaged in a tightening lever fixed to the skis.

For more than one generation, the “Alpina”, introduced in the 1920’s,   was the least expensive and thus the most common on the market. It   boasted adjustable, screwed on toe irons to which leather straps were attached to a “Hoyer-Ellefsen” tension lever. In the late 20’s, Alpina was sold by Attenhofer.

Adolf Schiess (patent CH93314 of 1920 & CH108294 of 1924) covered conventional bindings but patent CH108294 of 1925 may be the first safety binding worldwide. Similar to the Beetschen, it had a hook screwed on the front bottom of the shoes, steel rods attached to the toe irons for fixing the shoes and buts in front. These allowed the shoes to move upwards and to disengage from the toe irons. The binding was sold by “AS” Geneva for Swiss francs 25 claiming 16 advantages including a 5 year guarantee.

Anton Kolarik patented in 1927 (CH128762) the binding shown on the left. A heel strap attached to steel plates under the shoe was hooked to a tension lever, latter screwed on the ski in front of the toe iron. The lever, incorporating a spring, permitted to push the shoe into the toe iron.

Guido and Henry Reuge (grandsons of Charles, the founder of the music box manufacturer in Ste-Croix in the Jura Mountain range, still in business today), both passionate skiers experimented in 1929 with bindings. Guido, a mechanical engineer of the Swiss Technological Institute (ETH), early member of the Swiss Academic Ski Club (SAS) and ski racer, patented in 1932 (AT137011 & CH175818) the first one really fit for downhill. It consisted of adjustable toe irons, steel cables instead of leather straps, attached to serpentine springs at the heel and a tightening lever, in 1932 in the back, thereafter in the front. To suit boot sizes, the cables could be anchored into different emplacements of the lever. Further, due to different hooks at the toe irons and at the side of the skis, the heel could be left free as required for “Telemark” turns and touring, or fixed down for slalom and downhill.

The 1938 “Kandahar” (named in reference to the prestigious Alpine races) needed a screw driver to remove the cables so as to prevent stealing them It revolutionized skiing, became highly successful and was licensed – and copied – worldwide. As market leader, “Kandahar”, belonging to Attenhofer offered in 1952 nine models (Boy, Baby I, Baby II, Junior, Monopol, 3 kind of Super, Automatic, Supersport, latter with two springs in front). “Kandahar” was still sold in the 1960’s, some with two small springs in front as well as with safety pivot toes.

Together with his brother Henri, they owned over 10 patents covering bindings besides much more covering ski equipment, music box and others.

Walter Amstutz, a friend of Guido Reuge, also mechanical engineer ETH and ski racer, brought on the market in 1929 the “Amstutz-spring” (patent CH140454), attached to the skis behind the shoes and to the upper part of latters to give a certain halt for the modern “Vorlage” Ski Technique”.

Gustav Ruchser patented in 1930 adjustable toe irons, locked by two toothed wheels fixed under the irons. He also invented from 1910 to 1954 several equipment parts of skis, poles as well as climbing skins.

Different binding came up in the 30’s, several with tension levers in the back. On the upper left, the “Hespi” with serpentine springs at the back, in the middle the “Bernina” with small diameter spring cables instead of leather straps; the front part of the cable could be locked in a    horizontal or inclined position for either walking or descent. On the right the “Universal” which even had three positions to set desired inclination. Underneath, a “Thorens” which manufacturer made also skis.

Adrien Lador, patented the Labrador, a binding similar to the “Kandahar” but without springs. Possibly because of its simplicity, it equipped the skis of the Swiss Army. The tension lever of some models is pulled to the front, of others to the back.

Labrador, Reuge, and Thorens were all made in the small village of Sainte Croix in the 30’s

The “Belmag” of 1938 (patent CH 205566) had two parallel serpentine in front and became the main competitor of the ”Kandahar”. In 1943 they replaced the two springs by one located under the tightening lever.

Ernst Gertsch, the initiator of the Lauberhorn races in Wengen, patented various quick-release binding (CH354012, CH412672, CH412672, CH457235, CH462017) – some already with incorporated ski stopper. From 1967 onwards he began selling release plate bindings too.

At one time Gertsch covered almost half of the plate binding market, the “G70” being their top model. Also in 1967, the “Su-Matic” provided a downhill and a touring mode. It was good in the downhill mode, but with only 11/2″ heel lift, limited in ascent. As a complex piston/spring binding it was rather heavy – and as sales lacked, abandoned in the 80’s.

Albert Fritschi opened in 1960 an engineering shop in which he manufactured as of 1966 the Gertsch binding before taking over in 1979 latter’s patent and distribution rights. In 1977, Fritschi launched their first plate model for alpine touring. His sons, Andreas and Christian, developed the company to become today the global market leader of ski tour and freeride bindings with walking function. They launched the “FT-88” in 1980 of which not less than 70,000 were sold to the army. The company designed their first binding for snowboards in 1988, the “Verton” but abandoned it early 2000.

Fritschi reached a milestone in 1995 by launching the “Diamir”, a new generation of touring bindings, lighter, safer and easier to handle. Recent models are the “Diamir Eagle” for touring, the “Diamir Freeride Pro” for Freeride Mountaineering and the “Diamir Experience”, an all-round touring binding for price sensitive customers. In 1996, they presented the “Rave”, the first real carving binding with integrated rod height and free moving bond bridge, followed the year after by the “EVO 2” and in 2002 the “EVO 3” with the models “Powerride”, “Freeride” and  “Easyride”. Their first Telemark binding came on the market in 2000 and included safety feature. In 2005, the company introduced the steel crampon “Axon”, fastened to the binding which can be activated or deactivated with the pole. Fritschi is presently represented in 32 countries and equips the French, German and Swiss army. Since 2009, they are integrated into the Nordeck International Holding group.

In 2001, some ex staff of Fritschi started up the “Naxo®” company. Their model NX01 and NX02, mountain and freestyle bindings had as a particularity, double pivots. Naxo was bought by Rottefella, Norway in 2006 but as latter could not gain the critical mass, discontinued the binding in 2009.

