Where are they now?

His Olympic gold was only the beginning. The triumphant, sometimes tumultuous professional and personal life of the 1960 Olympic downhill gold medalist, technique analyst, resort developer, and entrepreneur of eyeglass fame. By Alain Lazard

Today in the Haute Savoie of the French Alps quietly lives Jean Vuarnet, 83, captor of the first Olympic medal ever won on non-wooden skis. Vuarnet’s downhill victory at the Squaw Valley Winter Games signaled the start of the most productive decade for the great French national ski team of the 1960s. At the time of the Games, Vuarnet had already begun to co-author, with Georges Joubert, a best-selling series of influential ski technique books. In the period 1968–1975, he directed major changes in both the Italian and French national ski teams. He spearheaded the development of France’s first car-free ski resort, and then launched an eponymous and très chic line of sunglasses, marketed worldwide. Later in life, he experienced a strange twist of events that had their beginning almost 50 years earlier.

Vuarnet is dividing his time these days between the ski town of Morzine, where he was born, and Sallanches, gateway to the Mont Blanc region, where he resides in a boutique retirement home with two other residents, and his lively companion Hifi, a King Charles Spaniel. Sallanches is where the Dynastar ski company has long been headquartered. Last year, Vuarnet—just as he was recovering from hip replacement surgery—suffered a stroke. Despite this double blow, he’s determined to rebound from the ordeal.

From Law School to the Winter Games
Jean Vuarnet was born on January 18, 1933 in Tunisia, where his father, Dr. Victor Vuarnet, had recently established a medical practice. Originally from Savoie, Dr. Vuarnet soon changed his mind about life in North Africa. He returned with his family to the French Alps in 1934, settling in Morzine, one of few established French ski resorts before World War II.

Little Jean began to ski when he was two-and-a-half years old. When his father bought him his first pair of skis, he threw a fit because he thought they were too short. It was an early indication of his penchant for going straight downhill rather than wasting time with turns.

He was known by everyone in the village as Jean-Jean, the son of Dr. Vuarnet. Like the other kids, he skied and ice-skated whenever possible. He also introduced skijoring to the valley by attaching a harness to Toto, a dog that belonged to his childhood friend Roger Vadim. (Vadim went on to become a movie director and the husband, at various times, of Brigitte Bardot and Jane Fonda.)

When he finished grammar school at age 11, his father sent him to a private boarding school in Paris. He was expected to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a physician. Dr. Vuarnet exerted an overwhelming influence over his son. He encouraged Jean to pursue excellence in sports, but not to the detriment of his education. The elder Vuarnet had achieved this balance himself by attending medical school while playing soccer at an elite level, including his selection to the French national team for the 1936 Summer Games.

Vuarnet’s mother, overshadowed by Victor, had a lesser influence on him. The couple divorced when Jean was 10. His father remarried quickly, but as soon as Jean began to bond with his stepmother, his father divorced and remarried again.

As a high school student in Lyon and Annemasse, Vuarnet skied mostly during the holidays, dabbled in jumping, and became a competitive swimmer. After graduation, he decided to give ski racing a serious shot while earning a college degree. He enrolled as a law student at the University of Grenoble in 1952.

Around the same time, he became romantically involved with a young French-Canadian woman who, after she discovered she was pregnant, wrote a letter to Jean explaining the situation. The letter arrived at the Vuarnet home in Morzine. Dr. Vuarnet opened it, and then promptly decided not to reveal its contents to his son, who was away at college. Jean discovered nothing of what had happened. The girl returned to Montreal, presumably never to be seen again.

At law school, Jean joined the Grenoble University Club (GUC), where the ski program had recently been taken over by a PE teacher named Georges Joubert. It was a remarkable winter. At the French University Games, Vuarnet won the 1952 national titles in downhill, slalom and combined. He also picked up a lasting reputation as a “city racer” from his future colleagues on the French national team, mountain boys who at the time seldom pursued education beyond the age of 13 or 14.

Schooled in cities, Vuarnet was only partly raised in a ski town. He never became a true “natural” skier by his own admission. To compensate, he observed and analyzed what the best skiers were doing. Olympic bronze and silver medalist Guy Périllat expressed it well in a 2002 interview in l’Équipe Magazine: “Jean wasn’t the most gifted among us, but he always scrutinized everything in depth.”

Vuarnet’s attitude was a perfect fit with what Georges Joubert was doing at the GUC. Their first book, Ski ABC: Technique Moderne, published in the fall of 1956, was praised by 1937 overall world champion of alpine skiing, Émile Allais, who contributed a preface. The purpose of the photos in Ski ABC was to demonstrate that the world’s best racers all used the same basic techniques. That opinion contradicted the narrow nationalism prevalent in ski technique at the time, when French, Austrians and Swiss each were claiming to have the superior method.

For more than a decade, Joubert and Vuarnet analyzed and explained what they observed in elite racers, codifying their findings in five books, translated into multiple languages, which influenced ski coaching and teaching around the world. Joubert tended to focus on turning technique, Vuarnet on speed. From their books emerged inventive technique terms, such as the Jet Turn, the Serpent, Avalement (swallowing terrain irregularities), and l’oeuf.

Vuarnet’s downhill research led him to an enhanced streamlining of the body, with feet farther apart for superior gliding. After he used it to win his Olympic downhill gold medal at Squaw Valley, American media called it the “egg,” which translates to French as l’oeuf. Actually, a cartoonist at the French sports daily l’Équipe, André Caza, in 1946 used the word “oeuf” in a comical way to describe the positions employed by cyclists and skiers to streamline themselves.

For Vuarnet, the correct stance was not natural. It required special physical conditioning to build the stamina necessary to hold the position for sustained periods of time. It combined the two necessities for reaching maximum speed in speed racing: a body profile offering minimal air resistance, and the ability to keep skis flat on the snow and properly loaded for the best possible gliding. The racer could employ it to gain time on the easier sections of downhill courses. Later, Honoré Bonnet, the iconic director of the French Ski Team, wanted to call the position “VJ” (Vuarnet Jean), but it was dropped for l’œuf, or aller tout schuss.

The Path to Olympic Gold
During the period leading up to the 1960 Winter Olympics, Vuarnet rose rapidly through the racing ranks, winning regional and national races and competing on the international circuit. He collected seven national titles in all three existing disciplines—downhill, slalom and giant slalom—from 1957 to 1959.

He made the cut to race the giant slalom and the downhill at the 1956 Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, only to discover at the last minute that his GS spot had been given to another team member. Angry, he declared publicly that James Couttet, the French team coach and 1938 world downhill champion, “…was a great racer but a mediocre coach.” The declaration made the front page of France Soir, a daily newspaper with a print run of 1.2 million copies. Vuarnet didn’t ski in the GS or in the downhill…and Couttet resigned.

