Biography

 Justice Served: Jim Thorpe’s 1912 Gold Medals Restored

In my article “Pro vs. Am” (July-August 2022), I discussed the historic conflict between the concepts of amateurism and professionalism in skiing and Olympic sports. The most tragic victim of this conflict was Jim Thorpe, who won two gold medals in the 1912 Olympic Games in the decathlon and pentathlon, two of the most difficult of all sporting events. 

Thorpe dominated the 1912 Olympic Games, with Swedish King Gustav V telling him at the medal ceremonies, “Sir, you are the greatest athlete in the world.” However, Thorpe had earned $25 a week while playing semi-professional baseball before his Olympic career, and in 1913, he was stripped of both medals by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) under the era’s strict rules governing amateurism. Historians consider this action to be a combination of racism against Thorpe, who was Native American, and a rigid adherence to the idea of amateurism. 

In 1982, the IOC partially restored Thorpe’s 1912 successes by declaring him co-winner of the two medals. But that partial victory is now complete. In July, the IOC announced that Thorpe is now officially recognized as the sole winner of the decathlon and pentathlon at the 1912 Stockholm Games, while the two athletes who received the medals after they were stripped from Thorpe will be recognized as co-silver medalists of their events. When Thorpe died in 1953, the New York Times called him “probably the greatest natural athlete the world had seen in modern times.”

John W. Lundin
Seattle, Washington

Amateur Athletes? Hardly

John Lundin (“Pro vs. Am,” July-August 2022) is right to point out Avery Brundage’s hypocritical stands on amateurism in Olympic competition. But Brundage’s hypocrisy went beyond the unfortunate examples Lundin cites. Even though most Soviet Union and Soviet Bloc Olympians (and other top athletes) were supported by their governments, Brundage saw no problem in their participation in the Olympics. The value of that government support far exceeded the value of prizes or endorsements that led Brundage to disqualify famous athletes such as Karl Schranz. Athletes from the Soviet Union and the states it dominated were often paid by the military or other state institutions without having to do much other than train and compete. Some amateurs!

Ivo Krupka
Former President
Canadian Ski Hall of Fame and Museum
Ottawa, Canad

T-Bar Timeline

I have a correction to make about the Sugarloaf poster in the “Many Gems at Swann’s Winter Auction” (May-June 2022). Those are all T-bars, not chairlifts, on the poster. The poster was created later than 1955. The lower of the tandem T-bars was built in the summer of 1956; the upper T-bar was built the next summer. The lower left T-bar was built later. 

Jean Luce
Carrabassett Valley, Maine

Correction

Due to an editing error, we reported in the July-August issue that Hedda Bernsten and her husband, Tyler Conrad, spend summers in New England. In fact, they live near the ski resort of Hemsedal, Norway, in the winter and in coastal Tønsberg, in the summer.

For obituaries, go to Lives.

With medals in three different disciplines and a Ph.D., this multi-tasker is on her way to doing it all.

Within 13 years, Hedda Berntsen won a World Championship in telemark skiing, a World Championship bronze in slalom and an Olympic silver in skicross. That puts her in the versatility Hall of Fame along with Birger Ruud (won jumping gold, and the downhill half of Alpine combined, in the same Olympics) and Ester Ledecká (gold in super G and snowboarding). Now, at age 46, she owns a Ph.D. in sports psychology and still podiums in FIS races.

Photo above: Multi-discipline medalist Berntsen freeriding in Hemsedal, Norway. Tyler Conrad photo.

Berntsen lives with her husband, Tyler Conrad, near the ski resort of Hemsedal, Norway, in the winter and in coastal Tønsberg, in the summer. Conrad was a Middlebury ski teammate and baseball pitching ace who still holds the school’s strikeout record (177). Berntsen is an associate professor of performance psychology at the University of South-Eastern Norway and has hardly retired from competition. In March 2022, at age 45, she finished third and fourth in back-to-back FIS slaloms. Not Masters. She beat kids born in this century–26 years younger than herself. She raced recently on her 46th birthday, in April.

“I don’t like giving up, you know?” Berntsen says. “I’m still really having fun working on the slalom technique.”

Her current obsession is skateboarding. For the X Games? Nah. She already has two silver medals in skicross from the Winter X Games. She also owns national championship medals in moguls, downhill skiing, youth ski jumping and wakeboarding. She’s written four books and finished her Ph.D. in 2019. What hasn’t Berntsen done?

“Figure skating!” she says. Her bucket list also includes ice cross (roller derby on hockey skates down a luge-like chute); wing foiling (surfing on a hydrofoil stilt, pulled by a kite wing); freestyle dance (Flashdance and gymnastics, on crack); and tumbling (successive flips on a 25-meter sprung track).

