Competition

Patrician attitudes initially dominated 20th-century sports.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conflicts over Amateurism in Skiing

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Open Tournaments Permitted Ski Instructors to Compete

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

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

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

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

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

Skiers Faced Discipline Over Amateur Issue

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There was more to Willy Schaeffler than stern disciplinarian.

By PETER MILLER

During the 1970-71 World Cup season, the men of the U.S. Alpine squad clashed with their coach, Willy Schaeffler. After Billy Kidd’s departure in February 1970, Spider Sabich was the team’s most successful skier. When he quit in January 1971 to join World Pro Skiing, the proximate cause was money—U.S. Ski Team racers earned none. But Sabich also butted heads with Schaeffler. In his book The 30,000-Mile Ski Race (1972), Peter Miller told both sides of the story.

At fifty-four, their head coach, Willy Schaeffler, was a good generation gap older. His hair is grey, thin and combed straight back close to his skull. Part of his face seems to be paralyzed, so that his smile stops in the middle. Willy is a neat dresser and walks erect, almost stiffly. His blue eyes are appraising and sometimes appear quite cold. He spent the first half of his life in Germany, where he was born.

He had told the team earlier, when they were training in Aspen, Colorado, that he was the team hatchet man and that if someone had to be kicked off the team, he would do it, and he would be the scapegoat for all the difficulties. He had also told them that he was going to discipline their minds and bodies, and that although skiing is an individual sport, everyone must work together. He wanted to develop winners.

Willy has been a winner all his life. In his twenty-two years as the coach at the University of Denver his ski teams won 100 out of 123 dual meets, and 14 National Collegiate titles. For a while, his archrival was Bob Beattie, who, before he became one of Willy’s predecessors as National Ski Team coach, trained the ski team at the University of Colorado. Willy beat the pants off Bob. Most of the team did not appreciate Willy’s authoritarian attitude toward ski racing. . . .

The two months during which the young racers had lived and trained under their new coach had convinced them he was an autocratic disciplinarian. They called Willy a heavy-handed Kraut. What few of them realized was that Willy, like them, had started his life as an avid skier who disliked authority, discipline, regimentation, and the draft. During World War II, Willy’s rebellion against the political-military establishment in Germany nearly cost him his life half a dozen times.

Willy was raised in Bavaria, not far from Garmisch, where he learned to ski. His father was a Social Democrat, and since Hitler was not very well disposed to political opponents in the mid-thirties, the father was placed on the blacklist. Willy was drafted in 1937, and in a letter to an uncle in Chicago he described some of his training. The letter was censored. Then the government extended his Army duty, two weeks before he was to be discharged. Just as any American youth would do, Willy bitched, loud and clear. The Army brought forth the letter and accused Willy of being a spy. They criticized him for lack of patriotism. As Willy was not in the Party, and his family was blacklisted, they busted him from warrant officer to private and sent him to the Dutch border to what was called a baby concentration camp. For the next year and a half, he dug ditches from 5:00 a.m. until 4:00 in the afternoon. He was twenty-one, the same age as most of the racers he now coaches.

Willy was released in 1938 and started to live a happy period as a test driver for the Ford Motor Company. On weekends and holidays, he was a Garmisch ski instructor. When the war broke out, his presence on the blacklist saved him from being drafted. But the Army reconsidered in 1941 and inducted him into the ranks as part of a penal battalion. The battalion was sent to Poland to build bridges. When the offensive into Russia began, Willy’s penal battalion was offered a chance to rehabilitate itself. The men were given weapons and were used as special patrols and on spearhead missions. Willy was somewhere behind Moscow, as part of a pincer movement, when the temperature dropped to -54 degrees and the Russians began to pull the Germans apart. Willy put on the clothes of dead Russians. He was captured and lined up before a firing squad. He went through a very quick and intense period of concentration, where his life flashed in an instant. They fired and Willy, sure he was dead, fell to the ground. The Russians, drunk on vodka, fell down too, laughing madly over their practical joke. Willy managed to escape and rejoin the Germans. His life on the Russian front was probably saved by his fifth wound, shrapnel in the right lung and upper heart chamber. He was evacuated in a plane, which was shot down behind enemy lines. Willy, one of two survivors, hid in a small compartment for two days before he was rescued. He was transferred from one hospital to another until he arrived in Munich, weighing 130 pounds. It was 1944.

