Biography

Marie Marvingt achieved fame as an aviator, but she was also a pioneering skier and inventor of an early aluminum ski. 

She’s famous in France, but nearly unheard of in North America. Marie Marvingt (1875–1963) was an athletic phenomenon who forged a path for women into mountaineering, martial arts, skiing, cycling, aviation and military service. Combining her careers as a surgical nurse and military aviator, she invented the concept and technology of the air ambulance, and promoted air-evac services around the world.

(Photo top of page: Marie Marvingt at Chamonix in January 1913. The pants were a practical but daring fashion statement.)

With few exceptions, women of her era who succeeded in alpinism and aviation had the support of their wealthy families or husbands. In fact, Marie never married and had to work for her adventures. Marie’s father, Felix Marvingt, was postmaster of Aurillac, a decidedly middle-class occupation. After 1879 when, at age 52, Felix fled his stifling career as a bureaucrat, the family lived on his pension. A champion swimmer in his youth, Felix was 48 years old at Marie’s birth, and encouraged her to excel in sports—first swimming, then cycling, canoeing, mountaineering and gymnastics. From the age of five, she followed Felix on his swims in the Moselle and on trekking holidays in the Alps. At 15, she trained with the Alphonse Rancy Circus, learning to do acrobatics on horseback. With a preternatural sense of balance, she quickly became a leading equestrienne. Equitation put her in touch with cavalry officers, who dominated the sport. For the rest of her life Marie maintained a close relationship with officers of the French Army.

Marie’s mother, Elisabeth, died in 1889. At age 14, Marie lost any maternal influence Elisabeth may have exerted. Though she dressed fashionably and flirted easily, Marie increasingly devoted herself to sports. While attending the equivalent of high school in Metz in Lorraine, then a part of Germany, she learned archery, riflery, fencing, boxing, tennis, golf, track and field. (And, of course, German.) While studying medicine at the University of Nancy, she earned a reputation as a fierce competitor in all sports, winning against women in swimming and track, and against men in target-shooting. More passionate about sports than about medicine, she settled for a nursing license and supplemented that income as a sports and adventure writer. She sold articles, under the pseudonym Myriel, to dozens of newspapers. Returning to the Alps, she was the first woman to summit many of the high peaks around Chamonix.

Many women rode bicycles, but few entered races. Marie won the Nancy-Bordeaux race (600 miles) in 1904, Nancy-Milan (350 miles) in 1905 and Nancy-Toulouse (560 miles) in 1906.

That year, at age 31, she took up skiing in a serious way. Skiing in France and Italy was largely a military endeavor, as armies focused on frontier defense in the rising tensions with Germany and Austria. Marie set up the first civilian ski school in France, and at the second military ski meet, at Chamonix in 1908, she ran in the first organized cross-country race for women, a three-kilometer sprint. While the army races were covered widely in the French press, reporters paid not much attention to the women’s race. Coached by the Swedish expert Harald Durban-Hansen, Marie and her peers used two poles at a time when the French Army team was still paddling away with a single pole (see “End of the Single Pole,” Skiing History, March-April 2019). She apparently won the race, though no official records survive. Perhaps there were none to begin with. Durban-Hansen also taught her ski-jumping.

In 1909 Marie repeated the win, at the Gérardmer meet. This time, all the women racers showed up in culottes rather than skirts, greatly improving their performance and setting ski fashion forever. The threepeat came at Ballon d’Alsace in 1910. Meanwhile, she won events in skating, luge and bobsleigh.

During the summer of 1908, Marie made bicycling history. At age 33, she tried to enter the Tour de France and was refused—the race would be for men only. That year the race covered 2,800 miles over 14 stages. An average of 200 miles a day on dirt roads with single-speed bikes was punishing even for the strongest cyclists, so organizers allowed a day of rest after each stage. Marie simply cycled each stage on the rest days. She finished handily, while 76 of the 114 male starters dropped out.

In the summers during her ski-racing career, Marie took up aviation. She first piloted a balloon in 1907, and during an October 1909 storm piloted the first east-to-west crossing of the North Sea from Europe to England, nearly drowning herself and her passenger. That year she soloed in an Antoinette, a fiendishly tricky monoplane designed before the standard stick-and-rudder control system was devised.

Like skiing, French aviation was heavily promoted by the French Army. Among Marie’s student-pilot friends was the cavalry and artillery officer Paul-Maurice Écheman. Écheman was also an accomplished skier and skater. The two became constant companions on the flying fields and in the mountains. While Marie set some of the first aviation records for women, Écheman was promoted to captain and put in charge of one of the first French Army airfields. In 1910, Marie had the idea of combining her surgical and piloting skills to create an air ambulance service. With Écheman’s encouragement, she presented the idea to the Army. It was too early, and the War Department wasn’t interested. Écheman died in a solo crash in 1911.

Now 35, Marie continued to set aviation records, which were featured in newspapers around the world. The fame enabled her to earn money flying in exhibitions. In winters, she continued to compete in winter sports. Increasingly she devoted time to developing the medical air-evacuation concept. She organized conferences to promote the idea and raised enough money to order a specially designed Deperdussin monoplane to carry a pilot plus two stretcher patients or a patient and doctor. The company went bankrupt before the plane was delivered; its designer, Louis Béchereau, went on to create the SPAD fighter series of World War I.