More than that, Berntsen says, “I’ve always wanted to be a really great surfer. I have a lot of passions and interests, and I want to do it all. Obviously, you have to make choices and that’s not my strength. It’s the same in my academic career. I would like to learn design, psychology, motivation, teaching.”

But how many people from a small fishing village on the Oslofjord actually pursue and excel internationally at most of their dreams?

Growing up in Filtvet with two siblings, Berntsen challenged herself all the time. Her father, Dag, had been a Nordic skier at Middlebury. Her mother, Marte, was an avid skier. When Berntsen was 5, her father experienced an aneurysm in his spinal cord and has been in a wheelchair ever since. “He’s fantastic, never gives up, very optimistic and positive,” Berntsen says. At 75, he still teaches math and science at the same middle school where Berntsen’s sister, Ingrid, a two-time Olympian in moguls, teaches physical education and science.

At age eight, Berntsen excelled at ski jumping. She beat almost all the boys well before women jumpers succeeded in their drive for international competition. “I was a little bit too early,” she says. At 13, she picked up Alpine skiing, started racing at 17 and dreamed of being a downhill racer.

During her two years at a Norwegian ski academy, Berntsen ran telemark gates at night for fun. Each summer, she trained in moguls with her sister. “It was a parallel development between all those disciplines,” she recalls, with “a lot of variation. Maybe that’s why I became so good so fast. To develop [expertise], it’s important to go out of your comfort zone all the time—and I was always wanting to improve and master [these sports].”

When Berntsen didn’t immediately make the national Alpine team, however, her father suggested she attend his alma mater. “I don’t know,” she remembers saying. “All I wanted to do was be a world-class skier. I didn’t think I would make it if I went to college, but I decided it was going to be possible. And it was possible, because I believed it.”

She flew to Vermont, still so new to racing that, even now, Mark Smith, Middlebury’s Alpine director at the time, said he never would have recruited her. “I think her [FIS] point profile was in the 80s or 90s, and we were looking for athletes in the 30s,” he says. “But she was very intelligent about technique. She also worked at it tirelessly. I mean, she closed the lifts pretty much every day at Middlebury Snow Bowl. We would do training on Nordic skis and she would just about kill herself so she wouldn’t be last in any training situation. She was all attack, all the time. You’ve heard the term, ‘Attacking Vikings?’ Her picture should be in the book under that.”

Another Middlebury influence was her teammate Forest Carey, who raced for the Panthers after a stint on the U.S. Ski Team, then would go on to coach for the team for 14 years, minus a two-year gig as Bode Miller’s coach when Miller broke away from the national squad. Carey had a gift for explaining technique, even as an undergrad, so Berntsen picked his brain constantly.

“She was right on my ass, every training run,” Carey recalls. “Hedda comes down seven gates behind you and sprays you at the finish because she was so close and is so pumped, talking about the feelings, sensations, gets back on the lift and does it again. She had this crazy infectious energy. She was so different than anyone else I’d ever met. The determination. She was just gonna do it! Whatever it took. She had the attitude and the ability.

“She was the reason I made it through college skiing, frankly,” Carey admits. “She’d skateboard around campus, arcing turns, constant movement and activity.”

In 1997, Berntsen won gold at the Telemark World Championships in Meiringen, Switzerland, in a three-minute Classic (includes gates, skating and a jump. “I’ve never been more tired in my whole life, on the course or after,” she says). That year she set the Middlebury single-season scoring record in soccer and retired her cleats.

Carey was dismayed to see her leave soccer. “I’m like, ‘Hedda! What are you doin’?’” he remembers. “She says, ‘Forest! I like the games. But the [soccer] practice, you just run around. Then I can’t lift weights, then I can’t get strong enough to ski so fast.’ She’s the best soccer player the school had ever seen. People would just bounce the ball off her and she’d score. And she quit so she could ski faster! I was like, ‘You’re crazy!’”

After Middlebury, Berntsen went straight to the Alpine World Cup. In 2000–01, her first full season on tour, she earned seven top-10 finishes in slalom, including a trio of fifth places. In the same season—inconceivably—she captured bronze at the FIS Alpine World Championships at St. Anton, Austria, beating Janica Kostelic of Croatia, and sharing the podium with winner Anja Paerson of Sweden.

At the time, Berntsen wasn’t surprised. “Only when I look back at it, I can’t believe I was able to pull it off,” she says. “It shouldn’t be possible. But right there and then, I can never see any doubts. I am in complete belief that I’m going to become the world’s best. I was convinced.”

After the Middlebury years, which involved three months each year of racing, the transition to a world-class workout regimen was jarring. She suffered dangerous muscle deterioration. Bloodwork showed high creatine kinase, or CK, levels, which had the potential for kidney damage.