The military establishment decided that Willy, after he gained twenty pounds, was so well trained in winter warfare that he could rehabilitate himself again by returning to the Russian front. Willy silently refused. At about the same time, American Flying Fortresses blasted Munich. The headquarters building was evacuated before the raid, but Willy and a friend lingered and filled a knapsack with code numbers, passes, stamps, requisition orders. The building was demolished by bombs five minutes after Willy rifled the offices. A day later, Willy and his friend were dug out of a nearby bomb shelter. No one would ever know that the papers were stolen. Willy split for Austria.

He could, with the papers, go anywhere, requisition guns and munitions, food and uniforms. He entered the underground, harassing the German Army with sabotage. His biggest coup was in 1944, when Hitler ordered a last stand at St. Anton. Tanks, cannons and supplies were brought in by train from Germany through the Arlberg Tunnel, and the guns were being dug into the lower slopes of St. Anton—where today there are ski slopes. Willy blew up the tunnel with a box of dynamite and for the rest of the winter, from his hideout on the Valluga mountain, watched German troops struggle over the Arlberg Pass.

After the war Willy fished out a few top Nazis who were hiding in Austria and managed to land his old job at Garmisch, ski instructing American troops. One of his students was General George C. Patton. They became friends and Patton helped Willy, who had been living for two years on forged identifications, to receive official papers and the goodwill of the U.S. military.

World War II is history; the emotions of that period are lost on the younger generation. Yet perhaps it is the residue of that period of hardship that has forged this particular generation gap, the difference between the easygoing young American ski racers and the older, German-born, adopted American. Willy developed, in his younger days in Bavaria, as an independent thinker who believed in self-determination and who loved to ski. His beliefs, and they were as strong as are the anti-Vietnam war protests of the youth today, turned him into a rebel against authority, the establishment, draft, right-wingers. He developed his own philosophy, survived against the odds, and became a person who dislikes criticism and who is uncompromising in his beliefs. When he was twenty-one, the average age of the American ski racer, he was, because of his independent, outspoken attitude, digging ditches in a concentration camp. In fact, Willy, a German who sabotaged the war effort of his own country, has all the qualities that the young Americans think are so cool. The difference is that Willy was nearly killed a number of times because he adhered to what he thought was correct. Discipline and physical stamina and the will to win, or survive—that which he hopes to instill in his young American skiers—kept him alive. Money, prestige, security were luxuries he never knew in his youth. 

Willy Schaeffler was elected to the U.S. Ski Hall of Fame in 1974. After repeated cardiac surgeries, his heart gave out in 1988. He was 72 years old.

Peter Miller joined Life Magazine as a writer/photographer in 1959 and went on to write and shoot for dozens of national magazines, including Sports Illustrated and, from 1965 to 1988, SKI. He has written ten books. In 1994 he received ISHA’s Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism.

A new and improved bidding process might give Utah the edge.

Salt Lake City, which hosted the Winter Olympics in 2002, has begun a bid process to bring back the Games as early as 2030, according to Susanne Lyons, chair of the United States Olympic and Paralympic Committee (USOPC).

“We are already in dialogue with the IOC–not yet for a specific year,” Lyons said at the USOPC’s press conference in Beijing, per Reuters press coverage. “Depending on what the needs of the overall Olympic movement are, that could happen as early as 2030 or it could happen after that.” Park City officials held a public meeting on February 15 to hear proposals from the Utah Olympic Legacy Foundation.

After criticism of its bidding process, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) is working to streamline the process. With costs soaring and public support waning, the IOC now prefers previous host cities with venues already in place. This gives Salt Lake an edge, Lyons indicated.

Vancouver, which hosted the 2010 Winter Games, has also expressed interest, as has 1972 host Sapporo. Public opinion in both cities appears split over proposed budgets around $2.5 billion. The Barcelona-Pyrenees region has also prepared a bid.