At the 1958 World Championships in Bad Gastein, Vuarnet won a bronze medal in the downhill, then added three titles at the French National Championships. That year he married the attractive Edith Bonlieu.

Vuarnet’s new bride had experienced family misfortune. She had grown up among four siblings with three different fathers, without knowing her own. One brother was 1964 Olympic GS gold medalist “Le Petit Prince” François Bonlieu, who was killed tragically in 1973. Notwithstanding these challenges, Edith became a formidable racer in her own right, winning three national titles. A leg fracture prevented her from competing in the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics. She could console herself with the knowledge that, uniquely, she had a brother and husband who were both Olympic gold medalists. (Edith and Jean went on to have three children—Alain, b. 1962; Pierre, b. 1963; and Patrick, b. 1968.)

At the 1960 Winter Games at Squaw Valley, Vuarnet rode a pair of metallic Allais 60s made by Rossignol, designed in collaboration with Emile Allais. At the time, high-performance competition skis were still made of laminated wood. One of the drawbacks of the first metal skis produced was the lack of consistency between the skis in a pair. Vuarnet left France for the Olympics without a pair to his liking. Even with the best pair sent to Squaw Valley, only one ski performed well. He instructed Rossignol to make him a second ski similar to the one he liked… and he received it in California only days before the race! The skis were worth their weight in gold.

A New Life After Racing
On returning from Squaw Valley, Vuarnet was greeted at home by an overwhelming reception in Morzine. He was offered the position of Director of Morzine’s Office du Tourisme, in charge of promoting the resort. He started work immediately. Also, with the aid of ski journalist Serge Lang, he wrote a book, Notre Victoire Olympique. A new life, a new career had begun.

Pouilloux and another eyeglass manufacturer approached him with an offer to develop a new and stylish pair of sunglasses, called the Vuarnet. Sales were slow, but took off in the 1980s after the company was a sponsor of the 1984 Summer Games in Los Angeles, where it introduced its catchphrase, “It’s a Vuarnet Day, Today.” Newspapers compared owning a pair of Vuarnets to having an Hermès scarf. Celebrities Mick Jagger and Miles Davis wore Vuarnet glasses, as did world-class sailors and ski instructors at resorts like Cortina, Courchevel and Megève. Annual sales reached 1.4 million pairs worldwide and in the United States, Vuarnets surpassed Bausch & Lomb’s Ray-Bans for a few years in a row. France rewarded the success with the coveted Annual Export Award.

Creation of the Avoriaz Resort
Beginning in the 1960s, new ski-in, ski-out resorts were being developed in France—among them La Plagne, Tignes, Les Menuires, Flaine and Les Arcs. As head of Morzine’s Office du Tourisme, Vuarnet envisioned a grand project—the development on an adjacent plateau of a high-altitude, pedestrian resort.

“I convinced the municipality to imagine a brand new resort above Morzine,” Vuarnet recalls, “free of cars. It would be Avoriaz.” As the possessor of a law degree, an Olympic gold medal, and knowledge of skiing and the local terrain, Vuarnet was seen as having the assets necessary to launch such an ambitious venture. The municipality gave the project 200 acres of developable land for a base village. Avoriaz, the first no-car resort in France, opened in 1966. Later Vuarnet negotiated an agreement to connect Avoriaz to 11 adjacent resorts, including four in Switzerland. Les Portes du Soleil is now the second-largest complex of interconnected ski areas in the world.

Italian and French National Ski Teams
After the launching of Avoriaz, Vuarnet anticipated devoting more time to his growing family, with two boys and a third on the way. But another challenge arose: The president of the Italian Winter Sports Federation asked him to lead the country’s languishing alpine ski team, ranked 8th in the world. The losing status was unacceptable to the proud Italians, who still remembered the great period of Zeno Colò, 1950 world champion in giant slalom and downhill at Aspen and downhill gold medalist at the 1952 Olympic Games.

Vuarnet hesitated, but finally accepted the challenge, with the condition that he be given carte blanche to run the operation as he wished. He led the team from 1968 to 1972, blessed with the arrival of 18-year-old racer Gustavo Thoeni. Success followed. Before his tenure, the Italian alpine team in 17 years had scored only one podium in the classic races. A year after Vuarnet left the team, 1973, Italy had risen to second in the men’s Nations Cup standings, and a year later first, ahead of Austria. The exceptional team was nicknamed The Blue Avalanche. Between them, Thoeni and Piero Gros won the overall crystal globe, symbolic of the best alpine ski racer in the world, consecutively between 1971 and 1975.

In 1972, Vuarnet was petitioned to accept the vice presidency of the French Ski Federation, which perceived the national team to be in trouble. Against his better judgment, he accepted, with the condition that his friend and collaborator Georges Joubert be placed in charge of the team. Despite what the two men brought to the table—Vuarnet’s just-accomplished turnaround of the Italian team, and Joubert’s transformation of an insignificant university ski club into the number-one team in France—the new assignment quickly turned sour. Their reforms were derailed. The fusion of staff, racers and suppliers, which Vuarnet had been able to create in Italy, did not happen. The French Federation, supported by the government’s Secretary of State for Youth and Sports, decided to fire six top racers for intransigence. Joubert resigned.

The mountain community and 1968 Olympic triple gold medalist Jean-Claude Killy unconditionally supported the racers, leading to a split between Killy and Vuarnet that persists to this day. It’s a long, complicated and unpleasant story. (For one version of what happened, visit www.affairevaldisere.fr; a differing interpretation will appear in the July-August 2016 issue of Skiing History.)

Vuarnet quit after two years. By 1974, he had spent almost 15 years working nonstop since his gold-medal win at Squaw Valley, with little time for family life. Edith had borne the brunt of handling the house, running two ski shops in Avoriaz and raising three boys. The only time the family spent together was during extended summer vacations in the South of France, the Costa del Sol in Spain, and aboard Vuarnet’s sailboats, the Eileen and the Tahoe, a 64-foot custom-built schooner.

Vuarnet took advantage of this window of time to try his hand at a lifelong passion: books and reading. For a few years he launched and operated a publishing company, Les Éditions VUARNET, which handled titles as diverse as cinema, history, travel guides, sports and medicine. This semi-dilettante period didn’t last. In 1987, Vuarnet decided to capitalize on the strong brand recognition of his namesake sunglasses by launching a skiwear line with his son, Pierre. Subsequently created was Vuarnet International, which branched out into watches, sportswear, shoes, perfume, cosmetics, pens, luggage, leather goods, jewelry, ski underwear, helmets, ski poles and skis. The company came to oversee luxury Vuarnet shops in Brazil and France, and developed licensees with distribution in 30 different countries. Jean Vuarnet retired in 1998. His son Alain, who succeeded him, stepped down two years ago.