“The team didn’t let me individualize my program, so recovery took a really, really, really long time,” she says. By 2002, she was cleared for her Olympic debut in Salt Lake City (along with her sister in moguls), but skied out in the first run of slalom and ended her World Cup run in 2003.

By 2010, however, Berntsen was back in full force, ready to compete in the Olympic premiere of skicross. In Vancouver, the 33-year-old Berntsen won every heat, beating even the eventual gold medalist in the semifinals. But she got a slow start in the final heat and claimed silver, behind Ashleigh McIvor of Canada.

Of all her athletic achievements, Berntsen thinks that Olympic silver was the most significant. “It was so unlikely and so late in my career,” she says. “I felt like I never fully reached my potential in Alpine skiing, so it was fantastic to be able to reach that level again.”

More good news followed, at Carey’s 2015 wedding in Mexico. “Hedda was coming in Hedda-style,” Carey says. “I was like, ‘Just get here and we’ll figure it out.’” When Carey had to run an errand, he told his sister, ‘Hedda’s coming in a half hour. Tell Tyler to look after her.’” The college ski teammates reconnected and made an indelible mark on the dance floor. “To this day, everyone still laughs because they were dancing together all night, but it was like a plyo workout, like calisthenics, which fits them both to a tee,” Carey says. “Tyler’s also a phenomenal athlete.”

“In Tyler, I met my match,” Berntsen says. “Relationships were always hard, because I usually beat the boys in stuff, but he beats me at absolutely everything.” Four years later, they married.

Now that Berntsen has a Ph.D. in sports psychology, she has been thinking about her meteoric and multi-faceted ski racing career and reading all her old training logs. She wants to write a scientific article about skill development. “There are a lot of theories on how [sports] learning happens,” she says. “It’s very complex, and sometimes you don’t get the complexity in the theories. For me, it’s been very cognitive. I spent a lot of time analyzing and connecting the feeling of a good turn to what I’d see on video and in coaches’ feedback. Of course, it’s just my own experience, but I have it documented quite well. I wrote journals every single year that I was a ski racer, since 1994: what I wanted to work on, what worked, how many runs I did, how I understood the turns. I cut out pictures of Alpine skiers and glued them in, I made ski development models that I created myself,” she explains.

Those journals could be doubly useful now, because Berntsen still has athletic goals. “I really want to improve in Alpine skiing!” she says. “It would be fun to go to Nationals and be top 15 in slalom. But my job is super demanding, and I can’t always ski as much as all those kids. But that’s the big dream.”

If she did it, no one would flinch.

“People ask me, because of my coaching background, ‘Who’s the best athlete I’ve been around?’” Carey says. “I give half the people the easy answer: Bode, one of the best athletes that ever put on skis and what excitement he brought to people. A lot of it was because he wouldn’t take no for an answer. But I tell the other half: Hedda. Look what she’s freaking accomplished, with her results and her enthusiasm for playing sports. She dives into s*** with such passion and so much energy. She’s one of my favorite people in the world.” 

Aimee Berg is a sportswriter base in New York. She profiled Marco Tonazzi in the May-June issue of Skiing History.

How a Seattle kid persevered and lived his dream.

Ed King is well known among Sun Valley locals as the only African-American ski instructor in the history of the resort. Considered by most ski historians as the birthplace and role model of American destination ski resorts, Sun Valley built its ski school around European-trained managers, who seemed to have been uninterested in the diversity of skiing talent on hand in its major market, Seattle.

Photo above by David N. Seelig, courtesy Idaho Mountain Express

The few years King was a member of the Sun Valley Ski School are a small but significant part of his enormous contribution to American ski instruction and culture. The Seattle native began skiing in 1958 at age 11, after meeting Jim and Hans Anderson and their father, Hercules, in the YMCA swimming program. The Andersons, the best known among the few African-American skiing families in Washington at the time, invited King to Stevens Pass. “I took my first lesson and was hooked,” he recalls. “I told my Mom I was going to be a great skier. She replied, ‘We don’t have that kind of money.’ I replied that I will earn it, which I did.”

King was unintimidated by this Scandinavian sport. He came from a family of pioneers. His mother, Marjorie Pitter King, ran a successful accounting business and was the first African-American woman to hold state office in Washington. His aunt Maxine Hayes, after being denied entry to the nursing program at the University of Washington (UW), got her degree in New York; she then integrated the staff at Seattle’s Providence Hospital and became a professor of nursing at UW and Seattle Pacific University. His aunt Constance Thomas was the first African-American teacher in the Seattle Public Schools.

PTA Ski School, Seattle Ski Club

Seattle’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) ran its own weekend ski program, and for several years King rode the PTA buses to Snoqualmie Pass. For three years he took lessons from the Japanese-American instructor Fred Hirai, and by the time King was in high school, he was a strong skier—strong enough that ski school director Hal Kihlman took the kid under his wing.