Host-city hesitance became evident with the 2024 Summer Games: Of five initial bids, only Paris and Los Angeles stuck it out. With no alternatives, the IOC gave Paris the 2024 event and L.A. got 2028. Only one city bid for the 2032 Summer Games: Brisbane, Australia got the IOC nod by default.

By the numbers, the 2022 Beijing Games hosted 2,900 athletes over 109 competitions. While reusing some venues from the 2008 Summer Games, Beijing still reported costs of $4 billion for Olympic-specific necessities. That doesn’t include new permanent infrastructure, such as the $9 billion high-speed rail line linking Beijing to the two Olympic-venue ski resorts. After the athletes leave, the high-speed train remains. Will tourist traffic make it pay? No one knows.

Approving 10-figure budgets is a tough sell these days for host cities, especially with reports of chronic corruption tainting the awarding process. Oslo, Norway, reported a 55 percent voter opposition to hosting the 2022 Winter Games, and pulled out of the bidding process.

In order to attract more host cities, the IOC no longer requires elaborate bid proposals costing millions of dollars. Instead of holding multiple votes to thin the candidates, the IOC now works to identify a “preferred bidder” and positions itself as a partner in the process.

IOC’s new focus on cities with existing venues appears to be working. The Paris 2024 Summer Olympics, per press reports, will be 95 percent staged in venues that already exist. More than 90 percent of the events for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Games will be held at venues already in place.

As Lyons noted, the USOPC hopes that gives Salt Lake a leg up—both with the IOC and with the local community. “Salt Lake City has made it very clear to our partners at the IOC that they are ready and able to go as soon as we are needed,” Lyons said. –Greg Ditrinco

Dave Ryding, meet Mouse Cleaver

When, on January 22, Dave Ryding aced the Hahnenkamm slalom to become the first British skier to win a World Cup race, he joined an exclusive club. Ninety-one years ago, another Brit, Gordon “Mouse” Cleaver, won the very first Hahnenkamm combined trophy.

At the time (March, 1931), Austrian skiers were astonished that they’d been bested by an Englishman who wasn’t even a member of the British team (they assumed he hadn’t qualified, and that the “team” skiers must be even better.). That “team” consisted of members of the Kandahar and Downhill-Only Ski Clubs from Mürren and Wengen. Cleaver’s combined victory was based on finishing ninth in the downhill and second on a slalom course set by Bill Bracken, winner of the first-ever Lauberhorn slalom and combined held in February 1930.

No British subject topped a podium again in a premier race until Ryding’s victory. Konrad Bartelski came close, with a second-place finish in the 1981 Val Gardena downhill. The Scot Alain Baxter claimed bronze in slalom at the 2002 Salt Lake Olympics—only to have his medal revoked after a still-controversial drug test.

Mouse Cleaver joined the RAF in 1937 and became an ace, flying Hurricanes in France and in the Battle of Britain. In August 1940, his canopy was shattered by gunfire, sending plastic shards into his face and eyes. Near blind, he bailed out. He never flew again. While Cleaver lost the right eye entirely, and most of the sight in his left, an ophthalmologist noted that the plastic fragments didn’t inflame his eyes. This insight led to the invention of plastic lens implants. –Seth Masia

Snapshots in Time

1952 Heaven on Earth
When warm winds and spring sunshine put an end to skiing in the rest of the U.S., the season is just beginning at New Hampshire’s Tuckerman Ravine. Although there are none of the usual comforts available to skiers, such as warming huts and ski towns, Tuckerman skiers have other compensations. As the sun gets warmer in the valley, it turns the icy crust to crumbly “corn” snow, and skiing on “corn” is considered by fanatics as close to heaven as they will get on earth. — “Spring Skiing,” Life Magazine (March 10, 1952)

1968 Dial a Run
A new 24-hour telephone service for the latest ski reports is in operation. By dialing LY 4-7500 skiers can obtain information on snow conditions in the East, including New York, New Jersey, Vermont, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The service is supported by the New York-New Jersey American Motors Dealers Association. — “24-Hour Phone Service Offers Latest Ski Reports” (New York Times, December 24, 1968)