Family Tragedy
The years 1994 and 1995 were horrific ones for Vuarnet and his family. In October 1994, news emerged of a mass suicide in nearby Switzerland. The bodies of 53 members of an obscure apocalyptic cult, the Order of the Solar Temple, were found dead and partially burned. A few days later, two journalists showed up at the door of Vuarnet’s chalet in Morzine. From them Vuarnet learned that his wife Edith and Patrick, the youngest of his three sons, belonged to Solar Temple. Thankfully, they were not among the victims. But the family was devastated. Over the next year, they desperately tried to persuade mother and son to leave the sect.

The effort failed. On Christmas Day 1995, another 14 sect members were found in a remote area of the Vercors range near Grenoble, their bodies shot and partially burned. After a week of waiting, Jean learned that Edith and Patrick were among the dead. It was a terrible tragedy. Despite public outcry and civil lawsuits, a key cult leader—a Swiss musician and orchestra conductor—was inexplicably acquitted.

The funeral of Edith and Patrick in Morzine was a moving tribute to the Vuarnets from the local community and afar. Jean received hundreds of condolences from around the world. One was from a Montreal woman named Christiane. She reminded him that they had known one another in the early 1950s. By coincidence, Jean’s son Pierre was living with his Canadian wife and two children in Montreal at the time, so Jean decided to spend the 1996 Christmas holidays with them. While he was there he looked up Christiane. To his shock and surprise, she told him how she had moved to Canada and given birth to a lovely child, Catherine. In Montreal, for the first time, Vuarnet met his biological daughter, named Catherine.

Three years after re-connecting in Montreal, Jean and Christiane married. Over the next 13 years together, they divided their time between Morzine, the Baleares Islands (where Vuarnet moored his schooner, Tahoe), and a picturesque Cantons de l’Est village in Quebec, Knowlton, which happens to be the longtime home of Canadian two-event world champion Lucile Wheeler Vaughan—who had no idea another gold medalist was living nearby.

In 2012, Christiane died of a heart attack. After her passing, Vuarnet sought a place where he could spend the remainder of his years. He found a retirement home in Sallanches, then recently returned to his home town of Morzine.

Only a handful of French ski champions have accomplished so much after their successes on the slope—notably Émile Allais, Vuarnet, and Jean-Claude Killy. Vuarnet looks back at his career with pride and equanimity. Over his multi-faceted career, he made a good amount of money, “but money-making,” he says, “never drove the decisions that led to my successes.”

The author, the late Alain Lazard, was a longtime ISHA member and frequent Skiing History contributor. His most recent articles included “Rise and Fall of Racing Nations” (May-June 2015) and “Joe Marillac: The Little-Known Frenchman Who Helped Squaw Valley Win the Winter Olympics” (July-August 2013).

I know the small box it’s in, but right now, I couldn’t tell you which large box the small box is in.” Deb Armstrong is talking about her gold medal from the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo. “I could find it if someone wanted to see it,” she assures me. “It’s a ‘working’ medal.” 

The same could be said of its owner, who today, at 52, continues her quest to develop as a skier. In fact, she admits to being a little sensitive about being known 

as “Deb Armstrong, Olympic gold medalist.” “I didn’t ‘retire’ from skiing,” she explains. “I continue the pursuit of lifelong learning through the sport I love.” 

That pursuit has included a stint on the PSIA Demo Team and six years as alpine director for the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club, where this fall she saw the fruition of a four-year project she championed, the $2.5 million Stevens Family Alpine Venue. Located at the Steamboat Ski Resort, it’s a dedicated training and competition site for alpine, telemark and snowboard racers.

In her current position, leading the U-10 program for SSWSC, Armstrong finds her evolution as a skier more relevant than ever. “If you’re going to teach kids, they don’t care about a gold medal after five minutes. It’s fun. But it’s not enough.” 

The Storybook Career

Hugh and Dollie Armstrong raised their kids, Debbie and Olin, to love learning, the outdoors and all manner of recreation. Weekends were spent skiing and hiking in the mountains near their Seattle home, where Hugh was a clinical psychologist at the University of Washington and Dollie taught school. The kids’ first turns were at Alpental. Both took to racing there on weekends, while participating in multiple sports during the week. “I was too short for basketball,” explains Deb, though it didn’t stop her from playing for inner city Garfield High School. In skiing, however, her athleticism made her an exceptionally quick study. Even after missing two entire ski seasons at age 12–13, when the family moved to Malaysia, Deb shot up the junior ranks, winning her Junior Olympic competition by two seconds, and gaining the U.S. Ski Team’s attention. 

Her international ascent was similarly steep. “She was very fast, if she made it,” recalls Michel Rudigoz, head U.S. women’s coach at the time. “She could let ’em go!” Armstrong won her very first World Cup downhill training run, and within two years was in the World Cup downhill first seed.

Going into the 1984 Olympics, having just scored her first podium five weeks earlier (a super G bronze in Puy Saint Vincent, France), Armstrong’s star was on the rise. But she was hardly conspicuous amidst a dazzling roster of World Cup champs like Tamara McKinney, Christin Cooper, Cindy Nelson, Phil and Steve Mahre, and brash downhill sensation Bill Johnson (see page 33). Knowing Armstrong’s competitive nature, Rudigoz offered to make her a bet. Before he could make his wager for the DH race, she beat him to the punch: “Bet you $50 I medal in either event.” Determined to fully experience Olympic competition by staying in the moment and having fun, she nabbed gold in the GS, ahead of favorites Cooper and McKinney. Four years later, after six years on the World Cup and 18 top-ten finishes, Armstrong retired from the U.S. Ski Team, at age 24.

After her World Cup career, Armstrong hungrily immersed herself in academics—“I wanted to read books, write papers and fill in the gaps of what I’d missed while skiing”—and earned a history degree from the University of New Mexico. When the inevitable question of “What now?” surfaced, she listed priorities: The next chapter had to meet her intellectual need to teach, her physical need to be athletic, and her spiritual need to be in the mountains. “Those three things brought me right back to skiing,” says Armstrong. 

In 1995 she became a skiing ambassador at Taos, and often felt ill-equipped to answer the most technical ski questions from guests. To address that, she set about earning her PSIA level 1, 2 and 3 certifications, eventually landing a spot on the PSIA Demo Team. 

The Plot Twist

In the fall of 2004, Armstrong got bitten by a tick carrying the Borellia virus. “One weekend I rode my bike 200 miles and by Tuesday I was on life support,” she says. Suffering from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome (ARDS) and sepsis, she spent six days on a ventilator in a medically induced coma. Sidelined for the 2004–2005 ski season, she eventually recovered—but unusual symptoms lingered. “I smelled the drugs coming out of me for a year,” recalls Armstrong, who later wondered if she was “the same Deb.” (Studies show that one-third of people who survive an ICU experience suffer from PTSD.) 