When war broke out, Marie went straight to work as a surgical nurse. The Army wouldn’t let her fly military missions, but she became a part-time civilian flight instructor training new Army pilots. After all, she was one of the world’s most experienced aviators, with a sterling reputation. She had completed more than 900 flights without ever seriously damaging an airplane, while more than 15 percent of pilots licensed in 1910 were killed before the war—and that doesn’t include the student pilots who died before being licensed (77 percent of French pilots died during the war). In March, 1915, one of her surgical patients was an injured pilot, and she learned there was no replacement for him in his bombing squadron. She talked her way into the cockpit and flew two bombing missions over a German airfield. She was thus the world’s first female combat pilot. The army turned a blind eye. Officially, she was a nurse. Unofficially, she flew missions as a “scout”—that is, solo reconnaissance in a fighter plane. Then, with the collusion of an infantry lieutenant (and some help from her friend Marshall Foch), she put on a private’s uniform and served in the trenches. After six weeks she was wounded lightly and sent to infirmary. That was the end of her infantry career, but Foch assigned her to the Italian alpine troops fighting Austria in the Dolomites, officially as a combat nurse. It was the perfect job. As a skier and alpinist, for six months she engineered the evacuation of wounded soldiers from the mountain peaks and passes, and skied in food and medical supplies. After that, she spent most of 1916 at the Italian front, ostensibly as a war correspondent. There are big gaps in what is known about her travels, and friends assumed she was working for military intelligence. What with flying, fighting, nursing and spying, at the end of the war Marie earned both the Croix de Guerre and the Legion of Honor.

After the war, Marie campaigned tirelessly for her medical air-evacuation program, and this, oddly enough, led to the invention of an aluminum ski.

Travelling with French and Italian forces in the Sahara, as both a medical officer and war correspondent, in 1923 she designed aluminum skis for an experimental medevac airplane to land on sand. That led her to think about skis for herself. Back in France in 1927, she found a metal shop in Nancy that could forge skis from solid aircraft-grade aluminum alloy. She had two pairs made, one pair for sand in the desert. She tested the other pair on snow in Chamonix. The sand skis were certainly better than walking up dunes in sandals, but the snow skis failed, compared to ash and hickory. Undamped, they were nearly uncontrollable on firm snow, and as they didn’t absorb wax, could glide in soft snow only in a very narrow temperature range. Nonetheless, her skis represented a start, and French aluminum foundries near the Alps began looking for a way to combine wood-ski performance with aluminum durability—a problem eventually solved in 1947, in the United States.

Marie had many more adventures, including leading early motorized expeditions across the Sahara, first in a modified Fiat truck and later in Citroën six-wheelers. By the early ‘30s her flying ambulance concept was on a roll, and she held many international conferences to promote the concept. She established the Captain Écheman Award for the best-equipped medical aircraft, and launched the first training course for medevac nurses. During World War II she returned to the Red Cross, and was honored after the war for unspecified actions on behalf of the French Resistance.

Into her 80s, Marie was widely honored by the aviation community and French government, but she descended into genteel poverty and died in a hospice, penniless, in 1963, at age 88. 

Seth Masia is the president of ISHA. Sources for this article include Une histoire du ski by Franck Cochoy; Marie Marvingt: Fiancée of Danger, by Marcel Cordier and Rosalie Maggio; “Bride of Danger,” in The Strand Magazine, September 1913; The Culture and Sport of Skiing, by E. John B. Allen; and Before Amelia: Women Pilots in the Early Days of Aviation, by Eileen F. Lebow.

Go to Recent Obituaries

Since the 1960s, this Austrian instructor has been an influential voice in ski technique and mountain management … and for the past few decades, a hard-working innkeeper in Vermont. By Edith Thys Morgan

Photo above: Dixi Nohl in March 2020 outside of The Charleston House, the Vermont inn that he and wife Willa have run for 21 years.

On a typical day in Woodstock, Vermont, Dixi Nohl is up at 7 a.m. to set up breakfast, which his wife of 50 years, Willa, cooks for guests at the Charleston House. The two have run this bed-and-breakfast at the edge of town for 21 years, and welcome guests from all over the world who come to experience quintessential Vermont. They fuel up on Willa’s feast, especially German pancakes with sautéed peaches, which she admits is “not health food,” and, as Dixi adds with a laugh and a decidedly German accent, “no German has ever recognized it.”

Dixi and Willa have lived in Vermont since 1967, and in Woodstock since 1997. They consider themselves proud Vermonters, though both hail from beyond its borders. Willa grew up in Canada, while Dixi was part of the Austrian invasion that shaped ski technique and the ski industry in America.

Dieter “Dixi” Nohl grew up in St. Anton, Austria, where, in the 1950s, his parents Fritz and Maria built the Hotel Montjola above the heart of the village. At the time, Fritz was running the ski school in Zurs over the Arlberg Pass. They slowly built up the hotel and eventually acquired the neighbor’s house, making the Montjola—and Maria’s famous fondues—a destination in St. Anton.