Edges

In the 30’s appeared edges of steel, aluminum, duralumin, brass, messing, blue celluloid, even horn, of different size and forms, screwed-on or glued, base or side mounted. The most familiar were named “Ideal”, “Jack Ettinger Spezial”, “Lauberhorn”, “Rubi”, “Parsenn Schuss”, “Parsenn Spezial”, “Parsenn Firn”, “Silberhorn”. Beerli patented in 1935 the blue celluloid edges, often used for the ski’s upturn. Of special design were: the “Staub” of brass, without screws, held by small staves introduced from the sides, the “Bärlocher” combi-edges, violet celluloid with on the side of the skis screwed-on 5 cm steel ones, the “Staehli GS”, 5 cm with acute bevel and tongue requiring one screw only, considered best by many racers, the “Rominger” of one piece with a small steel surface enlarged with blue celluloid (which provided faster skis). In 1972, Inter Montana Sport (IMS) sold the exclusive rights for cracked “VCE” edges to Olin-Authier.

Boots

There was a time when Switzerland was the largest shoe and boots production center in the world, with the Bally Company over 150 million pairs since inception. Its founder, Carl Franz Bally (1821-1899) and his brother established in 1851 the “Bally & Co”, manufacturing among other, high fashion silk ribbons in Schönenwerd. In 1854, they set up a factory for foot wear, the “C.F. Bally” and employed some year’s later more than 500 people. Within another decade it had built an international reputation for quality and design and expanded operations to Europe and America. In the 20’s, they launched ski boots, in the 30’s the well-known models “Oslo”, “Winner”, “Arosa” (latter of brown scotch grain leather with a storm proof lacing), “Olympic”, in 1951, one of the first double ski boot, the “RADAR”. As the ski boot business was not profitable, Bally entered a joint venture with Koflach in the 60’s. In 1999, Bally went into the hands of the American investment fund Texas Pacific Group and since 2008 they make part of the Labelux Group, Austria.

Matthäus and Andreas Henke with Johann Georg Storz, three Germans, set up a shoe factory in Stein on the Rhine, Switzerland in 1885. They employed in 1889 56 persons, in 1911 130 but collapsed in 1936 and changed to a trading company. Henke specialized later in ski boots, for example in 1955 the “Stein Ericksen”, a successful two-lace model.

In 1956, they were the first to introduce buckle boots (with 4 metal hooks) on their “Speedfit” model. Hans Martin, a Swiss stunt pilot invented it, still used today. In the 60’s, Henke was the largest boots producers in the world (represented in the U.S. by Bernie Murith in Scarsdale, NY) producing up to 1’200 pairs a day – but went nonetheless broke in 1973.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bally_Shoe – cite_note-0

Franz Heierling, a Davos shoemaker made his first pair of leather boots for skiers in 1885. He copied the “Laupar” shoes of some Norwegians who had been teaching skiing to a few locals. Years later, his family fabricated what became known as the Rolls Royce of hand-made leather ski boots. For the Olympic Games in St. Moritz (1948), even the French team (under Emile Allais) had special braze-reinforced boots, made by them. Many racers trusted Heierling boots: among other, they helped the US and the Swiss team to win six medals at the Olympics of Squaw Valley (1960) and four of Innsbruck (1964). Heierling is still a family business.

Louis Raichle founded his company in 1909 in Kreuzlingen, close to the German border. It became world famous for ski, climbing and recreation boots, represented in the U.S. by Frank Kerner. For the 1980/81 season, they launched the “Flexon 5”, a 3-piece boot, an improved three-piece design developed by Sven Coomer and commercialized by Erik Giese of Aspen’s Comfort Products. One of the first pro ski racers and freestylers to compete in the boot was Billy Shaw on a prototype in 1979/80 and hot dog freestyle skier Peter Ouellette. The boots quickly caught on and became one of the top boots of choice by Olympic racers and freestylers. Bill Johnson won a gold medal at the Olympic downhill of Sarajevo (1984), Nelson Carmichael was a two-time World Cup Grand Prix Mogul champion and won a bronze medal at the Olympics of Albertville (1992).

In 1983, Raichle built a new factory on the other side of Kreuzlingen. Their president, who owned the company, sold it to Peter Werhan (a grandson of Konrad Adenauer, the chancellor of Germany). Sales grew worldwide due to podiums of Olympic and World Cup race as well as freestyle competitions and as Raichle held strong patents. After Werhan died, the business went down. In 1996, the business was purchased by Swiss banker Dr. Grosnick who bought companies in distress such as Kneissl skis. Latter became Austrian Kneissl, renamed in 1998 to Kneissel & Friends. Their marketing concept was Kneissl for skiing and ski boots, Raichle for climbing and hiking shoes, and the new brand DeeLuxe for snowboard boots. This strategy resulted however in sales decreases and as a consequence the company was sold in 2003 to the Mammut Sports Group; later was founded by Swiss Kaspar Tanner in 1862 for ropes is now worldwide known for mountaineering, outdoor pursuits and snow sports products.

Other ski boots manufacturer in the 20’s and 30’s were among other Chodan, Doelker & Walder, Lüscher & Laber.

The hand-made boots crafted by Fritz von Allmen, a shoemaker, ski instructor and racer in Mürren, were famous for their material, workmanship and design. The members of the local Kandahar Ski Club (named after Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar) appreciated the boots so much that von Allmen named the company he founded in 1932 “Kandahar”. He was likely the first to extend the lacing to the toe and to introduce a sponge-rubber tongue. Von Allmen also came up with a leather belt at the top, around the leg, for firmer stability and traction. The family business abandoned ski boots at the time plastic replaced leather and sells after-ski boots, which are to this day handcrafted in Gwatt, close to Bern.

Fritz Molitor, a saddler in Wengen (the sration of the famous Lauberhorn races) , started repairing shoes for tourists before making hand-made ski boots in the mid 20’s. His son Karl launched the “Molitor” boots, with which he and others won many races. After his two medals at the Olympics of St. Moritz (1948), he was the first to export hand-made boots to the U.S.

At the other side of the valley, Fritz von Allmen, a ski instructor, a racer and a shoemaker in Mürren, crafted famous boots known for their material, workmanship and design. The members of the local Kandahar Ski Club (named after Field Marshal Earl Roberts of Kandahar) appreciated the boots so much that von Allmen could name the company he founded in 1932: “Kandahar”. He was likely the first to extend the lacing to the toe and to introduce a sponge-rubber tongue. Von Allmen also came up with a leather belt at the top, around the leg, for firmer stability and traction. The family business abandoned ski boots at the time plastic replaced leather and sells after-ski boots, which are to this day handcrafted in Gwatt/BE.