1975 Biting Commentary
As a dentist living and practicing in a ski-oriented community, I treat hundreds of adolescents who are ski enthusiasts. For many years I have had SKI and Skiing magazines in my waiting room for my young patients to read. Your February article “The American Pros” is so electrifying with bar-room language, however, that I had to cut out most of the pages. — David R. Williams, Boulder, Colorado, “Take the Teeth Out of It” (Letters, SKI Magazine, September 1975)

1980 Redford’s One Run Too Many

I always make the mistake of skiing past what I should in terms of my fatigue. I’ll take a run right after the run that’s been so perfect, but the legs just won’t hold up and you won’t be quite as quick. Then you get mad so you go back and do it again to prove you can do it and you’re worse yet. —Robert Redford, “Who is that Guy?” (Powder Magazine,
November 1980)

1990 Easiest Way to Improve

Probably the single most common mistake skiers make is believing that their skis don’t need to be waxed. Properly waxing your skis is the easiest way to improve their performance on the slopes. New skis are normally iron waxed at the shop where they were purchased. If not, you can wax them at home. —Jim Deines, “Tuning Tips” (Skiing Magazine, February 1990)

1996 The Revolution Starts Now

Promises are cheap, but are they believable? Well, this time it’s true. The Shaped Ski Revolution is here and it will make skiing more fun. It’s a revolution that will free thousands of skiers from the drudgery of the skidded turn, and thousands more will ski longer, stronger and faster. —Jackson Hogen, “Revolution” (Snow Country, October 1996)

Did a foggy slalom course on a French mountainside tarnish the coronation of skiing’s king?

If history follows form at this month’s Olympic games, a controversy is sure to erupt, whether it’s whispers of non-regulation skis or a suddenly strapping racer using pills to pump up. But nothing is likely to eclipse the dispute at the Winter Olympics 38 years ago, which fueled newspaper headlines around the world. Was a race jury right to have disqualified Karl Schranz—Austria’s greatest racer of the era—in the slalom, allowing France’s Jean-Claude Killy to win his third gold medal, instantly turning the handsome Frenchman into a skiing legend? 

Photo top: Jean-Claude Killy congratulates Karl Schranz on winning the 1968 Olympic slalom. The race jury later disqualified Schranz’s second run, giving the gold to Killy. To this day, Schranz contends he won. Courtesy SKI Magazine.

The previous winter, Killy had dominated the new World Cup circuit, winning an astounding 12 of 17 races, making him the heavy favorite at the 1968 Grenoble Games. He won gold in the first two races—the downhill and the giant slalom—leading up to the historic slalom competition. 

On race day, thick fog enshrouded the course, occasionally lifting to allow a lucky racer to see ahead. Many officials thought the two-run race should be canceled. But the closing ceremony, with its television coverage, was set for the next day. 

In the first run, Killy recorded the fastest time, but Schranz was less than six-tenths of a second back, setting the stage for the final run. Killy started first. 

“At gates 17 to 20, the fog was tremendous, Killy told me a few years ago. “I slowed almost to a walk. Schranz didn’t even finish. He stopped below gates 19 and 20, claiming that an official had crossed his path. He demanded another run. In his retry, Schranz recorded a combined time a half-second faster than Killy’s, but race officials quickly disqualified the second run. The Austrians protested.

As the crowd awaited the race jury’s decision, Schranz proclaimed himself the victor. Killy, meanwhile, sat with friends, trainers and reporters, drinking champagne to celebrate his two gold medals. After several hours, the jury ruled: Schranz was disqualified. France’s new hero had completed his gold-medal hat trick after all.

Schranz’s reaction was immediate. “If Killy were sportsmanlike, he would refuse the gold medal, he declared. The Austrian would never compete in another Olympics. Now a St. Anton innkeeper, he continues to believe he was robbed in the fog on French snow. 

Excerpted from the February 2006 issue of SKI. John Fry (1930-2020) was editorial director of SKI and Snow Country magazines and longtime president, then chairman, of ISHA. He authored the award-winning book The Story of Modern Skiing. His final book, published posthumously, is Abandon Foolish Scheme: Deathly encounters that you won’t find in bestsellers about dying.