As a ski racer, Nohl’s contemporaries included Karl Schranz, Egon Zimmermann and Pepi Stiegler. After a rash of injuries—five broken legs, including two in the same season—he took a break and delved into the three-year process of getting his Austrian ski instructor’s certification. In 1960, at age 20, Nohl accepted Sepp Ruschp’s invitation to come to Stowe and join the ski school. Nohl was a welcome addition to Stowe’s ski school and social set, setting slalom courses for Ted Kennedy and teaching young Cindy Watson (daughter of IBM’s Tom Watson) to ski. He was featured in September 1960 LOOK magazine as Stowe’s “Romeo on Skis.”

For the next four years, Nohl followed an annual migration pattern, teaching in Stowe in the winter and in Portillo in the summer. Nohl fondly remembers Portillo’s convivial ambiance, with all of the guests together in one hotel, gathering for dinner. In the fall, Nohl returned to Austria and taught English to aspiring ski instructors as part of their certification under Professor Stefan Kruckenhauser, the “Ski Pabst” (Pope of Skiing).

Kruckenhauser had filmed Nohl and his fellow ski racers for his book Wedeln: the New Austrian Skiing Technique. In 1969, Bob Ottum of Sports Illustrated described wedeln as: “an entire new style of skiing, a legs-together, wriggly, snakelike way of going down the hill, using hip movement and heel thrust from the waist down…[that] swept the world like no other form of skiing before or since.” Kruckenhauser continued to film Nohl, a star student, for technical demonstrations on his trips home to Europe.

When Gore Mountain opened in 1964 in New York, Nohl was hired to start its ski school. In 1967 he returned to Vermont to take over the ski school at Madonna (Smugglers’ Notch), where he also started the Fondue Haus. During that time Nohl represented Madonna at pre-season ski shows in major northeastern cities. At the show in Montreal, he met Willa, who was manning a bus tour booth as a favor for her friend. They married the following May. In 1972 they moved on to Mad River Glen, where Dixi stayed for 12 winters, running the ski school and heading the resort’s year-round marketing program.

Around this time, Kruckenhauser quite literally changed his stance on ski instruction, famously showing up in Aspen at Interski in 1968, armed with film and young beginner skiers to promote his new technique. Advances in ski material and design allowed for shorter, more maneuverable skis that accommodated a wider stance. This was an easier and quicker way for beginners to learn than the feet-together wedeln, and Nohl, described in SKI as “Kruckenhauser’s alter ego,” helped to spread this new skiing gospel. “It made sense,” says Nohl. “As the skis got shorter and shorter, the stance got wider and wider.”

Kruckenhauser was happy to use fellow Austrians to export his ideas and get newcomers skiing well quickly. Nohl was an early adopter of video review with his ski students at Mad River. He took an active role in writing and demonstrating pointers in SKI and was also an examiner for PSIA.

A constant in SKI magazine throughout the mid- to late-1960s, Nohl brought his meticulous understanding of technique to readers though a treatise on the respective evolutions of the Austrian and French ski techniques, as well as a comprehensive comparison of the American, New Austrian (wide-stance) and GLM teaching methods. His concise one-page pointers included things like the “Tired Skier Carry,” for getting kids off the slopes, the thrust in slush for conserving energy, and no less than six ways to ski a catwalk.

Each spring, SKI organized a photo shoot starring Nohl. “Because of his training under Kruckenhauser, along with his thin, tall physique, he was a superb technique demonstrator,” explained John Fry, then editor of SKI. “We’d get all these pointers sent in by instructors, in longhand. Sometimes they included pictures, sometimes not,” he says. They shot the whole season’s pointers in a day or two. Sequence shots of Nohl were then converted to line art by artist Bob Bugg.

While at Mad River, Dixi and Willa sent their older son, Jay, to Green Mountain Valley School to pursue ski racing. When the family moved to Burke in 1984, and Dixi took the role of general manager, Jay and his younger brother Cory attended Burke Mountain Academy. Jay went on to ski for Dartmouth College, and Cory raced for Williams. Nohl managed Burke for 13 years (1984–1997), coming in after the development of the lower mountain and lasting through five owners and multiple bankruptcies. Finn Gunderson, who was headmaster at Burke Mountain Academy during some of that time, remembers negotiating for snowmaking and hill space with Dixi, who was also dealing with state regulators, managing the resort and fending off creditors. “He was always proud of the school and supportive,” says Gunderson.

When Burke sold again, in 1997, Nohl moved on to Woodstock. He had visited the Charleston House one winter and the owners mentioned wanting to sell. With his training in the hotel business, Dixi and Willa jumped in. Twenty-one years later the inn is their work and their social life, and they never shut down between seasons. Willa gets out for volunteer work, and to stage the occasional political rally or fundraiser, while Dixi skis at Killington regularly. The rhythm of inn life keeps them busy every day until afternoon.

“We love Vermont,” says Willa, who can’t pick a favorite of all the places they’ve lived along the way—Jeffersonville, Warren, Burke and Woodstock. “It is home for us. We are lucky to feel that way.” 