Georg Spini of St. Moritz/GR manufactured “Vorlage” boots, thus forcing a forward position. It served some of the Swiss ladies team, such as Niny von Arg-Zogg (slalom silver medal winner of the Ski championship of 1938). These boots were ultimately sold by Löw. In the 40’s several racers used a “Rominger” wedge shaped platform to be laid between binding and boot, this again to force a “Vorlage”.

Climbing skins

In 1905, a Swiss trade journal carried a lengthy article about various attempts to use strips of skin fixed from the tip of the ski to the binding so as to permit climbing slopes. In the 30’s “CHEVA”, “PAMIR” and “Pomoca” sold conventional, later also adhesive (glued) skins. Subsequently, the “TRIMA” became the mostly used skins for more than a generation. They consisted of 3 small metal plates riveted to the skins which could be easily inserted to 3 metallic hinges fixed in the groove of the skis. By 1968, Tödi Sport in Glarus/GR introduced the “Colltex®” adhesive skins, still widely used to this day.

Bases & waxes

In 1916, the Schoop Company, specialized in metal spraying, prepared 3 skis, 2 with aluminum, the other with copper sprayed base. They were tried out by the Ski Club Bern in the region of Lenk – the results were disastrous.

In the 30’s, many varnishes were developed such as “Authier Competition gold-yellow”, “A21”, “B.S.33”, “Gsellin”, “Lucendi”, “Maissen yellow, “MIWI”, “OP1”, “Säntis”, “SKIBO”, “Skiwa”, “Temperol green”, “Rulack”, “TEMPEROL 3”, “Vernisvert”, “Wesco”, “Unikum”. The “Beerli” base helped several racers to win at the Olympics of 1948. In the 50’s, Müller (the founder of Montana Sport, better known as IMS) introduced the highly successful P-Tex® polyethylene base to oxidize the surface (a patent of 1952 by Dr. Kreidl, U.S.).

TOKO, well known by alpine and cross-country skiers, was founded by Jakob Tobler in Altstätten (1916) for products caring footwear and leather goods. Its first ski product was “Skigliss”, a red-colored varnish and “Skimont” for ski bases sold under the Toko brand (1933). It was followed by “rub-on wax 1-3-5” (1940), Olympiawax Combi blue-red-green” (1948), “Paraffin-Skiwax” (1969), “System 4” (1974), “hot waxes” (1975), “System Elite” (1979), “World Cup Wax” (1985), “Wet Jet”and Streamline” first fluorinated wax (1989), “Dibloc” (1991), “Nordlite Molydenum” (1996) and “HelX” (2002). Several Olympic and World Champion-ship winners in alpine, Nordic as well as snowboard disciplines relied – and rely – on Toko. They also sold wooden cross-country skis as of 1971 and fiberglass as of 1974, both made in Sweden. Toko was absorbed in 2002 by the Mammut Sports Group. In 2010 it became part of the Swix Sport, a Norwegian company with products for tuning skis and boards as well as accessories for outdoor activites.

Poles

In 1905, at a time most skiers used one pole only, a manufacturer offered one which could separate in two pieces so as to permit skiing with one or two poles. Gustav Ruchser, patented in 1931 (patent CH150336) a pole characterized by a basket attached without piercing the pole and which hand strap could easily be exchanged. Guido Reuge of 1932 featured adjustable length (patent CH165184).

In 1930, Walter Amstutz and Max Lüthi convinced Arnold Lunn to introduce hinged slalom poles for the Kandahar races. The “Müro” pole was on the Himalaya expedition of 1936. An interesting invention of 1948 was the “Labor”; it had spring suspended basket rings which always maintained the baskets in place. In 1960, Borda’s “Lawinensonde” was designed for searching people buried under avalanches. One handgrip and the two baskets could easily be taken off which allowed both poles to be pushed together so as to get a long stick. The “Tele pole” (1971) was particular in that it had variable spikes capable to adapt itself to different snow conditions.

Synthetic materials

Worbla, mentioned earlier, manufactured blue celluloid edges from 1935, celluloid bases from 1950 and polyethylene bases from 1956. Later, their extruded polyethylene flame treated base became the famous “P-Tex®” base. In 1962 followed the pressure sintered polyethylene bases, known as “P-Tex 2000®”. Head, an early customer for “P-Tex®”, acquired the exclusive rights for this fast base – and won many races with it. Since 1976, Worbla is a part of the Inter Montana Sport which itself belongs to the Gurit Composite Technologies group both Swiss firms. Gurit is today a leading supplier of semi-finished materials and sub-assemblies to the winter and summer sports industry.

Gaston Haldemann and his brother Willy made some fiberglass/epoxy skis with wood core as of 1957. Former patented a hollow ski in 1958 (patent CH351205, one of over 40) which would become famous. “Kaiser” Franz Kneissl looked at it, but did not believe in the new technology. As a consequence, Gaston sold the license to Rossignol and got engaged by them in 1960 to develop the technology with the required moulds and presses in France. However, as Rossignol began to develop non hollow fiberglass/epoxy skis in 1963, he quit for Inter Montana Sport (IMS).

In 1965, he nonetheless founded a company with Rossignol (Haldemann-Rossignol AG) located in Stans, Switzerland. After disappointing downhill results, Haldemann had the idea to incorporate 1 mm Zicral (an aluminum alloy) plates on top and bottom of the 3 fiberglass/epoxy channels again without wood core. In 1969 tests were made in Zermatt – initially without the knowledge of Rossignol. The results were spectacular, the skis later branded “Equipe Suisse”, mentioned earlier.

Also in 1960, Cellpack in Wohlen began to produce fiberglass/epoxy reinforced plastics. They convinced Kneissl to adopt this material for the top and bottom layers of their skis. The result was the famous “Kneissl White Star” with which, among other, Karl Schranz won many races.

Mountain railways, cableways including ski lifts

Due to its liberal economy, early industrial development, wealth, scenery and tourism, Switzerland has more mountain railways and cableways in relation to its size and population than any other country. The first ones were an aerial cableway used to ferry workmen across the Rhine at Schaffhausen (1866), a rack railway up to the Rigi (1871), a cable railway (funicular) in Lausanne (1877) and the world first mountain aerial cableway for public passenger to the Wetterhorn in Grindelwald (1908).