In Brattleboro, Vermont, ski jumping remains a popular tradition.

In 1909, Dartmouth junior Fred Harris, of Brattleboro, Vermont, founded the Dartmouth Outing Club. That same winter he leaped from a primitive ski jump for the first time, according to the new book Harris Hill Ski Jump, the First 100 years.

Photo above: Some 10,000 spectators encouraged 160 athletes at the 1951 National Championships.

“Broke my skis to pieces,” Harris wrote in his diary. He grabbed another pair and tried again. “Fell twice,” he recorded. “Tried several times, and at last made it. Hurrah! Twice. Oh, ye Gods!”

That tenacity led to the construction of the Brattleboro Ski Jump, which Harris organized (and paid for) in 1922. The jump cost $2,200 to construct and was completed one week before its first competition, during which Bing Anderson, of Berlin, New Hampshire, set a New England distance record, at 48.5 meters (158 feet). Later that year, the hill hosted the Vermont State Ski Jumping Championships, followed by the National Championships in 1923. Over the century, the hill has hosted 18 national and regional championships.

In 1924 the wood-trestle inrun was increased in height and Henry Hall raised the hill record to 55 meters. Improvements in 1941 brought the hill up to the 90-meter standard, and Torger Tokle jumped 68 meters. Structural improvements, including a steel tower, followed in the post-war years.

The jump was rechristened the Harris Hill Ski Jump during the 1951 National Ski Jumping Championships, which drew a crowd of 10,000 spectators cheering more than 160 jumpers. In 1985, Mike Holland jumped 186 meters for a new world record. The following year, with the help of Mt. Snow, the hill got a snowmaking system.

By 2005, the hill no longer met international standards for profile or structural integrity and shut down. Over the next three years the community raised $600,000 to upgrade and meet FIS requirements for 90-meter Continental Cup events. In 2011, Harris Hill hosted the first FIS ski jumping tournament in the United States.

Over its long history, Harris Hill has considered itself a progressive operation, looking to promote ski jumping for everyone. For instance, it took the International Olympic Committee until the 2014 Sochi Games to allow female jumpers. The Brattleboro-based jump beat that by 66 years; Dorothy Graves competed there in 1948.

The hill record stands at 104 meters (341 feet), set by Slovenian Blaz Pavlic in 2017. The centennial competition is scheduled for February 19-20.

“The jump provided heroics for all to see,” winter sports historian and Skiing History contributor John B. Allen notes in the 100th anniversary book. “It really did seem that a man could fly.” 

Dating back to 1928, the biennial Winter University Games will return to Lake Placid in 2023.

The 2021 World University Winter Games, scheduled for Lucerne, Switzerland, last December, were canceled due to pandemic-related travel restrictions. Lake Placid, New York, is set to host the next edition of the biennial winter games in January 2023.

The idea for the Games emerged from the 1891 Universal Peace Congress in Rome, which proposed a series of international student conferences that would include sports events. While the conferences never happened, the concept led Frenchman Jean Petitjean and modern Olympics founder Pierre de Coubertin to create the International Universities Championships, hosted by the Confédération Internationale des Étudiants (CIE). Summer games were held in Paris (1923), Prague (1925), Rome (1927), Paris (1928), Darmstadt (1930), Turin (1933), Budapest (1935), Paris (1937), and Monaco (1939), and then were halted by World War II. A number of “winter” events were actually summer games held in September.

In the autumn of 1924, Walter Amstutz, Willy Richardet and Hermann Gurtner held the first meeting of the Swiss Academic Ski Club (SAS), and over the next three years organized downhill and slalom races between Swiss and international university teams in Mürren, Wengen and St. Moritz. In 1928 these races culminated in the First International Academic Winter Games, in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy. Because the event was endorsed by the CIE, many consider the Cortina races to be the progenitor of the Winter Universiade. The 1928 downhill and slalom were organized by SAS president Gurtner; both races were won by André Roch. The Academic Winter Games were held five more times before World War II, from 1933 on in odd-numbered years to avoid conflict with the Winter Olympics and FIS World Championships.