Edith Thys Morgan is a ski-racer mom, blogger and author, and former World Cup and Olympic alpine racer (racerex.com).

Top exec will step down after five decades at the sport’s governing body. 

Gian Franco Kasper, the president of the International Ski Federation (FIS), recently announced that he will step down this spring after 22 years at the helm of the sport’s governing organization. Both an effective and controversial executive, Kasper has held different roles at FIS for nearly 50 years...

The high-flying, and at times bumpy, journey of freeskiing’s busiest athlete. By Edith Thys Morgan

Jeremy Bloom is a planner…to a point. That point typically comes just when he launches towards his next big goal in life. At age 37, he’s already achieved more goals than most would dare envision accomplishing in a lifetime of hard work. At age ten Bloom set a goal to ski in the Olympics and play football in the National Football League. He did both, becoming a two-time Olympian (2002, 2006) in freestyle mogul skiing, then being drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles. He is the only athlete to ski in the Olympics and also be drafted into the NFL. And that was just a start.

 Along the way he became a three-time mogul World Champion, fashion model, and TV personality. While in the NFL, he worried about being productive after sports, and took advantage of an NFL partnership program to study entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of Business. After retiring from football in 2008, and forming a successful nonprofit to give back to society, he started Integrate, a marketing software company in 2010. As Integrate continues to grow, Bloom explains how he planned its success. “We like to call it jumping out of an airplane and assembling the parachute on the way down,” Bloom laughs. “I love that part of it.” 

Indeed, the uncertainty that goes along with bold ambition is one of the many sports parallels Bloom sees in business. “In some ways it is very similar to being an athlete. You set a really big dream and vision and have a little bit of an idea of how to get there. But everybody’s journey is different. You have to take it one day at a time.” ... 

Farewell to Ski Pioneers: Recent obituaries

Jeremy Bloom is a three-time World Champion, two-timeOlympic competitor and the only Olympic skier who also played in the National Football League. 

By Edith Thys Morgan

Jeremy Bloom is a planner…to a point. That point typically comes just when he launches towards his next big goal in life. At age 37, he’s already achieved more goals than most would dare envision accomplishing in a lifetime of hard work. At age ten Bloom set a goal to ski in the Olympics and play football in the National Football League. He did both, becoming a two-time Olympian (2002, 2006) in freestyle mogul skiing, then being drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles. He is the only athlete to ski in the Olympics and also be drafted into the NFL. And that was just a start.

Along the way he became a three-time mogul World Champion, fashion model, and TV personality. While in the NFL, he worried about being productive after sports, and took advantage of an NFL partnership program to study entrepreneurship at the Wharton School of Business. After retiring from football in 2008, and forming a successful nonprofit to give back to society, he started Integrate, a marketing software company in 2010. As Integrate continues to grow, Bloom explains how he planned its success. “We like to call it jumping out of an airplane and assembling the parachute on the way down,” Bloom laughs. “I love that part of it.”

Indeed, the uncertainty that goes along with bold ambition is one of the many sports parallels Bloom sees in business. “In some ways it is very similar to being an athlete. You set a really big dream and vision and have a little bit of an idea of how to get there. But everybody’s journey is different. You have to take it one day at a time.” 

As golden as Bloom’s career has been, it has not been easy. His name has been in the news recently with California passing the Fair Pay to Play Act in September 2019, which permits college athletes in the state to hire agents and be paid endorsement money, essentially doing nothing less than rewiring amateur college athletics. Other states are sure to follow California, eventually leading to racers on elite college ski teams, for instance, being able to accept big-dollar endorsements from sponsors.

Bloom helped get this tectonic shift in college athletics moving 15 years ago when he sued the NCAA to allow him to accept skiing endorsements—which totaled as much as six figures—while also playing college football at the University of Colorado (CU) in Boulder. After two years, he lost his legal battle, and quit college football to prepare full time for skiing in the Olympics.

He dominated the sport in 2005, and entered the 2006 Games as the favorite, but did not medal. From there, he went directly into the NFL, an acronym he defines as “Not For Long,” and spent much of the next three years sidelined by injury.  

These experiences were fodder for Bloom’s book Fueled by Failure (Entrepreneur Press, 2015), which touches on his life’s philosophy, including: his 48-hour rule for steeping in and obsessing on failure before moving on; the Five Pillars of success in his company (performance, entrepreneurship, responsibility, creativity and humility); and positive reminders like “Don’t let the good days go to your head or the bad days go to your heart.” Other than his book’s title, little about Bloom’s life reads like failure. 

GROWING UP

Jeremy Bloom was born in Fort Collins, Colorado, and grew up in nearby Loveland (the town, not the ski area), the youngest of three in a skiing family. While skiing with their older children, his parents, Larry and Char, often left Jeremy with his grandfather, Jerry, who outfitted him with a superhero cape and baited him down the slopes with mini Snickers and an abiding faith in his abilities.