There are still several cableways manufacturer in business: Bächler Top-Track, BMF Bartholet Maschinenbau AG, Borer Lift AG, CWA Constructions SA, Garaventa/Doppelmayr AG, Inauen-Schätti AG, NSD Niederberger AG, Rowema AG Swissrides AG and Von Rotz Seilbahnen AG. Others stopped manufacturing, sold on or disappeared such as Annen, Baco AG, Bell Maschinenfabrik AG, Brändle, Constam, WBB Bühler, Elbag, GMD-Müller, Georg Fischer AG, Garaventa, Giovanola Frères SA, Habegger AG, Küpfer Maschinenfabrik, Lauber Seilbahnen, MWB Metalwerke Buchs, Odermatt, Oehler Eisen- &Stahlwerke Co, Norro, Rickenbach, Rowema, Sameli-Huber, Skimag Ski- und Sessellifte, Streiff, TEBRU, Vogler, Von Roll AG and WSO-Städeli.

1934 will be remembered as the birth of history’s most influential ski lift design. Ernst Constam, an engineer from Zürich, built the first “J-bar”, later a “T-bar” at Bolgen in Davos (patent 179310). In 1940 he immigrated to the U.S. where he further developed the business of ski, chair lifts, and gondolas. All over the world he must have sold over 200 installations – many more copied. There are still today thousands of T-bars in operation worldwide. These lifts had a strong impact, not only on the ski industry, but on tourism.

Also in 1934, Gerhard Müller a rope ski lift (CH174250). One year later, Beda Hefti built the first ski lift which permitted curved sections. Instead of bars, there were belts around the hips. In 1946, Heinrich Vogler invented the ski lift “Trainer”, a lightweight removable, inexpensive lift, ideal for short slopes; it could cope with lengths of up to 1000 meters and height differences up to 300 meters and is still highly popular.

Currently, Switzerland has around 900 ski lifts (not including 570 lightweight, removable lifts), 350 chairlifts, 120 gondolas, 130 aerial cable trains, 60 cable railways and 30 rack railways.

Ski Instructors in North America

Emile Constant Cochand (1890-1987), after two years as a ski instructor in Switzerland, was invited by the Montreal Ski Club in 1911. He came with 100 pairs of skis and poles, six bobsleds and 20 sleds. At Ste-Agathe in Quebec, he founded the first North American ski school. Cochand taught cross-country, Telemark, cross jump, jumping, bob sledding, snow shoe and organized competitions. In 1914, he opened the first resort hotel on this continent at Ste-Marguerite. The lodge burned down shortly after its completion but, he rebuilt the lodge by 1917. Chalet Cochand still exists today.

John (Jean) Monod, from the French speaking part, a world class ski racer in the 1930’s immigrated to Banff, Canada in 1947 where he met fellow Swiss Bruno Engler. Monod was an adventurer, a mountaineer, above all a man with a vision to bring Banff a winter life through the sport of skiing – even showed ski movies that he filmed. By 1949, he set up Monod Sports at Sunshine Lodge (now Village), making it one of the first ski shops in Western Canada. With his brother Jerry and Bruno Engler they were ski instructors at the Mt. Norquay ski area for most of the 1950’s. Monod also led the ski schools at Mt. Norquay for 4 years and at Sunshine for 11 years. After a fire destroyed his business in 1956, he reopened Monod Sports in Banff. Monod sons, Peter, Phillip, and his step-daughter, Stephanie Townsend raced on the World Cup Circuit. Phillip was Canadian Junior Champion and Peter was seven-time Canadian Champion and one-time U.S. Champion. Today, the store is managed by Monod’s sons.

Hans Thorner (1908-2004), from Einsiedeln, a ski instructor, emigrated to the U.S. in 1932. There, he became a PSIA first class certified ski Instructor. During the 40′s he owned and operated the Thorner House in Franconia, NH. It was an inn of some renown and one of the first in this country where you could “ski all the way home.” He also ran the Hans Thorner Ski School on Cannon Mt., filmed the 1948 Olympics and went on to make ski movies for Swissair including sequences of himself. Thorner dreamed of a Swiss village at the base of a mountain. As a consequence, he chose Magic Mt. VT (1960) with its steeps, trees and cliffs – on the upper half even frightening skilled skiers today. The Thorner family operated Magic Mt. until in 1985. Fortunately, the area remains a refreshing change from the scene of the crowded and expensive mega-resorts.

Walter Prager (1910-1984), from Arosa, became the first FIS Downhill Champion (Arlberg-Kandahar race) at Mürren in 1931 and two years later won the FIS world downhill championship at Innsbruck, Austria. Prager became the Dartmouth Ski Team coach in 1936 and occasionally also taught skiers at Pico VT. He was named U.S. Olympic coach for the men’s and women’s team at St. Moritz (1948) where Gretchen Frazer won gold in slalom and silver combined – to become America’s sweetheart. In 1941 Prager volunteered and was given the rank of Sergeant in the 10th Mountain Division. He retired from Dartmouth in 1957.

Alfred (Freddy) Pieren (1911-2003), from Adelboden, became in 1939 a battalion guide before emigrating to the U.S. in 1941. Two years later, he joined the 11th Mountain Brigade, served as an instructor of the 10th Mountain Division at the Allied Mount Warfare School. After the war, he settled in Sun Valley. Pieren, an ingenious ski instructor, developed among other, a machine for ski waxing and as a consequence opened a shop for waxing and storage. In 1961, Howard Head offered him a job as chief technician of the Head Ski Company where he played a major role in developing the highly successful 360 model. Pieren represented Head at the Olympics of Innsbruck (1964) as a technician of the U.S. and Canadian teams. On his return, he joined Voit Co., which began developing fiberglass skis in California. After Voit discontinued ski manufacture, Pieren worked for Olin Ski from 1966 on.

Fred Iselin (1914-1971), from Glarus (the son of Christof, the pioneer mentioned on page 1), became known as a skier before he went 1930 to Chamonix in France. He stayed there 8 years as a ski instructor, film actor, racer, trainer of some women of the French ski racing team. Iselin won impressive victories at the Grand Prix de Chamonix, the Brevant-Chamonix, and the Lognon Downhill. His most impressive win was the time record at the Grand Prix de l’Aiguille du Midi – a race discontinued because too dangerous. Iselin arrived in the U.S. in 1939, met in San Francisco by chance Friedl Pfeifer, one of Colorado’s notable ski school directors and designer of the Mt. Baldy ski area at Sun Valley. Latter offered him to teach the top class. In 1947 they both moved to Aspen. An instructor “par excellence” for over 40 years, his achievements include ski school director for Aspen Highlands, author of bestselling book on ski techniques “Invitation to Ski” as well as “The New Invitation to Skiing and Invitation to Modern Skiing” and movies such as “Snow Carnival” starring Gary Cooper and “The Wonderful World of Color” with Walt Disney.