The Games were restarted in 1947, but soon afterwards the CIE disbanded, and successors arose on either side of the Iron Curtain. Western countries formed the International University Sports Federation (FISU) in 1949, while Eastern European nations had their own Union Internationale des Étudiants (UIE). The two groups held their own rival summer and winter games until 1957, when Petitjean was able to hold a summer games in Paris, including Soviets and a token team of six Americans. Thus was revived the term Universiade, implying that students of all nations could compete.

The first post-war Winter Universiade was held in Chamonix in 1960. Charles de Gaulle opened the ceremonies, with 151 athletes from 16 countries participating in 13 events in five sports. Thereafter, games were held in Europe on a two-year schedule, and the Seventh Winter Universiade came to Lake Placid in 1972.

The small village in New York’s Adirondack Mountains had hosted the 1932 Winter Olympics. After World War II, facing vigorous wintersports growth in New England and Colorado, the resort town lost its luster. Locals saw international sporting events as a route to reinvigorating the economy, and in 1960 they launched a new Olympic Organizing Committee.

Rebuffed in its initial attempts to gain a second Olympic bid, the organizers looked for alternatives. By the late 1960s, it appeared that Denver would be the U.S. choice to host the next winter Olympics. The best alternative multi-sport international competition was the World University Winter Games. While some upgrades were necessary, Lake Placid had the competition and hospitality facilities in place. All the town needed was money.

National federations balked at the cost to fly teams across the Atlantic. With the backing of New York State, Lake Placid offered a package including round-trip airfare, busing from Montreal, lodging in Lake Placid, and breakfast and dinner daily. The total price for participants: $324 per person. The deal was done. 

Opening ceremonies were held February 26, 1972. There would be 25 competitions in seven sports: Alpine and Nordic skiing, biathlon, ski jumping, figure skating, speed skating and hockey. There were 351 athletes from 23 countries. The games were just a few weeks after the close of the 1972 Winter Olympics. While there was some overlap, most participants had not competed in the Sapporo Games. 

The start of the Universiade was not exactly what organizers had planned. The opening parade from the Lake Placid Club to the outdoor arena at the speed-skating oval got a late start, leaving spectators restless in the evening cold. “There was a lot of horseplay,” recalled Jim Rogers, local ceremonies chief. By the time the athletes entered the arena, discipline had given way to youthful exuberance. The Italian team commandeered a sleigh and circled the oval while singing songs. The torch bearer was American skier James Miller. As he ascended the podium, oil from the torch he was carrying spilled, and the sleeve of his wool sweater caught fire. He was able to slap down the flame and light the cauldron—but it was an inauspicious start to the ceremony. Richard Nixon was busy, concluding his historic trip to China and sent a brief message read from the podium. New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller was a no-show. “The wonderful part of the opening ceremonies was the brevity of the speeches,” noted one local newspaper columnist. 

The competitions went off as scheduled. Arrangements for athletes were praised. The major issue was weather: spring came early. Roby Politi, village native and two-time All-American skier, remembers temperatures going from “cold to warm to cold to warm, to even warmer.” Temperatures, below zero at the opening ceremonies, at one point reached 58 degrees Fahrenheit. “I remember ruts a foot deep on the course,” says Politi, who finished 20th in the giant slalom. It was worse for the Nordic skiers and speed skaters, who raced on slush. 

U.S. athletes finished a distant second in the overall medal count with seven, behind 29 won by Soviet students. The best American skiing result was turned in by Stanford University’s Caryn West, who took the overall Alpine gold medal. Canadian Lisa Richardson won the women’s downhill by 3/100th of a second. 

In his final report to the FISU organizers, Austrian official Prof. Werner Czisiek noted “the Winteruniversiade 1972 in Lake Placid must be called a great success.” He enthused about the logistics of transportation and efforts “to arrange different activities to bring people into contact with people of other nations.” 

The successful 1972 Games proved to be a key factor a couple of years later, when Denver withdrew from hosting the 1976 Winter Olympics. Innsbruck stepped up as the replacement and Lake Placid, with facilities and organization in place, was selected for 1980.