Larry, an avid sports fan, tossed the football with Jeremy in the afternoons, and indoors at night. “We spent countless hours watching the Broncos, and during the Olympics that’s the only thing that was on our TV,” recalls Bloom. When watching the 1992 Olympics, young Jeremy told his parents he wanted to ski in the Olympics and play in the NFL. Larry and Char shared what Bloom describes as “a healthy disregard for the impossible,” and encouraged him to pursue both paths. 

While competing for Team Breck he became the youngest athlete on the U.S. Ski Team at age 15, while also becoming a high school track and football star. His ski coach from age 11, Scott Rawles, describes the quick-footed Bloom as “the best trained athlete out there,” thanks to his track and football success. Additionally, “he had the mental attitude over everyone,” says Rawles.

Longtime U.S. Ski Team star and freestyle legend Trace Worthington was struck by Bloom’s outgoing personality and confidence with the older generation of athletes, as well as his savvy regarding sponsorship. He arrived on the scene with an agent, in pursuit of contracts for both skiing and modeling. To sponsors the pushy young kid delivered. “He had this infectious positive attitude,” says Worthington. “A lot of us would sit around and joke, ‘What doesn’t Jeremy Bloom do great?’” After the freestyling success of Eric Bergoust, Nikki Stone and then Jonny Moseley, Bloom stepped boldly into a legacy and the spotlight. 

TAKING OFF IN ALL DIRECTIONS

By the 2002 Winter Olympics, at age 19, Bloom was already World Champion, and though he did not win a medal, he set his sights on the 2006 Games. In the meantime, the small (5 foot 9 inches, 180 pounds) but fast athlete had been recruited by the University of Colorado Buffalos as a wide receiver, and enrolled that fall. In his first game, on the third punt return team, Bloom didn’t expect to see any action, but the coach sent him in. He ran 75 yards for a touchdown. Bloom set a pile of records at CU and earned All-American honors freshman and sophomore years, all while continuing to compete full time in skiing. 

“I had to radically change my body for each season,” explains Bloom, who had to gain 15 pounds for football, and then lose it almost immediately for the competitive ski season. Mentally, however, doing both sports was an advantage. “When I was ending football season, my skiing competitors were coming off eight months with no competition. Mentally I was so sharp and ready to jump back in.” Additionally, he was familiar with the pressure of playing in front of 50,000 people. 

Off the slopes and the field, Bloom was also building his brand in mainstream culture, sought after for modeling, product endorsements, TV guest hosting and celebrity appearances (he won the 2003 CBS Superstars Competition). While playing for CU, Bloom battled the NCAA for the right to keep his earnings—upwards of $350,000 per year— from skiing, his non-NCAA sport. Before starting his junior year in 2004, the NCAA declared him ineligible to compete in college football, and Bloom chose to focus on skiing and the 2006 Olympics. Bloom dominated the 2005 season, winning a then record six straight competitions. Off the hill, he had near rock-star status, and entered the 2006 Winter Games in Torino as both a celebrity and the heavy favorite for gold. The capriciousness of athletics struck, however, and the gutsy, usually rock-solid Bloom bobbled, finishing 6th. It was a surprise for fans, and devastating for Bloom, who calculated that he “missed a medal by an inch.” 

Three days later, despite not having played football for two years, Bloom crossed the pond back to Indianapolis and the 2006 NFL Combine for prospective draftees. In April he was picked in the 5th round for the Philadelphia Eagles as a returner and wide receiver. While in Philadelphia, Bloom enrolled in the NFL program that arranged for players to attend MBA classes at Wharton after practice and in the summer. Sidelined with a hamstring injury, his passion for training started shifting towards business and entrepreneurship. After two years, Bloom was traded to the Steelers, and quit football a year later, at age 27.

RETIREMENT AND REBOUND

That same year, Bloom started his first business, inspired by his love for his grandfather Jerry, and his grandmother Donna (who lived in his home 19 years), and also by the profound experiences while traveling with the U.S. Ski Team. He saw how elderly people are revered, respected and treated with dignity in other cultures like Japan and Scandinavia, and wanted to bring some of that respect home by starting Wish of a Lifetime, a nonprofit that grants seniors their wishes. The first year Wish of a Lifetime granted four wishes, and now, ten years later, the organization of 40-50 people grants one wish per day, in the U.S. and Canada. These range from trips to reconnect with family, to fulfilling lifelong dreams, to revisiting favorite activities or places, to getting something as simple as a warm rug underfoot. The effect on recipients is not so much about the wish, “but that someone cares,” says Bloom.

Though Wish of a Lifetime remains a top priority in Bloom’s life, he realized that this dream would not be a path to the economic success he desired. After putting management in place, he embarked on his next venture, co-founding Integrate, a marketing software technology firm. Integrate was named best new company at the 2011 American Business Awards, the same year Bloom was named to the Forbes 30 under 30 list for tech innovation. In 2013 he was a finalist for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year, and was also inducted into the U..S Ski Hall of Fame.

A decade after its founding, Integrate, and Bloom, continue to expand and evolve. Bloom hosted CNBC’s Adventure Capitalist for two seasons and is a keynote speaker at various events. He is on the board for U.S. Ski and Snowboard, where he is focused on athlete education. “I’m passionate about the transition from sport, specifically under the lens of mentorship,” says Bloom. “That, and mental health, which is as important as physical health.”