Bruno Engler (1915-2001) from Lugano, a mountain guide and professional photographer arrived in Canada in 1939. After working as a ski instructor for Jim Brewster at Sunshine Village, he obtained his first guiding job at Chateau Lake Louise where he operated with the legendary mountaineers, Ernest Feuz and Rudolf Aemmer. In the mid-1940s, Engler taught survival and mountain warfare for the Canadian army and upon returning to the Rockies to teach skiing, organized the first Veteran’s Ski Race – an annual event over which he presided for many years. In his long career, Engler was also an actor, cameraman, photographer, as well as one of the Canadian Rockies’ great story-tellers. In the mid-1950’s, Engler created Alpine Films, which offered cinematography and location/mountain safety consulting to the film industry. He worked with Disney, Universal Studios, the National Film Board and both Canadian and American television networks. Engler photographed such Hollywood stars as Jimmy Stewart, Paul Newman, Charles Bronson and Margot Kidder, many of whom remained his friends. During more than 60 years of still photography, he compiled an unprecedented collection of magnificent black and white photographs, which represent a remarkable portrait of a period of intense change in Canada’s National Parks. In 1996, The Alpine Club of Canada celebrated his extraordinary life by publishing Engler’s first book, “A Mountain Life: The Stories and Photographs of Bruno Engler”.

Karl Acker (?-1958), from Davos, a slalom racer, was recruited in 1939 by Brad and Janet Mead (the founders of the Pico VT resort) to head their ski school. While in Davos, the Mead’s were impressed by Constam’s T-bar ski lift and ordered one right away, as a matter of fact the first in North America. Acker joined the 10th Mountain Division during World War II to develop the mountain troop ski program. He also initiated the Pico Ski Club. Acker was trainer of young Andrea Mead, the daughter of Brad and Janet. At age 19, she captained of the U.S. women’s team at the Olympics of Oslo, Norway (1952) – and became the first American skier to win two Olympic gold medals (slalom and downhill). A trained mechanic, Acker also designed and built a single chair to be attached to the Pico T-bar lift for summer rides. He managed Pico resort before buying it from Jane Mead in 1954. Acker suffered a heart attack in 1958, and according to his wish, was buried at the Peak of Pico.

Paul S. Valar (1920-2007), from Davos, spelled Valär there, was a ski instructor, mountain guide as well as Swiss decathlon champion – besides fluent in German, Italian, French and English. As a member of the Swiss National Ski Team, Valar was invited to compete in the U.S. National Ski Championship of Ogden, UT in 1947. There, he placed second in both the downhill and the combined – met a beautiful Austrian-born member of the U.S. National Ski Team, Paula Kann (working for Hannes Schneider at North Conway, NH). In 1949 he coached the men’s Swiss National Ski Team, later decided to follow Paula to the U.S. where he became the director of the Cannon Mt. Ski School in Franconia. From the 1940s to the 1980s, Valar was a founding force and guiding light for New Hampshire ski instruction. In 1977, he became the first President of the New England Ski Museum. For his manifold contributions to the sport of skiing, Valar was honored with lifetime membership in the Professional Ski Instructors of America (P.S.I.A.) in 1974 and was elected to the National Ski Hall of Fame in 1985.

Walter Haensli (1921- ), from Klosters (a ski friend of the writer) was already at the age of 17 member of the Swiss National Ski team. Because of bad luck however, he could not join the Swiss team at the Olympics in St. Moritz (1948), at that time some selected by drawing lots! Haensli’s second chance came when US Coach Walter Prager hired him to train the women – and Gretchen Frazer became the first American to win gold and silver. Jack Heinz, from the Heinz Ketchup fortune, admiring Haensli, managed to have him hired by the prestigious Sun Valley Ski School for the next season.

During the 1949/50 season, Haensli tested new kinds of skis, Howard Head had sent to the Sun Valley ski school for appreciation. They consisted of blank aluminum plates on top and bottom, bonded to a thin core of plywood. He found the skis excellent in powder, made trials, recorded these and wrote to Head suggesting improvements. Invited to visit latter’s “factory” – located in a basement garage in Baltimore, Haensli suggested steel edges, bending the ends slightly upward and adding for esthetics a plastic material. Head chose phenol, a black material to eliminate the glare of the metal, a distinctive feature of his early skis. Head, not a rich man, asked Haensli how he could recompense him. Latter asked for the right to sell Head skis in Europe. During the next 30 years he sold: 18 pairs in 1950/51, in succeeding seasons 57, 186, 1500 and more than 20,000 in 1958 – over a third of Head’s annual total production. Haensli was also a key figure in setting up Head’s production center in Kennelbach, Austria after U.S. production was stopped because of a long strike.

Bryan Todd, a rich New Zealander, met Haensli in Sun Valley in 1949. Todd persuaded Haensli to come to New Zealand to look for a skiing area. After investigating different sites, he recommended the Ruapehu Mountain. There, Haensli founded a ski club, run a ski school and set a ski and two chair lifts. Even today, he is honored by the yearly “Haensli Cup” race. Karen Williams covered his life in her biography “Barrel Staves to Carving Skis – A Skier’s Story: Walter Haensli of Klosters”.

Art Furrer (1937- ), from Greich, a local ski racer, member of the National B-Team at the age of 17, instructor at 20, examiner of the Ski School Association at 21 (however suspended at 23 because he liked to ski as he said: the other ways). In 1959, he left for the U.S. and was hired by Paul Valar as a ski instructor at the Cannon Mt. Ski School in Franconia. There, he invented the “Franconia Super-Dooper Wedeln”, and later, under contract of Hart skis, used trick techniques such as the Butterfly, the Reuel, the Charlston, the Twist, the Javelin Reverse, the Hinge-Hop Helicopter and others. Furrer also starred in films such as “The crazy Swiss”. He moved to Penny Pitou in Laconia, NH where he taught the 1961/62 season. Furrer returned to Switzerland where he received an unexpected attractive offer from Henke ski boots as their representative in the U.S. (1963). Two years later he became ski school director at Bolton Valley, VT. Furrer became the number one public relations figure of Hart skis, doing acrobatics shows and films. From 1966 on, he invested his savings in condominiums at Riederalp, next to the Aletsch Glacier ridge where he returned in 1973, bought a hotel and became its leading resort entrepreneur. Furrer, who began penniless, is now a rich man, a personality, politically and on TV. In his restaurant “Tenne“, are the twelve-foot long skis from the German broadcast “Can you take a joke?” displayed.