In 2007, daughter Addy was born. Armstrong and her partner moved to Steamboat, where Deb took a position as Technical Director of the Ski and Snowboard School. Soon she was lured back into the racing world as Alpine Director of SSWSC. The job—working directly with athletes, parents and staff; managing schedules and programs; fundraising and working with the city and the ski area—was demanding. 

She started noticing behavioral changes, like agitation and irritability, confusion, trouble concentrating, and difficulty being with friends. At the same time, she also went through a separation. “Personally, I was barely making it,” she says. “I kept thinking that day-to-day life should not take this much energy.” A concussion in the fall of 2013 was the final straw. Even after the acute symptoms passed, she had to go home to rest at noon each day. That spring, after six years of running SSWSC, Armstrong stepped down. She restructured her job and her life, reducing stress where she could, but still not understanding her symptoms. 

The New Reality

Last spring, she finally connected with neurologists at Stanford University for an exam and MRI and then with Dr. Pamela Kinder at Blue Sky Neurology in Aurora, Colorado. Kinder suspected that Deb, like many athletes, was underreporting the head trauma she had suffered over the years. “Today we know that there can be significant and damaging injury with no loss of consciousness,” says Kinder. Deb recalled a head injury in 1980 at age 14, and another in 1995, but surely there were other crashes along the way, and more soccer-ball headers than she could possibly count. 

A SPECT scan revealed that Armstrong was suffering from the cumulative and long-term effects of Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), something much talked about in the NFL, but less acknowledged among ski athletes. Kinder credits Armstrong’s “Olympian brain”—especially adept at overcoming physical and emotional challenge—for the ability to maintain her previous immense work responsibilities while quietly coping with debilitating symptoms. 

For Armstrong the diagnosis was both liberating and validating. Managing her condition, which involves deficits in her short term and working memory, is something she had instinctively done by restructuring her life “and writing everything down.” Now, however, she can do it with more acceptance and understanding.  

Today the woman who dedicated her 40th year to “throwing helis” is in her element, pushing her skiing skills and working not only with the 80 young kids in her program but with their coaches and parents. She regularly makes and posts instructional videos, and leads clinics and conversations that foster technical development and a healthy culture and learning environment for the kids. She gets to work with Addy, who recently turned nine, and to spend her time figuring out how to best utilize Steamboat’s facilities to create a unique experience for eight- and nine-year-olds.

“Personally and professionally the job could not be a better fit,” she says. “I’m out all day, reaching people, teaching, guiding, helping. When not coaching, I am a 100 percent hermit in my house, feeding my introvert self.” 

Armstrong came away with an abiding sense of gratitude for being able to live without the stress of always rising to the occasion. “I can handle doing that some of the time,” she assures, “but not for everyday life.” 

From Jackson Hole to Alaska, the former Olympic downhill champ now makes a living as a mountain and river guide. By Edith Thys Morgan

Pictured above: Moe leads skiers through the Jackson Hole backcountry as a guide. Courtesy of Jackson Hole Mountain Resort.

At 8 a.m. on any given powder day in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, up to a dozen backcountry guides gather for their morning briefing to go over snow, weather and avalanche conditions. From there, they meet their clients on the deck of Nick Wilson’s Cowboy Café and hop on the early tram for a day of adventure on 4,000 vertical feet of skier heaven.

Among the guides is one especially boyish, perpetually grinning 44-year-old who looks more like a puppy straining at his leash than one of America’s most successful and steel-nerved downhill ski racers. If you want to feel what it’s like to play hard—to play like it’s your job, in fact—then let 1994 Olympic downhill champion Tommy Moe be your guide.

Known as “Moe Vibe” among his former teammates, Moe still exudes his famously mellow demeanor, though it masks a heavy metal heartbeat—the edgy tune that hums within every World Cup downhill racer, the riff that kicks in when making split-second decisions at 80 mph. It surely sparked when, heading into the 1994 Lillehammer Games, Moe was featured in Sports Illustrated as a poster child for the beleaguered U.S. Ski Team. SI referred to the team as “Uncle Sam’s lead-footed snowplow brigade,” and described Moe, participating in his second Olympics, as “no soaring success.” 

Indeed, Moe’s flight to the top was not direct. The Montana native’s early and spectacular promise was accompanied by youthful exuberance and experimentation that got him kicked out of two ski programs. His father collared him to work construction in chilly Dutch Harbor, Alaska, a stint that firmed up the younger Moe’s resolve to focus his efforts on skiing. 

After settling in at Glacier Creek Academy in Alyeska, Alaska, Moe glided through the youth ranks, capturing Junior Olympics titles. In 1989, he also triumphed at the Junior World Championships and U.S. Nationals. That same year, the late coach Dan Bean captured the magnitude of Moe’s potential at a U.S. Ski Team coaches meeting, when he asserted: “If we screw up Tommy Moe, we should all be shot.” 

And yet, by the early 1990s, Moe’s career had stalled. He had speed and looseness, but was missing discipline. With his big-mountain pedigree and laidback attitude, Moe might have been lured into the extreme skiing scene. But instead he chose the path of persistence, buckling down and focusing on refining his lower speed skills with the U.S. technical coach, Thor Kallerud. 

Picture to the left: Moe wearing his medals from the Sun Valley spring series, sometime in the mid-1980s. He rose quickly through the junior racing ranks. Photo courtesy of Megan Gerety.

Everything—skiing, equipment, experience, coaching and teammates— came together in 1994. Despite SI’s dire assessment, AJ Kitt, Kyle Rasmussen and Moe were quietly becoming a force. On the eve of the Olympic downhill, Moe, who was fourth in the final training run, privately decided to win a medal or go down trying. He focused on skiing the hill’s natural rhythm—that so suited his big mountain style—as perfectly and daringly as possible. “To this day when I watch the race, I was the guy who didn’t have that one mistake,” he says.

Not only did Moe win the most coveted and prestigious prize of the Winter Games (only the second American to do so, after Bill Johnson in 1984), but four days later, on his 24th birthday, he captured Super G silver and became the first American male skier to double up on medals in a single Games. Moe had the last laugh with SI, appearing on the cover with the headline, “Golden Boy.” 

Moe admits it was tough to stay motivated after Lillehammer, a challenge further complicated with a season-ending knee injury a year later. He retired at age 28 after the 1998 Nagano Olympics—where he placed 8th in Super G and 12th in downhill—with 12 years on the World Cup circuit and five U.S. National titles.