Last year Bloom married Brazilian actress Mariah Buzolin. Now living in Denver, the couple is building a home in Boulder and looking forward to starting a family. “I’m not sure what it’ll be like,” says Bloom. “People can only prepare you so much. I’ll be assembling that parachute on the way down. I’m sure I’ll figure it out.”

Edie Thys Morgan is a former U.S. Ski Team member and two-time Olympian. She grew up in Squaw Valley and now lives in New Hampshire with her husband and two ski racing sons. Follow her on skiracing.com and at racerex.com.

From the January-February 2020 issue of Skiing History.

Top exec will step down after five decades at the sport’s governing body.

Gian Franco Kasper, the president of the International Ski Federation (FIS), recently announced that he will step down this spring after 22 years at the helm of the sport’s governing organization. Both an effective and controversial executive, Kasper has held different roles at FIS for nearly 50 years.

Photo at top of page: An effective and controversial leader, Kasper’s reign has been spiked with controversy, often fueled by his off-hand remarks. DPA Picture Alliance / Alamy Stock Photo

Kasper, 75, was named secretary general of the federation in 1975 and took over as president in 1998. He succeeded the late Marc Hodler, who at 80 had headed FIS for nearly 50 years, the longest reign at any international sports organization. Under Hodler, the season-long World Cup competitions and freestyle were introduced, snowboarding competition came under FIS governance, and he exposed the bid-rigging scandal of the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Under Kasper’s reign, the number of ski and snowboarding medaling sports at the Winter Olympic Games has multiplied to more than 50, with many new freestyle events successfully geared to attracting a younger audience.

The FIS began in 1924 as a Scandinavia-based and operated organization. The first two presidents were a Swede and a Norwegian. With Hodler’s election in 1951, the FIS moved its headquarters to Switzerland, where they have remained for almost 70 years. The current headquarters are in Oberhofen, where the influential Marc Hodler Foundation is also located.

Regarding Kasper’s succession, the FIS says that it supports “a timely process for the national ski associations to prepare any applications for candidacies.” The less-than-transparent Hodler-Kasper succession process in 1998 was harshly criticized by former FIS vice-president Bjorn Kjellstrom. The betting now is on another Swiss, Urs Lehmann, 1993 world championships downhill gold medalist, President of the Swiss Ski Federation, a successful business consultant, President of the Laureus Foundation, and husband of Swiss acrobatic ski champion Conny Kissling.

Kasper’s long tenure also has been spiked with ongoing controversy, occasionally fueled by his off-hand remarks. Last year he caused worldwide headlines and brief outrage when in an interview with a Swiss journalist he sarcastically remarked that with authoritarian governments it was easier to overcome environmental obstacles to Olympic site selection. He previously found himself under the spotlight in 2005 after commenting about women ski jumpers that the physical force upon landing “seems not to be appropriate for ladies from a medical point of view.” The FIS did eventually sanction women’s ski jumping, which made its Olympic debut at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.

This season, Kasper scrapped with athletes and coaches who criticized the expanded 2019-20 alpine schedule for not providing enough time for travel and proper recuperation. Kasper conceded that the alpine World Cup circuit contains “too many races,” and then offered not much more than sympathy.

“I know it’s not easy for the athletes and also for some organizers. We are now at a certain limit, there is no question,” Kasper said at a press event in October. “But FIS is not here to prevent races but to organize races.” He did say that the FIS would look into improving its scheduling process. Without Olympic Games or World Championships this season, the current alpine World Cup schedule runs nonstop from October through March, with 44 men’s events and 41 women’s events at nearly two dozen venues.

Kasper, a former journalist, also has held leadership roles with the International Olympic Committee and the World Anti-Doping Agency, among others. He was elected to another four-year term as FIS President in 2018, but will only make it halfway through. He will officially resign his post at the next FIS Congress in Thailand in May. --Greg Ditrinco

Wear Your Passion on Your Sleeve

Karl Johan grew up with an immutable ski uniform: a Demetre sweater. It made sense. He lived in Seattle, near Demetre’s Ballard-based factory. And his family all wore the sweaters whenever they skied. As did most Seattle-based skiers.

The factory and the brand have since shut down (Roffe purchased Demetre in 1987, and itself closed a decade later), but the sweaters still live on in Johan’s memories and closet in Sun Valley.

Marketing director for Sun Valley Culinary Institute, Johan has long collected the sweaters at garage sales, thrift stores, retro clothing stores, online—wherever he can find them. When he nabs one, he cleans it, steams it, and stashes it away. His collection can number more than 50 sweaters at a time. That number decreases whenever he holds a pop-up vintage sweater sale in Sun Valley.

Johan notes that the old-school sweaters hold up remarkably. “The designs and colors are amazing,” he says. And “they look brand new” whenever he still sees them on the slopes. He also enjoys the local angle to his soft-goods obsession, as John and Sally Demetre have long had a home in Sun Valley.