Roger Staub (1936-74), from Arosa, ski racer, ice hockey player and ski instructor won three races of the Swiss Junior Championship (1955), followed by three medals at the World Championship in Badgastein, Austria (1958). His biggest success however, was the goldmedal (GS) at the Olympics in Squaw Valley (1960). Thereafter he signed on to promote Hart skis. After the season 1960/61, Staub retired from racing and opened a ski school in Arosa. There he did also acrobatic ski shows, in part together with Art Furrer (both on Hart skis), culminating in the movie “Die Snowboys aus Arosa”. Staub was ski school director in Vail from 1965-69. A deep powder run is named after him and he participated   in the movie “Ski the Outer Limits”. Staub died 1974 in a delta wing accident in Verbier, Switzerland. His Roger-Staub cap, enclosing the head with small openings for the eyes, continues to live.

Among other instructors, racers or mountain guides from Switzerland, there were C. Bezzola, Herb Bleuer, Ernst Buehler, Beat, Hans and Otto von Allmen, Rudi Gertsch, Stefan Kaelin, Hans-Peter Stettler, Peter Schlunegger, Sepp Renner, Ernst Salzgeber, Kobi Wyss as well as many others.

Patents:

They can be viewed and printed at http://ep.espacenet.com

Contacts:

Luzi Hitz, Cyprès 4, CH-1802 Corseaux, Switzerland (close to the lake of Geneva); lhzlhz@bluewin.ch. You can visit the collection of about 120 pairs of alpine skis from around 1900 to these days beside consult a large documentation.

Ski and Wintersportmuseum Noldi Beck, Fabrikweg 5, FL-9490 Vaduz, Liechtenstein (1½ hours’ drive from Zurich); www.skimuseum.li. One of the largest European collections of winter sport articles

Laurent Donzé, CH-2336, Les Bois (about 60 miles from Bern); l.donze@bluewin.ch. Most likely the largest collection of cross-country skis (about 2000) in the world as well as over 200 pairs of antique alpine skis.

Collection of Schwendener skis: Rainer Geissmann, Renkwiler, FL-9492 Eschen, Liechtenstein; Geissmann.Rainer@adon.li

More skiing is on TV than ever before, so why do most people think there’s less? Look to history for the answer.

By John Fry (September 2008 issue of Skiing Heritage)

While television viewing and the sport of skiing have each grown immensely over the last 50 years, one thing has not: the viewing of ski racing   on television.

Competitive skiing once appeared regularly during the winter months on home TV screens -- free to viewers, thanks to the big networks. Today, apart from the Winter Olympics, you have to be a cable subscriber to watch taped or delayed-transmission alpine races, such as the FIS World Alpine Ski Championships held in odd-numbered years, and the annual Hahnenkamm downhill, which has a world-wide audience of five hundred million. 

But even cable coverage has waned. If you want to watch World Cup races live, last year you had to pay to view them on your computer monitor.

So, within half a lifetime of most of the folks reading this article, ski racing on television has evolved from being free on broadcast network stations, to part of a paid cable package, to an on-line subscription service.

To be fair, that’s only part of the story. There are probably as many hours of skiing and snowboarding and extreme skiing as there’ve ever been on television. But, spread over more and more channels, each viewed by ever smaller numbers, skiing on television gives the appearance of having shrunk dramatically.

Moreover, the sport’s low ratings – the number of people watching it -- have left it with fewer of the advertisers whose money is needed to pay for the programming. The U.S. Ski Team has to buy television time to ensure that the World Championships can be viewed in the U.S. The cost is not small. Compared to other sports – for example, a tennis tournament -- ski competitions, conducted in the freezing outdoors in remote locations on steep mountainsides, are logistically difficult and expensive to produce.

Why has skiing on television not fared as well as golf and tennis tournaments? After all, an estimated ten million Americans ski and snowboard in a given winter, and millions more may be retired or temporarily inactive skiers who still love the sport. Surely, they comprise a viable potential audience. Yet during half-a-century of explosive growth in mass viewing of football, baseball and basketball, ski racing has been drawn down into narrower holes bored by changes in video technology.  How did it happen?

AT THE BEGINNING

The earliest television coverage of competitive skiing – flickering images on a screen – was at the 1936 Olympic Winter Games held at Garmisch Partenkirchen, Germany.  Twenty years and one world war later, in 1956, Italian television carried some live coverage of the Olympics at Cortina d’Ampezzo.    

The first Winter Olympics seen live on American television were the 1960 Squaw Valley Games. Not that the television networks were vying for the privilege of covering Squaw Valley. ABC Television actually withdrew its bid of $50,000. Walt Disney, who was orchestrating the Games, worried anxiously that Squaw Valley might not attract any live TV coverage. CBS finally took it on. The network’s owner Bill Paley did it, according to the late Roone Arledge, “not out of any love for the Olympics, but as a favor to Disney.”

Arledge, for his part, liked what he saw of the 1960 Games and so, after joining ABC, he convinced the network to pursue the right to televise the next Winter Olympics at Innsbruck. ABC won, paying $500,000, or ten times as much as the rights for Squaw Valley. 

Arledge wrote a special article for SKI Magazine readers about the complex preparations for televising the ’64 Games, with competition sites scattered around the city of Innsbruck at Igls, Lizum, Seefeld.

“Compared to Innsbruck, Squaw Valley was child’s play,” wrote Arledge, who is generally acknowledged today as the pioneering genius of early sports television. It is significant that he regarded heavily involved skiers, readers of a ski magazine, as an important, influential core of viewers. In later years, television executives came to regard skiers as less important to success than making ski races appealing to millions more of non-skiers --  a mission in which they arguably failed.

The cost of televising Olympic skiing escalated rapidly. For the 1964 Games, the videotape of the competitions had to be trucked to Munich and flown to London, whence it was satellite-fed (a first) to New York. Innsbruck was a ratings winner, and the IOC was able to sell TV rights to the Grenoble 1968 Winter Games world-wide for five times more than it got for Innsbruck four years earlier.

The Winter Olympics weren’t the sole source of growth for televised ski racing in the 1960s. ABC introduced its Wide World of Sports program in April, 1961, and the following winter Wide World taped and showed the first televised pro ski race, with cash prizes, run by Friedl Pfeifer’s International Professional Ski Racing Association (IPSRA). Wide World of Sports also televised Dick Barrymore’s filming of the 1966 World Alpine Ski Championships at Portillo, Chile -- used by ABC to win itself an Emmy Award.