For better or worse, the trappings of fame did not snare Moe. For a brief time one could get caffeinated with a “Tommy Moecha” in Minnesota’s Mall of America. Within the ski industry, he cashed in on the requisite line of gold-medal endorsement deals, and he raced on Jeep’s King of the Mountain Tour for six years. But Moe, who barely overlapped with Bode Miller in 1998, just missed the catapult to mainstream fame ridden by later U.S. Ski Team stars like Miller, Lindsey Vonn, Ted Ligety and Mikaela Shiffrin. “I could have kept going until 2002 (and the Games in Salt Lake),” he says, “but I had achieved my goals and wanted to move on.”

That included business opportunities that leveraged his passion for outdoor adventure sports like kayaking, fishing and big mountain skiing. Along with partner Mike Overcast, Moe started his entrepreneurial career in 1992 by founding Class V Whitewater, a river guiding business that he parlayed into Chugach Powder Guides in 1997. Soon after, Moe realized he needed a home base in the Lower 48 and signed on as Jackson Hole’s Resort Ambassador in July of 1994, a role that has been a perfect fit for the affable, approachable, leave-your-ego-on-the-tram-dock Moe. 

In 2003, the same year he was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, Moe married fellow Alaskan, Olympian and downhill racer Megan Gerety. He and Gerety are “both pretty Type A,” he admits. During the winter, Tommy reports for duty at Jackson Hole and travels to ski events while Megan teaches fifth grade full time. Come springtime, Tommy shifts into gear for his Alaska season, based at the Tordrillo Mountain Lodge, which he co-owns. While Megan runs the show at home, Tommy guides 12 guests per week on skiing, fishing and the “Cast and Carve” and “Kings and Corn” fishing/heli-skiing adventures.

All the travel makes the summer downtime at home—with Megan and their two daughters, Taylor (6) and Taryn (4)—all the more precious. “It’s cool because it’s not all about us anymore,” says Moe. “It’s all about them.” In addition to mountain biking, paddleboarding and waterskiing, the family logs time outdoors camping, hiking and fishing. 

Moe relishes mixing work and play in his roles as guide, instructor or coach. “Choppers, trams or gondolas: I love it all,” he says. “Being in the mountains, skiing 100 plus days per year and having the life I enjoy...It’s a dream come true.”  

Many racers believe they need downsized, super-stiff, ultra-narrow boots. The most accomplished alpine ski boot designer of the plastic era, Sven Coomer, believes that’s changing. 

By Jackson Hogen
Photos by Sven Coomer

While there have been several seminal figures in the creation of the modern plastic ski boot, including Bob Lange, Hans Heierling, Mel Dalebout and brothers Chris and Denny Hanson, a case could be made that none has left as large a footprint as the puckish Australian, Sven Coomer. Over the course of a career that began when he competed in the modern pentathlon at the 1956 Summer Olympics in Melbourne at the age of 16, the autodidact Coomer studied the foot and its function in a variety of athletic environments. From his first contract with Puma in 1965 to his recent work with Atomic, Coomer has left a trail of innovations, many of which enjoy a considerable market presence today. From his home base in Aspen, Colorado, where he has lived since 1997, the last ten years with wife Mary Dominick, Coomer continues to contribute to various boot development projects. 

Above: The Astral Slalom and Racer (1971) became best-sellers, launching the craft of ski-shop custom fitting.

One of Coomer’s designs, the Nordica Comp-3, was the inspiration for the external tongue originally licensed to Raichle and sold by the Swiss brand as the Flexon series. This three-piece shell design still exists intact in the Full Tilt collection, and its imprint is all over the mainstays in Dalbello’s current line. Coomer’s work in the field of molded athletic orthotics, first marketed under the Superfeet brand, virtually created the custom insole category that he still competes in with his unique Down Unders line. 

The groundbreaking models Coomer helped develop for Nordica in the late 1960s began with the one-piece Olympic, followed by the two-piece Astral Racer and Slalom, also known as the benchmark “banana” boots. The Olympic was the first ski boot with a removable liner, a breakthrough that enabled inner boot customization. Then came the iconic Grand Prix and GT, a suite of successes that put the erstwhile middle-of-the-pack leather boot brand on the path to market dominance in the dawning era of plastics. Modern ski boots don’t just echo these designs; they’re based on them. When Coomer claims, “These boots established the fundamental technology and functional design criteria that remains standard in every ski boot today,” he’s not exaggerating. 

Coomer’s influence isn’t limited to the impact of his legacy. A recent collaboration with Atomic resulted in the patented Hawx series of non-race boots that has become the world’s biggest seller, followed up by a reconceived race boot, the Redster. 

AN OLYMPIC PENTATHLETE LEARNS TO SKI IN SWEDEN

Born in Sydney in 1940 to a Swedish mother and Australian father, Coomer soon became deeply involved in multiple athletic pursuits, including swimming and his particular passion, modern pentathlon. His precocious talents earned him a spot in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, for which he felt well prepared. Disaster struck when Coomer was knocked unconscious and hospitalized after a tree separated him from his mount during the cross-country event. Coomer wasn’t about to miss the next four days of competition, so despite bruises that covered half his body, he slipped out of the hospital before dawn and limped back to team headquarters. He ended up 32nd out of 40 entries, a remarkable achievement considering his condition. 

The International Pentathlon Union Secretary General Willi Grut, the 1948 Olympic gold medalist in modern pentathlon, tried to convince Coomer to compete for Sweden, the world leaders in the sport. After finishing high school, Coomer worked his way to Sweden on a merchant ship so he could continue his specialized training while studying mechanical engineering at Stockholm’s Tekniska Institut with an eye towards a career in product design. Impressive competition results had Coomer on track to compete for his native country for the 1960 Rome Games when Australian authorities informed him that he would have to return home to train. Since competing for Sweden was no longer a viable option and as there wasn’t time to find work on a merchant ship for the six- to eight-week trip back to Australia, Coomer was out of luck. “So I gave up on that idea, for the time being,” says Coomer with just a trace of resignation. 

To help take his protégé’s mind off his disappointment, Grut suggested Coomer come up to his cabin in Åre over spring break and learn to alpine ski. “I was instantly smitten with skiing, the new challenge and the possibility of competing in winter pentathlon (giant slalom, cross country, shooting, fencing and riding). When I returned to Stockholm I was determined to finish school, catch a merchant ship back to Sydney, get a job in a ski area and train to be a serious skier.” 

While he never competed in winter pentathlon, Coomer did become proficient enough to train at the national ski team level, which he did with both French and Swiss team members. He counted among his friends Jean-Claude Killy, François Bonlieu, Emile Allais and Leo Lacroix. He frequently cut first tracks with Junior Bounous in Utah and coached the McKinney kids when he ran the ski school at Mt. Rose, Nevada. 

Back in Stockholm, Coomer submitted his ideas on improved track and field shoe design to an influential sports shop that put him in touch with Puma. At the conclusion of a 1965 ski expedition across the Alps from Innsbruck to Grenoble, Coomer was invited to Puma’s factory for a five-day meeting about applying emerging technologies of performance footwear to artificial track surfaces. Coomer’s interest in product development had borne its first fruits.