Demetre was founded in 1921 by John’s father as the Standard Knitting Company, which manufactured uniform sweaters out of its factory in Ballard, Washington, which is now a hip waterfront neighborhood of Seattle. During the time Demetre sweaters were being manufactured, Seattle was one of the largest apparel centers in the country and considered a pioneer in outerwear.

In the early 1960s, Demetre saw a business opportunity in the explosive growth of skiing, and expanded into ski sweaters. The company landed early sponsorships with the U.S. and Canadian Olympic ski teams. The U.S. Ski Team wore Demetre sweaters at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. During its heyday, Demetre was tagged “America’s first name in fine ski sweaters,” with an ad from a 1972 issue of Skiing magazine pledging: “One look and you know it’s Demetre.”

As any skier of a certain age can confirm, Demetre sweaters were colorful, comfortable, and tightly woven to provide superior warmth. The construction resulted in a heavy-weight sweater that was virtually indestructible. Not surprisingly, many of the sweaters have survived, now 50 or so years later. And many Demetre fans have kept their favorite sweaters.

Pinterest, Ebay and other websites are full of Demetre sweaters—and memories from skiing’s golden era. One fan blissfully noted of her Demetre sweaters, “I wore them when I was skinny.” —Greg Ditrinco

Buck Hill Marks 50 With Sailer

In December 2019, Buck Hill—a small Minnesota ski area with a big racing reputation—celebrated 50 years with its legendary coach, Erich Sailer. Since founding the racing team back in 1969, Sailer has churned out an impressive roster of Olympic and World Cup athletes, including Kristina Koznick, David Chodounsky, Tasha Nelson and Lindsey Vonn. Vonn retired in 2019 with four World Cup overall titles, 11 Olympic and FIS World Championship medals, and 82 World Cup victories—a record for women, and just shy of Ingemar Stenmark’s record-setting 86 wins.

Thanks to Sailer, Buck Hill is home to one of the country’s most active recreational racing programs, drawing youth and adults from the Twin City suburbs for training, leagues and competitions. An honored member of the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame, the Austrian-born coach pioneered summer ski racing in the United States in 1956 with a camp at Timberline on Oregon’s Mount Hood. By 1967, his camp near Red Lodge, Montana had become the biggest in the country.

Buck Hill was founded in 1954 by Charles “Chuck” Stone Jr. and his future wife, Nancy Campbell. In late 2019, Nancy published Buck Hill: A History. To purchase a copy, email ncstone@aol.com. —Kathleen James

Snapshots in Time

1866 SONDRE NORHEIM’S HEEL
In 1733, a Norwegian military officer, Col. Jens Henrik, wrote the first ski instructions for the military. Those rules contain the first mention of heel bindings, but illustrations of military skiers throughout the 18th century show only toe straps. Despite the increased pressure of jumping and racing competition, begun in 1765 and 1767 respectively, the heel binding didn’t really catch on until Sondre Norheim’s dramatic exhibition at Mordegal a century later. “With legs drawn up, he flew like a bird.” Thus 41-year-old Norheim impressed the crowd at an 1866 jump at Hoydalsmo, near Mordegal in Telemark. Within two years, the Telemark skis—cambered at the waist, broadened at the tip—and Norheim’s new heel bindings astonished the crowd at Christiana. Sport skiing was on its way. —Ted Bays (Nine Thousand Years of Skis: Norwegian Wood to French Plastic)

1936 SISSIES, SPOILSPORTS AND MOTHER-FRIGHTENERS
The first death on the slopes shook up the small skiing fraternity of the day. An emergency meeting was called by the New York Amateur Ski Club, whose founder, Roland Palmedo, appointed Minot “Minnie” Dole chair of a committee to inquire into the causes and handling of ski accidents. The results of their questionnaires was disappointing. Only a hundred replies dribbled in. Of these, roughly half accused the committee of being “sissies, spoilsports, and frighteners of mothers.” —Gretchen Rous Besser, “Samaritans of the Snow” (Collected Papers of the International Ski History Congress, 2002

1959 LISTEN AND LEARN
Have you reached a plateau in your skiing where nothing seems to help you improve? Then “Skiing by Ear Method” may be just what you need! Relax and learn with these 33-1/3 rpm records. $8.95 each. Money-back guarantee! —Advertisement in SKI “Holiday Gift Guide” (December 1959)

1967 WORLD CUP ACCOLADES
The winter of 1967 marked the beginning of a new era in international ski racing. For the first time in the history of the sport, the world’s best racers were rated not on the basis of one or two headline races, but on a systematic accumulation of results over the whole season. The new system proved a smashing success. So much so that the World Cup of Alpine Skiing is to become a permanent annual fixture of the sport, rivaling the Olympics and the FIS World Championships. Initially ignored by international ski officialdom, the World Cup won instant and enthusiastic acceptance by the two groups most important to the success of ski racing: the racers themselves and the press, who report the results to an eager public. —John Fry (SKI, September 1967)