And so Lake Placid will get the centennial Universiade to number 30 in the winter series (it would have been 31 had the Lucerne events taken place). More than 1,600 athletes, ages 17 to 25, from more than 50 countries and 600 universities are expected to compete in 86 medal events in 12 sports over 11 days. It will be only the second time the Winter Games have been held in the United States. (Buffalo, New York, hosted the summer version of these games in 1993.)

New York State, through its Olympic Regional Development Authority (ORDA), has invested more than $300 million to upgrade its winter sports venues. All facilities now meet international competition standards.

Phil Johnson is the longtime ski columnist for the Daily Gazette in Schenectady, New York.

SNAPSHOTS IN TIME (OLYMPIC EDITION)

1931 French Wine vs.Prohibition Paris—The French athlete’s wine is so important an item of his training diet that the government will be asked when Parliament meets next week to seek permission for the Olympic team going to Lake Placid, N.Y., to take wine along. Deputy Poittevin served notice today that he would ask the Premier to intercede with the American Government so that the skaters and skiers might have the “necessary rational ingredient of their training regime.” — “French Deputy Wants U.S. to Permit Wine to be Brought Here by Olympic Athletes” (New York Times, November 5, 1931)

1960 Pedal to the Metal During the 1959-60 season, the French ski manufacturer that supplied the national team had provided Jean Vuarnet with wooden skis that he found far too flexible. “It was a disaster,” Vuarnet said. “So I went to their factory in Voiron and had a good look around. I came across a pair of metal skis that were just my size. They’d been tossed aside but they looked okay to me. I took them and tried them out in the Émile Allais Cup in Megève. One of the skis got bent but I still managed to finish fifth. So I called the manufacturer and asked them to send me a new pair because the [1960] Games were coming up.” Vuarnet became the first skier in Olympic history to win gold on metal skis. — “Vuarnet Takes Downhill Skiing to the Next Level” (Olympics.Com, February 1960)

1972 Colorado Olympic DNF Denver—The Olympic torch will not be passed to the Rocky Mountains in 1976, top organizers of the Winter Games said Tuesday after voters in Colorado cut off state funds for the event. Clifford Buck, of Denver, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, said, “Needless to say, it is a tremendous disappointment to me. I think it’s a tragedy for the state, and a tragedy for the nation that the people of Colorado were not aware of the great privilege and great honor to host the 1976 Winter Games. But the majority has spoken.” — “Voters Reject ‘Privilege’”(Eugene Register-Guard, November 8, 1972)

1992 Olympic Training, the Tomba Way At five o’clock, Tomba will get down to the serious business of training, but for the moment nothing is more important than enjoying the last days of summer lolling on the beach in the company of a lovely teenage girl whom he met while serving as a judge for the Miss Italy contest. — Patrick Lang, “The Road to Alberto-ville” (Skiing Magazine, January 1992.)

2006 Golden Aamodt Sestriere Borgata, Italy—Someone said if you looked at his media guide picture without knowing he was a skier, you’d think he were a bank president. Yet, Norway’s Kjetil Andre Aamodt made more Olympic history at Sestriere Borgata when, out of the 25th start—he zipped down in 1 minute, 30:65 seconds and made it stand up against Austria’s Hermann Maier, who finished .13 of a second back—he won the gold in the super-giant slalom. Aamodt came to Turin as the all-time alpine leader in medals with seven. Now he has eight. — Chris Dufresne, “Norway’s Aamodt shocks in super-G” (The Baltimore Sun, February 19, 2006)

2010 Peak Performance For the athletes, the Olympics, as he described them, were a festival of internationalism and frenzied liaising—“It’s a Small World” meets Plato’s Retreat. The impression I got was of an Athletes Village teeming with specimens of youth and fitness, avid men and women who’d spent their ripest years engaged in fierce, self-denying pursuit of peak physical performance, and who now, mostly after they’d competed, could throw off their regimens, inhibitions, and sweats, and pair off, with Olympic vigor and agility. It changed the way I watched the Games. And it made me wish I’d worked a little harder in practice. — Nick Paumgarten, “The Ski Gods” (The New Yorker, March 15, 2010)