Each of the next four winters were spent running ski schools, beginning with the PSIA experimental ski school in Solitude, Utah. This position was followed by three years at Mt. Rose and contiguous Slide Mountain near Lake Tahoe. The seasons culminated each spring in a six-week ski test with SKIING magazine editor Doug Pfeiffer at Mammoth Mountain. “It was the first magazine ski testing program,” Coomer recalls. “We’d spend April and May testing and go retreat to New York to write about the skis and ski technique.” 

LEAP FROM LEATHER TO PLASTIC

In turn, the Nordica Comp-3 led to the Raichle Flexon, a favorite of downhillers, mogul and extreme skiers. This photo shows how the boot’s parts evolved.

In 1968, Norm MacCleod from Beconta, distributor of both Puma and Nordica, came to observe the ski tests. MacCleod was sufficiently impressed with Coomer’s ideas about boot and ski design that he invited Coomer down to San Francisco for an interview, which led to Coomer’s signing on with Nordica the following year. Initially MacCleod would carry or mail Coomer’s detailed designs to Italy until Nordica, eager to move ahead quickly, proposed he move there and oversee developments directly in the factory, instead of by correspondence.

When Coomer began with Nordica, the transition from leather to plastic boots was stalled in its infancy. Many racers preferred the close fit of leather, as the first plastic boots were often shapeless inside. Nordica’s initial effort at a plastic shell Coomer describes as “miserably unwearable, really awful.” The first task was to make the best possible leather boot based on all the custom models he designed from each U.S. Ski Team member’s input and then consolidating all the versions into one model, the Sapporo. The Sapporo—worn by Paquito Ochoa when he won slalom gold at the Games for which the boot was named—would serve as the foundation for the first plastic boot that would be anatomically accurate and would take full advantage of all the new materials had to offer, delivering both comfort and performance without compromising either. 

While assembling a wish list for the ideal plastic boot, Coomer delineated, “173 criteria and details that had to be attended to for every model in every size, so it would function correctly,” he recalls. “The key was how to stabilize the foot and lower leg, fore and aft, for a balanced stance and flex. Until that time boots were very low, just over the ankle high, and scary as hell going fast. As we built up the boots, front and back, we called the extensions ‘spoilers’ because they were so effective at helping retain balance, stability and leverage that they spoiled you.”

In 1973, during his tenure at Nordica, Coomer attended an Athlete’s Overuse Syndrome seminar in San Francisco. There he met Dr. Chris Smith, a lecturer in biomechanics at the California College of Podiatry, and Dennis Brown, owner of Northwest Podiatric Labs. Together they would forge Superfeet, presenting their proprietary ideas to leading ski dealers in 1976. Their custom-molded insoles, vacuum-cast in plaster, found a fast following; however, the 3/4-length orthotics were made of hard plastic or fiberglass and took weeks to get back from the lab. Coomer continued tinkering, looking for a better solution that could be molded in situ using a similar process as the vacuum plaster casting. At a trade show in 1979, Coomer found the plaster substitute he’d been searching for the: Birkenstock cork in sheet form. The on-the-spot cork Skithotic was born. 

Meanwhile, by the late 1970s Coomer’s R&D position at Nordica had become untenable after Mariano Sartor was brought in from Caber to run the rapidly expanding design department. Sartor was a skilled draftsman but not a skier, and he succumbed to the pressures of a marketing department who declared four-buckle boots passé and one- and two-buckle boots the future. “It began the Dark Ages of boot design,” Coomer laments, “and it lasted until the mid-1990s.” Nordica ditched the functional design principles that had guided Coomer’s work. His final project, in 1976, the three-piece Comp-3, was the first plastic boot to feature a supportive, lace-up inner boot. 

Coomer quit Nordica to further advance the three-piece shell concept, molding samples with the intent of interesting a boot manufacturer in licensing the innovative boot design. The partner he recruited to sell the concept eventually shut Coomer out of the deal “when he realized he had all he needed and it ended up licensed to Raichle. So 1978 became the year to move on.”

FOCUSING ON R&D AT FOOTLOOSE

The Koflach Super Comp (1983) introduced the power strap. The DH version, left, used a leather cuff because downhill racers of the period found it gave smoother ankle articulation in absorbing bumps at high speed.

He relocated his family (first wife Kathleen, daughter Robin, now 38, and son Seth, 36) from San Francisco to Mammoth to concentrate on perfecting Superfeet orthotics and shell modification technology. His tiny on-slope testing and R&D facility was “an instant success” leading to the creation of Footloose Sports, a specialty ski shop that continues to be rated among the best in the country. Coomer’s partner, Tony Colasardo, still a hands-on co-owner, concentrated on the retail operation, allowing Coomer to continue to work in the R&D arena. Coomer sold his interest in Footloose to Corty Lawrence, Andrea Mead’s son, in 1995.

Following a successful product overhaul at Koflach, Coomer found an outlet for his Mammoth research into custom-fit concepts in his next consulting relationship, with San Marco and Munari, brands made at the Brixia factory in Montebelluna, Italy. 

It was while working with Munari on a new rear-entry model and subsequently on an overlap boot design that used all 173 of Coomer’s design criteria, that he began perfecting and producing his patented silicone-injection liners with Brixia’s encouragement. When the Silicone Personalization System (SPS) was introduced to Swiss dealers by their local Head distributor, the rebound in San Marco sales was so sensational that Head bought the brand new Brixia boot factory and marketed SPS internationally under the Head brand. 

Coomer continued to produce his silicone liners under his own ZIPFIT brand (for Zero Injection Pressure Fitting), while pursuing a new objective: eliminating all mixing and injecting of volatile chemicals. The latest result of his pursuit of perfection is “a pre-packed dynamic-response fit system that fits by actively molding a granular cork and proprietary clay-like composite according to the skier’s personal dynamic anatomy. The formula cannot catalyze, harden, pack-out or droop, and can be effectively refitted perfectly every day, rather than the familiar progressive deterioration, and it’s durable enough to last a thousand days, or longer than your shells.” 

To assist the daily fitting process, Coomer created the Hot Gear Bag, a clever accessory that heats boots and other ski paraphernalia. The bag warms both shells and liners to an optimum temperature so the skier can slip easily into any boot. It’s been an essential accessory among the World Cup racers for a decade. 