After attending ethnically diverse high schools (Garfield High in Seattle and Los Angeles High), King graduated in 1964 and headed to UW. Needing work to pay tuition, he taught swimming and diving for the Seattle Parks and Recreation Department and became a pool manager. In 1966, against some pushback from the resort owner, Kihlman hired him as a full-time ski instructor. A year later, King became the first Black member of the Seattle Ski Club. “I will never forget when Kihlman, Dan Coughlin and Keith Boender went to bat for me,” King says. “I remember them telling me it was quite a voting session!”

PSIA Certification and Sun Valley

King earned his full Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) certification in 1968, and he may have been the first Black full cert. Kihlman contacted Sun Valley Ski School director Sigi Engl to recommend King as an instructor. Engl agreed to hire him. (Kihlman had neglected to mention King’s skin pigmentation.) Kihlman also introduced King to the late Gordy Butterfield, the rep for Head skis in Sun Valley. Butterfield, beloved in the ski industry and father of the accomplished ski photographer and historian David, invited King to live in his Sun Valley home while he tried out for the ski school.

King recalls the first ski school meeting he attended: “Gordy and I sat along the back wall. Sigi explained how we would be breaking into our clinic groups. It was the ’60s and I remember him saying in a certain room of the inn they would have the Head ski, which was the ‘Black Power’ ski, and in another room they had the [Kneissl] White Star, which was the ‘White Power’ ski. I turned to Gordy and asked, ‘What happened to the Hart Javelin?’ The Javelin was integrated: a white ski with a black stripe down the middle.”

King enjoyed a week of clinics with Don Reinhart, one of the founders of PSIA. He was then told to be available and meet every morning at the bus turn-around, where Engl made all of the teaching assignments. As King relates, “I showed up every day but was never asked to teach. It was difficult watching others with lesser or no experience being chosen. I kept a positive attitude, thanked Gordy for his hospitality and generosity, and returned to the Northwest. Two years later I returned to Sun Valley and again went through the process and again made myself available every day, but I was denied the opportunity to teach. This time it was quite painful, but I did not let it show. I knew I was a good instructor, but I was never given a chance.”

Ski School Founder, Director

Returning to UW, King majored in recreational planning and administration with a minor in art. During his final year, in 1972, he was offered a job at Evergreen State College, in Olympia, Washington, as associate director for leisure education programs. He took the job and graduated from Evergreen, where he worked and played handball with the legendary climber/philosopher/teacher Willy Unsoeld. He also developed programs and workshops in the arts for local communities.

King launched a PSIA-accredited ski school for Evergreen, supporting some students with financial aid through the Federal Work-Study Program. The school leased equipment at special rates from local ski shops, and Crystal’s Col. Ed Link came through with discount lift tickets. Wini Jones at Roffe helped with ski school uniforms and student skiwear. King invited the Grays Harbor YMCA to participate and began running buses from there and from Olympia and Tacoma to Crystal Mountain for lessons on Wednesdays and Sundays.

“Through this program we were able to provide an opportunity for students of African-American, Asian, Native American and Hispanic backgrounds the opportunity to experience skiing,” King says. “The ski program also offered an outdoor educational credit.”

Over the next 25 years, while running arts programs, King worked as an instructor, ski school supervisor, technical director and director. Meanwhile, he launched a successful photography business, built a pottery studio and helped to manage Seattle’s annual Bumbershoot Arts Festival. King was also hired by several corporations for special photography projects.

Sun Valley Redeemed

But he never lost his original dream of teaching skiing in Sun Valley. In 1995 he moved there with Eleanor, his wife since 1969, and let it be known that he wanted to teach skiing. In 1998, ski school director Hans Muehlegger and ex-director Rainer Kolb invited King to join the ski school. King said at the time, “It has been a very positive and enjoyable experience, and I thank Kolb and Muehlegger and all of the ski school for bringing me into the family. It is where I belong.” Muehlegger later hired another Black ski instructor, a British fellow who returned to Europe after one winter. King remains the sole African-American instructor to have worked at Sun Valley.

In 2005 the Kings left Ketchum for Spokane Valley, Washington. For a few years they returned to Sun Valley each winter, and King continued to teach with the Sun Valley Ski School. Then he joined the ski school at Silver Mountain in Kellogg, Idaho, as technical director—it was five hours closer than Sun Valley. But after more than 60 years of skiing, his knees needed some attention. He arranged knee replacement surgery, which was postponed by Covid. While waiting for new knees, King is busy running his photography business.

Of his skiing career, King says, “Sometimes dreams do come true. Many might take this for granted. I do not.” He adds, “If the entire world skied together, it would be a happier place. The happiest place on earth is the ski slope.” 

Veteran racer, coach and author Dick Dorworth most recently reviewed Skiing Sun Valley in the July-August 2021 issue of Skiing History.