Later, ABC came to introduce the Saturday-afternoon Wide World of Sports program with a shot of Yugoslav jumper Vinko Bogataj careening sideways off the in-run trestle into a series of horrifying, ground-slamming, bone-crunching cartwheels. At first, when Bogataj soared into the air, the announcer cried, “The thrill of victory,” then as the unfortunate fellow crumpled into a fence, unconscious, the voice intoned, “the agony of defeat.”

THE 1970s: A GOLDEN AGE OF TELEVISED SKIING?

The 1968 Winter Olympics, and the rocketing fame of Jean-Claude Killy,  propelled broadcasters into televising World Cup classics, like the Hahnenkamm and the Lauberhorn, as well as international races in the U.S. The 1970s became the golden age of skiing on television. To the increasing  hours of Olympics and World Alpine Ski Championship coverage increase was added the new sport of freestyle, with bump skiing, aerials and ballet. TV executives also discovered the popularity of ski jumping among viewers who otherwise had little interest in skiing. (Internationally, ski jumping attracts as many, or more, viewers than World Cup racing -- albeit older viewers.)

Because of his excellent connections in the television industry, Bob Beattie in the 1970s was able to obtain broadcaster coverage of his professional, head-to-head, cash-prize races, involving famous ex-Olympians like Jean-Claude Killy, Billy Kidd, Spider Sabich and Hank Kashiwa. In parallel-course pro racing, the TV viewer could see who was moving faster, an experience not possible with one-racer-at-a-time FIS slaloms and giant slaloms. At the event itself, the air crackled with the voice of commentator Greg Lewis, in contrast to the dull, staid FIS races.

“Beattie was on the leading edge of change that took sports from being sports to being entertainment,” says Lewis.

Prime-time coverage in the U.S.  of ski racing at the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games ski races was helped by the time difference with Japan, which made it possible to show live action. Many, however, regarded ABC’s coverage, hosted by baseball and fishing show announcer Curt Gowdy, as lackluster. Sapporo would not be the last occasion on which TV executives fumbled the choice of a host announcer for the Winter Games, given their blind belief in the idea that the intrinsic athleticism and skills of the competitions are of so little interest to viewers that the anchorman need have no prior knowledge of winter sports.

In the 1970s, too, ABC introduced its famous – or infamous, depending on your point of view—mini-profiles with athletes, Up Close And Personal. As often as not, Up Close and Personal consisted of a cloying interview with ski star Franz or Rosi seated in their gasthof struggling to find the English words to answer questions posed by an interviewer whose knowledge of German perhaps extended to the meaning of the word schuss.

The 1976 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck shone, highlighted by Franz Klammer’s gold-medal-winning downhill run. In the words of veteran TV ski commentator Greg Lewis, Klammer’s run was “a frantic, on-and-over-the-edge, airborne, slashing, no-tomorrow plunge down a terrifying chute of ice, risking everything to win, yet still trailing Switzerland’s Bernhard Russi by a fifth of a second with only 1,000 meters to go.” Football Hall of Famer and ski enthusiast Frank Gifford called it, “the most exciting two minutes in sports,” and the taped voice-over of Gifford and Bob Beattie calling the race was the best the duo ever made.

After witnessing Klammer’s spectacular run, ABC Sports President Roone Arledge ordered his people to “buy every downhill we can get our hands on.” His judgment wasn’t far wrong. Ski racing generated decent viewer ratings, partly because it didn’t have to compete yet against the football and college basketball games that later came to invade television’s January schedules. 

CABLE TV: BOTH MORE AND LESS OF SKIING

A momentous change occurred in 1979 with the advent of cable television and the fledgling sports channel, ESPN.  For a while, more skiing appeared on television than ever before – alpine racing, freestyle events, celebrity races, Warren Miller movies, and more. Cable had a voracious need for programming. On-air work was plentiful for the likes of Bob Beattie and Greg Lewis, and for ex-racers like Billy Kidd and Hank Kashiwa, who would later be joined by articulate, photogenic retired competitors such as Christin Cooper, Andy Mill, Lisa Densmore, and Pam Fletcher.

While the amount of skiing on television increased with cable, paradoxically it served to make the sport less successful commercially. The number of people watching each show grew smaller as the number of cable channels multiplied. The audience ratings for alpine ski races were now perceived as comparatively weak.

The exception, of course, was the Olympics. When Antonio Samaranch became President of the IOC in 1980, he and vice-president Dick Pound increasingly exploited the competition among U.S. networks to televise the Olympics.  The TV bidding frenzy was not only propelled by ice skating and hockey, but also, ironically, by the alpine ski racing once so despised by the IOC’s former president, Avery Brundage. The IOC’s revenues mushroomed, along with the commercial advertising time needed to pay for it.

Television coverage in the 1980s reflected the growing diversity of what was happening on snow. Freestyle aerials and mogul skiing competitions were on their way to becoming Olympic sports. ABC broadcast a television show of the world snowboarding championships at Breckenridge in 1987. Women’s professional ski racing blossomed briefly. Famous ex-racers competed on teams with celebrities.

To reach vacationing viewers, Rory Strunk in 1985 began producing a show beamed into tens of thousands of television sets in resort condos and hotel rooms. Today, more than 20 years later, Resort Sports Network (RSN) annually creates seven shows, one for each day of the week, repeated throughout the winter. The resort channel adds local weather weather and snow conditions and, of course, there are time slots for commercials.

Entering the 1990s, Beattie, the mainstay of televised skiing, came to be joined by ex-downhiller Todd Brooker, who turned to television after suffering an horrendous, career-ending crash in the 1987 Hahnenkamm downhill.

More and more of the ski racing at the Olympics (Sarajevo and Calgary) was presented as delayed-action coverage – edited to focus on the winners and the most exciting spills. Increasingly, shows were packaged, or syndicated, allowing time slots for commercials. The master of the business became ex-racer Joe Jay Jalbert. Under an agreement with the U.S. Ski Team, Jalbert Productions filmed races during the winter, and edited the raw material into a show of highlights. The show was given to TV stations in return for half of the commercial time, in this way generating a profit for  Jalbert.

As the pro racing circuit collapsed in the late 1990s, it was supplanted by Jeep King of the Mountain races. Little known ex-World Cup racers winning a lot of money were replaced by well-known ex-World Cup racers winning less money.