While there isn’t an overlap or three-piece shell made today that doesn’t owe some debt to Coomer’s trailblazing designs, the current Atomic collection has his fingerprints all over it. The Hawx series evolved from concepts developed in partnership with Hans-Martin Heierling and drafted by the Claudio Franco design studio in Montebelluna. The Redster race boot concentrates on stabilizing the rear foot with an ultra-solid spoiler so the skier’s forefoot is allowed to flex and move naturally within the confines of the shell. This liberation of the previously stunted, frozen and crushed forefoot is what allows for the subtle edging and foot steering that initiates the slalom turns of World Cup champions Marcel Hirscher and Mikaela Shiffrin. Coomer suspects that if racers would only fit their boots more accurately, coupled with a dynamic molding inner boot medium between the foot and shell, and without down-sizing into short, narrow, thick-sidewall shells, their results just might improve. 

But then, Coomer, the Cassandra of the ski boot world for the last forty-five years, knows all too well that just because you can prove you’re right, doesn’t mean your advice will be heeded.  

Jackson Hogen is the editor of realskiers.com and co-author of Snowbird Secrets: A Guide to Big Mountain Skiing. His career includes stints as a ski designer, binding and boot product manager, freestyle competitor, ski instructor, marketing director, ski tester for 25 years and boot tester for 20. As a freelancer writer over the past four decades, he has regularly contributed articles to magazines including SKI, Daily Mail Ski, Snow Country and Skiing History.

Are today’s boots really any better? In a November 2014 editorial on RealSkiers.com, author Jackson Hogen observes that alpine ski boots haven’t evolved much in the past 25 years. To read the article, click here.

Former World Cup superstars and siblings Andreas and Hanni Wenzel have found post-racing success in the business world.

By Edith Thys Morgan

Weg vom Computer raus in den Schnee.” That motto, which urges kids to get away from their computers and out in the snow, is what drives Andreas Wenzel. And it has him driving a lot. In addition to his duties as President of the Liechtenstein Ski Federation, Wenzel is Secretary General of the four-year-old European Ski Federation, an organization of 11 European national ski federations united to grow, promote and improve snowsports in Europe. Wenzel leads the charge on SNOWstar, a series of competitions that combine elements of alpine racing, freestyle and skicross and takes place at partner venues throughout Europe. We’re talking while he drives to Bolzano, Italy, for a symposium on tourism and kids. “It’s not boring,” he says of the constant travel throughout the Alps. “The only thing is the traffic!”

As comfortable as he is on the road and getting things done, Wenzel, half of the brother/sister combo that turned tiny Liechtenstein into a skiing powerhouse in the 1970s and ’80s, much prefers being active in the great outdoors. His connection to nature can be traced to his father, Hubert, a passionate mountaineer and world university champion in the alpine/nordic/jumping combined.

Hubert was among the millions of East Germans who fled west in the early 1950s. He left on bicycle with no money, headed for Munich to study forest engineering. There he met and married Hannelore, a Bavarian shot-put athlete. In 1955, Hubert set out to tour the Alps by bicycle, and after an accident in Switzerland walked 50 kilometers with his bike until he found a shop in Liechtenstein that could fix it. While earning the money for the repairs, he learned that his skills in both engineering and avalanche protection were much in demand in the 62-square-mile country comprised mostly of steep terrain. In 1958, the Wenzels moved to Liechtenstein, with one-year-old Hanni and four-month-old Andreas.

Hubert passed his love of the outdoors to his four children—Hanni, Andreas, Petra and Monica—and instructed them to spend every spare moment being active in the mountains. “We were educated to compete,” Andi explains. “That is not always good from a pedagogical side,” he says with laugh that hints at an intensely competitive household. (Younger sister Petra was 4th in GS in the 1982 Worlds.) The emphasis, however, was always on enjoying the mountains. “As a kid I was out in nature full power,” he recalls. “I was a lousy runner around a track but get me into the mountains and watch out!” The siblings’ ski racing talents grew and in 1974, 17-year-old Hanni, racing for West Germany, won the world championship in slalom.  The family was granted citizenship in Liechtenstein and in 1976 Team Liechtenstein (including the three Wenzel siblings, in addition to Paul and Willy Frommelt and Ursula Konzett) integrated for training with the Swiss Ski Team.

Andreas attended Austria’s famed Stams ski academy, competing in his first Olympics in 1976, at age 17.  In those Innsbruck Games, Hanni won Liechtenstein’s first Olympic medal, a bronze in the GS, and two years later Andreas earned his own world title in GS. But it was at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics where Hanni and Andreas stole the show in their iconic white and yellow suits, producing four medals (and the first gold) for Liechtenstein. Hanni won a gold medal in both slalom and giant slalom, and a silver medal in downhill, while Andreas nabbed the silver in GS, bested only by Ingemar Stenmark and one of his signature second-run comebacks. The siblings crowned that season by each winning the overall World Cup title.

Hanni competed another four years, but along with Ingemar Stenmark was banned from the 1984 Olympics for her semi-professional status. She retired after the 1984 season, with 33 World Cup wins and two overall World Cup titles. Andreas retired in 1988 after his fourth Olympics, with 14 World Cup wins in all disciplines but downhill. Upon retiring, Andreas immediately dove into work, as racing director for Atomic. After four years there he switched to sports marketing, and was instrumental in bringing the first European sponsors (like Warsteiner beer) to North American ski races. Ten years later, he shifted gears again, becoming a tourism consultant. Then, in 2006, he was asked to become president of the Liechtenstein Ski Federation, and found himself back in the ski racing game.

The Liechtenstein Federation includes nine Skiclubs that teach kids until they are 10 years old. After that, the best qualify for the U12, U14 and U16 programs. The federation has 40 nordic, alpine and biathlon athletes and 11 trainers, but as ever, cooperates with other small nations to provide the best possible training framework. For example, Tina Weirather (daughter of Hanni and Austrian downhill great Harti Weirather, and a star on the current World Cup) races for Liechtenstein, but attended Stams and is now fully integrated on the Swiss team.

It is Wenzel’s work with ESF that keeps him on the road, and brings all of his athletic and business experience together with his passion for growing the sport. In Europe as in this country, kids are spending more time in front of screens and social media, and less time outdoors. “In Europe, we have seventy million people living close to the mountains. We want to get them in the sport and keep them in the sport while developing skills. And having fun is most important!” The SNOWstar events in particular—ten qualifying events and a European final—are aimed at doing just that in a safe environment for kids aged 10 to 16.

The events do not involve multiple sets of skis or race suits and are not set on an icy track. Rather, they are on less-harsh “Playground Snow” (a permanent infrastructure at the resorts, similar to a terrain park), studded with built-in features that demand athleticism while keeping the events lower in speed and higher on fun. Wenzel, known by fellow competitors for his intensity as well as his likeability, thinks kids should back off on ski racing’s regimented rigidity. “If you have to use a measuring tape to set GS for kids, something is not right,” he says. Instead, the courses are set in harmony with the natural terrain, teaching kids how to react and move. “Every day, conditions are different. It’s not just about making a fast turn, though that is important. It is about judgment.”