1978 THE BUCK STOPS HERE
Your three-miles-a-day skier is starting to see the wisdom of the East. For the first time, Stratton (Vermont) is drawing vacationing skiers from Washington DC, Texas, Georgia and Puerto Rico. And these are not weekend skiers. “Vail, founded the same year we were, programmed itself as a vacation resort from the beginning,” says Stratton marketing manager Jeff Dickson. “It worked closely with airlines and travel agents and ski clubs to get people to come for a week. The Eastern resorts are waking up. The only way we can support the lifts we’re building is by becoming a vacation destination.”  —Morten Lund (SKI, September 1978)

1989 CLAMORING FOR THE BEST
A great perplexity hits me every time I hear skiers talking about lift ticket prices. Late last season, I skied Butternut Basin in the Berkshires. The change from eight years earlier was dramatic: lifts, lodges, trails, parking and food were greatly expanded. And instead of narrow ribbons of icy snow or rock-hard moguls, the trails were white velvet from edge to edge. As good as Colorado. What happened? Butternut has been transformed into the New Skiing, with trail systems that disperse skiers around the hill, massive snowmaking, and squads of grooming machines that work every trail by sunrise into a soft-but-firm surface that spells, “Have a ball.” Yet skiers are having a fit—those lousy lift ticket prices keep rising. —Morten Lund (Snow Country, January 1989)

2000 HIGHER POWER OF POWDER
In the 2000–2001 season, I didn’t finish 13 of the 24 races I entered. I’ve seen people lose their hair or get religion over less. But I knew I was getting better; I knew I had far more control than ever before. It just wasn’t always obvious to everyone else. And explaining myself all the time got old fast. Better to be laconic—the shrug, the smirk. People hear what they want to, anyway. … When fans or young racers ask me the Big Question, I tell them: “Go fast.” It’s the whole deal, the only tip worth taking. —Two-time overall World Cup champion and 11-time Olympic and FIS World Championship medalist Bode Miller (Bode: Go Fast, Be Good, Have Fun)

SKI LIFE

from SNOW COUNTRY / DECEMBER 1988

That’s not what I said; I said “We have six inches of powder under an ice crust.”

Why's It Called That? Mont Tremblant

The Algonquin believed that Quebec’s Mont Tremblant trembled when violated by human exploitation.

The mountain lay in the heart of Weskarini Algonquin territory, and was the home of the Great God, or Manitou. They called it Manitou Ewitchi Saga, the mountain of the great god, or Manitonga Soutana, mountain home of the spirits. In 1652, Weskarini were massacred here by invading Iroquois. Many sought refuge with French Jesuits, and were forced to convert to Catholicism.

The Weskarini believed the mountain trembled when violated by human exploitation. And so the French settlers adopted the name Mont Tremblant (“Trembling” in English). What the Weskarini meant by “trembling” is unclear; one folk-tale recounts violent storms destroying swathes of forest. Seismic activity is common. Several faults run within 50 miles of the mountain and the region has recorded at least one magnitude 6.9 earthquake in the past 250 years, and a couple of 4.5 quakes right in Ste-Agathe during the past 25 years. It’s possible that the Weskarini actually felt the mountain shake. —Seth Masia

Ski Art: Gunnar Hallström (1875–1943)

On the one hand Gunnar Hallström, Swedish painter of national-romantic scenes, was everything a modern environmentalist might honor. He settled on the island of Björko in Lake Malar, about an hour by boat out of Stockholm, and became involved in the preservation of Birka, Sweden’s oldest town, and in the maintenance of the island’s traditional farms. He persuaded the government to buy up the land and put it under protection. Today it is managed by the Riksantikvarieämbetet, the National Heritage Board.

But there is another side to Hallström’s art, first coming to notice in the early years of the 20th century. The frontispiece of Henry Hoek and E. C. Richardson’s 1907 Der Skilauf und seine sportliche Benutzung (Skiing and its Sporting Use) is a reproduction of Hallström’s skier. The original is believed to have been owned by a Munich publishing firm that later had connections with the Nazis. When the Germans were in deep financial trouble following World War I, communities printed their own money, called Notgeld. The town of Furtwangen put Hallström’s Schneeschuhläufer (Ski Runner) on its 10-mark note. That gained him a great deal of attention. In 1921, for example, the German Ski Association’s journal Der Winter called Hallström “well known.”

In the political turmoil of the 1920s and 1930s, Hallström moved to the right in Sweden and became involved in decorating with swastikas one of the lodges to which Hermann Göring fled after the failed 1923 Hitler putsch. He signed his initials in the spaces created by the squared swastika symbol, and he appears to have been involved with the pro-Nazi Swedish Carlberg circle.

Politics aside, the painting illustrated here, used both as the frontispiece to Hoek’s and Richardson’s book and as the formidable image on Furtwangen’s 10-mark note of December 1, 1918 proves his knowledge of skiing as well as his expertise in landscape depiction. —E. John B. Allen

After World War I, a German town used Hallström’s image of a skier on its 10-mark note. He was likely involved with pro-Nazi circles in Sweden. --E. John B. Allen

This article first ran in the January-February issue of Skiing History.

For recent obituaries go to Lives.

Like Father, Like Son

By Michel Beaudry

Canada's Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a bona-fide rider and former snowboard instructor at Blackcomb, BC

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