SKIING’S LIMITATIONS AS A TV SPORT

After promising beginnings in the 1960s, televised skiing steadily lost ground to other sports. As the years passed, it turned out that the reasons for the sport’s limitations on TV in America were not a whole lot different from the reasons that ski racing has seldom attracted large throngs of spectators on the hill. Long-time announcer Greg Lewis pinpoints them. 

“It’s difficult to see where one racer may have lost a tenth of a second to another racer,” says Lewis, rarely making it possible for the spectator to know where and when the winner won.

“It’s a lot less attractive to viewers than is figure skating, which is sexy, graceful, poetic. You can see the skater’s face, whereas a ski racer’s face and the emotions it expresses are hidden by a helmet and giant goggles. The racer looks like an object. It doesn’t help that the camera, which is usually directed up and down the hill, flattens the terrain, making it looking less threatening or steep,

“Live coverage of ski racing,” continues Lewis, “presents all kinds of difficulties. The action goes too fast, and the announcer is always behind. The intervals between starts are abbreviated.

“Football is the perfect TV sport: 10 seconds of action, and 30 seconds to comment on it and show slo-mo replay. A basketball, football or baseball games typically lasts three hours. The elite downhill racers essentially are finished competing after only a half-hour. The only interest in two-run slalom and giant slalom is the second run.”

In America, ski racing is a second or third-tier sport, not a national sport as it is in central European countries like Austria, Switzerland and Slovenia. For American TV watchers, says Lewis, the preponderance of European competitors and competitions is a turnoff. . .”a bunch of people I’ve never heard of doing something I don’t understand in a place I’ll never go to.”

Ski racing was unlikely ever to attract viewers in the southern, football-loving, non-snow U.S. states, according to Jim Bukata of Mark McCormack’s Trans World International, which produces and markets TV shows.

“It didn’t help either that the sport’s season was short,” says Bukata, “and that the competitions never appeared on the regular, familiar schedule that builds audience numbers.” Skiers, who might have comprised the largest audience, were typically on the slopes when weekend shows aired.

U.S. television, instead of drawing on TV’s unique strength as a live medium, came to treat skiing in the manner of an evening newspaper -- full of background features and taped, edited coverage carried a day or more after the event. In the 1950s, for the first time, people were excited by seeing events live, as they happened. . .football,  baseball, tennis and golf. With skiing, television went backwards, from live to seeing it after the results have appeared in the newspapers.

A popular explanation for skiing’s weakness on television is that it is a minor sport. But wrestling, too, is a minor sport. What caused wrestling to become an almost daily occurrence on TV is that the athletes became actors in a play. It is a show. Organized skiing, especially the FIS, which is governed by officials having little or no media experience, has opposed showmanship in racing.

“Lang and FIS officials were shocked,” recalls Lewis, “when they saw their first major moguls competition at Tignes in 1982. . .rock music blaring, thousands of spectators, competitors hitting bumps, people yelling and screaming.” The FIS already viewed head-to-head pro racing as a sellout, a carnival.

Olympic 1984 silver medalist Christin Cooper who, after retiring from racing, successfully turned to serving as a ski expert analyst for CBS and NBC over a span of 18 years, is baffled by the FIS’s persistent lack of initiative in combating ski racing’s television decline.

“You’d think they would act after seeing the rise of the Winter X-Games on American television at the expense of alpine racing,” says Cooper. “The X Games swooped in and ran with an opportunity that the FIS had, and still has if it wants any chance to remain relevant and attract sponsors and viewers. Stage concerts. Do more events at night. Have competitors interact with spectators. Have a Dancing with the Skiers competition.

“ESPN saw what kids and lazy viewers want,” argues Cooper, “to be entertained in a 21st century way. The X Games took a bunch of pretty obscure and random snow sliding events, packaged them for full entertainment value, and drew sponsors and enthusiastic viewers. But the FIS seems unwilling even to try.”

AN UNCERTAIN FUTURE

In the Winter X Games, snowboarders perform tricks in halfpipes. aerialists flip, skiers compete in simultaneous-start races, fighting for position down the course. Forbes Magazine noted the cost efficiency of the X Games. ESPN, which owns them, gave out a mere $576,000 in prizes to 250 athletes in 2004, the cost of one backup NFL quarterback.

ESPN, which had featured commentary by Bob Beattie and Todd Brooker, backed up by Steve Porino, began to phase out its coverage of alpine racing in 2003, turning it over to the Outdoor Life Network (now re-named Versus) cable channel. New owner Comcast virtually saw little value in covering skiing.

Historically, ski racing has largely gone from a sport that the television industry wanted to show to viewers, to one that has to pay television to get on the air or on cable. The U.S. Ski Team, for example, budgets as much as $4 million annually to buy television time. The Team recoups the money by finding sponsors to buy commercial time. In this way, Americans have been able to see the World Ski Championships every three out of four years. But the air time keeps spiraling in cost, with sponsors harder to find.

Perhaps the future will be less bleak. In the winter of 2007, by going on line to www.wcsn.com and paying a fee of $4.95 a month, you could watch World Cup races live on your computer monitor, with ex-racer and journalist Steve Porino calling the action. This the summer of 2008, WCSN, which stands for World Championships Sports Network, entered into a partnership with NBC Sports. The new enterprise will continue to offer subscribers live World Cup races via the Internet. To subscribe, go to www.universalsports.com.

For racing enthusiasts, WCSN’s partnership with NBC is a ray of hope. With NBC’s strengths, the enterprise is moving swiftly to multi-cast ski competition on channels in the largest metropolitan markets, like New York and Los Angeles. Consequently, as more channels open up, more and more skiers will be able to watch World Cup races – maybe even the 2009 World Alpine Ski Championships at Val d’Isere – live on home television at no extra cost. The shows would be sponsored.

*            *              *

In Aspen, the 2005 Winter X Games attracted 68,000 spectators. Four months earlier, about 3,500 people had shown up over three days to watch World Cup alpine races. The contrast was astonishing and, for some, saddening. Fifty-five years after Aspen hosted the first World Alpine Ski Championships ever held in the Western hemisphere, traditional alpine racing was unable to attract a large crowd of spectators, or viewers in sufficient numbers to make it profitable to show on television.

The author is grateful to Lisa Feinberg Densmore, Steve Porino, Christin Cooper, Greg Lewis, Joe Jay Jalbert, Tom Kelly and others for their help in researching this article. A history of ski film-making and television is in John Fry’s The Story of Modern Skiing. Signed copies of the book are available by calling 914.232.5516.