Wenzel reflects on his own upbringing, and on his father’s melding of nature and training in a competitive atmosphere, when he looks at what he hopes the SNOWstar events will help cultivate in kids. “Kids need to learn intuition, which is not something you can learn in a book,” he says. Intuition is what you do when you don’t have time to think, when you come around a corner fast and have to react to whatever is in your path. “More intuition, less thinking,” he explains. “You have to move with fluidity. Those who panic later rather than earlier are going to win the race.”

Wenzel’s drive to create more opportunities for kids outside the traditional ski racing pedigree is personal. “You know, the raw diamonds come not so much from the Gstaad’s and St Moritz’s. They come from tiny villages,” he says. And even, perhaps, tiny countries.  

He created the first mass-produced fiberglass cross country ski, and the biggest ski factory in Colorado.

By Seth Masia

Today, John Lovett leads a company that makes scientific instruments used to monitor the earth’s atmosphere. But his career began in high school, when he designed a pair of cross-country skis.

Lovett was a student at the Colorado Rocky Mountain School, a private boarding school where kids prep for college while engaged in the great outdoors. Roger Paris, the school’s French teacher, was also a six-time world champion kayaker, and his real vocation was to teach whitewater sports. He taught his students to build their own boats, with fiberglass.

In 1966, at 15, Lovett used the school’s kayak workshop to build a pair of cross-country skis, laminating a maple core with fiberglass. He now thinks this may have been the first pair of glass XC skis in the world. He made 15 more pairs and sold them to his classmates at $10 a pair. He experimented with the core thickness to get the flex just right, working to duplicate the spring and kick of a good wooden Norwegian ski.

“I was skiing in the backcountry a lot, and our 55-millimeter wooden cross-country skis would often break,” he says. “I just wanted something that wouldn’t break.” The design he settled on was 55 millimeters at the waist, with little or no sidecut, and a maple or birch veneer laminated to the base to take pine tar and wax.

Lovett graduated from CRMS in 1969 and moved to Boulder to attend the University of Colorado. But what he really wanted was a job making skis at the Lange/Dynamic factory in Broomfield. He talked to Wells Lange and Ian Ferguson, and wound up with a job in the ski-repair department working with Ken Harrell. 

When Harrell moved to A&T to work with Dynastar, Lovett went along. He continued to build glass cross-country skis in his spare time. Lange engineer Lew Greenberg joined the Lovett Ski Co. as a partner in 1971, but they couldn’t agree on production issues.

A&T wanted to distribute the ski. They loaned Lovett $54,000 to start and operate the business. He borrowed more money from his grandmother, and bought Greenberg out. Then he built a factory on Central Avenue on the east side of Boulder. By 1976, Lovett was selling 70,000 pairs a year of foam-core Lovett cross-country skis, private-label skis, and alpine skis—more than Head made at its factory in North Boulder. Lovett was 25 years old.

Lovett had invented a cheaper way to make a torsion-box ski. Instead of using an expensive milled cavity mold, as Dynamic, Lange, Head and K2 did, he figured out that anodized aluminum angle, riveted to an aluminum sheet, would hold the materials accurately in the InterMontana presses. For a machinist, he hired a smart Kansas farmboy named Lyle Felbush who could build anything. Lovett could whip out a new mold set in a few days, for about $200.

By 1973, Lovett was selling the first steel-edged XC ski with a polyethylene base—in effect, the first of the “norpine” skis on which the modern telemark movement would emerge. The cross-country market was new and growing, but sales didn’t match the production capacity. So he used the base-and-edge capability to build an alpine ski for kids, which A&T sold as the Hummer. He took orders for private-label skis from Gart Bros., then for other retailers. With his inexpensive tooling, he could charge a modest fee for design and engineering and then crank out a few thousand pairs of skis under a customer’s brand.

In 1974, Bob Burns lost his job as a sales rep at K2. In the fall, he drove down from Sun Valley in his Jaguar and asked Lovett to build him an alpine ski to sell. Lovett worked around the clock with his assistant, Laura Clevett. They took an old 207-centimeter Dynamic and made the sidecut deeper, then made a mold from tooling resin. They designed the construction  around a Dynastar-style omega foam core, making it torsionally stiff with a soft flex pattern for bump skiing. “We made two pair and they looked like hell,” Lovett recalls. “We molded the first pair in a cross-country press, so it had double camber—a lousy line for an alpine ski. But Burns went to Vail to show them off and they worked just great.”

A ski company was born, as a partnership between Lovett and Burns and half a dozen investors in Sun Valley, Vail and Aspen. Lovett designed and built the skis and Burns sold them. Burns told his friends he was making the skis in his garage in Sun Valley, and Lovett kept air-freighting two or three pairs at a time to Friedman Field from Stapleton Airport.

The new skis still had no paint, nor even a name. In Sun Valley, people called it “Burnsy’s ski.” Burns claimed the ski used a woven sagebrush core. Eventually, after a disagreement  over the graphics, they settled on big squares of primary colors and called it The Ski.

Lovett brought in his brother Kevin to set up a manufacturing facility in Ogden, Utah after the first winter. Mike Brunetto joined up to help manage the factory. Burns was a genius marketer and sales boomed. Burns insisted that the skis were made in Sun Valley, and kept the real source of the design secret.

The relationship didn’t last. In 1977 Lovett sold his half of the company to Burns, and Brunetto took over The Ski factory in Ogden.

In 1977, Lovett and Ken Harrell made about 100 pairs of Lovett alpine skis, but that energy was blunted when A&T couldn’t keep pace financially with the growth of production. The factory needed more capacity, and the distributor couldn’t swing it. In 1978, Lovett approached Al McDonough of Eastern Mountain Sports, the biggest U.S. retailer of cross-country skis. Within two weeks, EMS agreed to buy the factory.

Lovett walked away from the ski industry. He worked with Robert Redford for a couple of years. He took over the Frank Shorter line of running gear and staged a turnaround. During the 1980s, he did product development consulting for a number of companies. In 1987, he took over management of Allied Marine in Miami, Florida, and turned it into the world’s largest dealership of Hatteras yachts. In 1992, he put together a partnership to pioneer computerized high-frequency stock trading. After 1997, he settled in Edwards, Colorado for a few years, working on some “new urbanism” real estate developments.

In 2007, Lovett returned to Boulder as CEO of a company he’d invested in. Droplet Measurement Technologies makes high-precision instruments for atmospheric studies. The instruments are used by NASA, NOAA and other leading research organizations worldwide, for pollution studies, climate and rainfall research, weather modification studies, and aircraft icing certification.

And he skis a lot. “Those early years in the ski industry were the best time,” Lovett says now.  “Maybe everyone feels this way about the beginning of a career, but that era brought the most interesting challenges and the chance to work with the most stimulating people.  It was a golden time.”