Competition

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)

What to Expect When You're Inspecting

By Edith Thys Morgan

When Alpine skiing athletes head to the Beijing Olympics, they will do so with an unprecedented lack of knowledge about the venue. While Nordic and freestyle events will be contested at known recreational venues in the Zhangjiakou Competition Zone, 140 miles from Beijing, the Alpine events will be in the more mountainous Yanqing Zone. Remote Xiaohaituo Mountain, 55 miles northwest of Beijing, receives little, if any, natural snowfall. All of its facilities, including the race trails designed by Bernhard Russi, were constructed for the Games.

It is not unusual to build a venue explicitly for the Olympics, nor for athletes to have had limited exposure to the venue. Ideally, however, FIS holds at least one World Cup test event in the year prior or, failing that, a Continental Cup–level competition. In 1988, for example, the Nakiska resort was built to host Calgary’s Alpine events, and in the season before the Games it hosted women’s NorAm and men’s World Cup competitions. New venues in both Sochi and PyeongChang hosted World Cup races prior to the Games.

The Alpine venues for Beijing, however, have hosted no World Cup events because of the pandemic. The only test event was a series of FIS competitions with, at most, seven Chinese athletes—none of whom were World Cup level— in each event. They competed on a downhill course that was shortened from 890 meters drop to 470. Compounding the mystery is an air of secrecy surrounding every aspect of the Games. Those who have first-hand knowledge are tight-lipped to preserve their livelihoods, and information flows on a need-to-not-know basis.

WHY IT MATTERS

Test events accomplish many things. First, they give organizers a dry run  testing everything from the venue itself—things like terrain and safety features, snowmaking and course set—to the logistics of running a world-class skiing event. These include timing systems, course workers, safety protocols, schedules, transportation, access and many other processes.. Second, test events reveal which areas may need improvement or even wholesale change. Such was the case at PyeongChang’s Jeongseon Alpine Centre, where sections of the downhill course laid out in the summer were entirely reset after testing by top-level athletes. Terrain features, like the spectacular bumps that are typically built into new courses, can’t be called safe until run at race speed. Finally, testing also gives athletes a chance to become familiar with the courses, which can in turn help their preparation.

WHAT WE DO KNOW

Piecing together point-of-view footage and the venue’s topography—long, flattened ridges that run along spines, then dive down steep pitches—a few things are clear. Where it is steep, it is very steep—especially the 68-degree pitch out of the start and another sustained plunge with four full downhill turns. Those translate to high speeds—but how high, nobody knows. And where it is flat, especially in the narrow canyon runout at the bottom of the course, it is very flat.

The “Whiteface” section of the course may be an homage to the 1980 Olympic venue or to the prevailing temperatures. This past October the mercury dipped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind, as one visitor described, “blows like crazy.”

The snow is entirely man-made and will be, Russi promises, the consistency of concrete. This is a good thing to forestall course deterioration but will make it nearly impossible to reshape any terrain features after the forerunners give the course its first real test, a few days prior to the event.

EQUIPMENT CHALLENGES

The lack of testing presents a unique challenge for ski technicians. Typically, they arrive armed with their own experience plus a database of historical snow and weather conditions for the venue. In Beijing they will have nothing to go on but the data gleaned from previous skicross and snowboard events in Zhangjiakou’s “Secret Garden” —some 30 miles away—as well as climate and geographical information. Chemist Thanos Karydas, founder of Dominator wax, gathered winter data on the area: average annual snowfall of 5cm/2 inches, high winds, very low temperatures, sunny days and clear nights. He knew it would not be business as usual. Karydas explains, “The rule with wax is that it has to be harder than the snow,” to which he adds, “and everything that is in the snow.”

In this case, that includes heavy concentrations of clay and salt in the snowmaking water (piped in 7.5 km/4.6 miles from two reservoirs), as well as the sand blowing in from Mongolia and debris from the massive earthmoving during trail construction. Dominator formulated a special series of Beijing waxes for extreme cold temperatures, extremely aggressive snow and massive daily temperature swings due to sun exposure.

WHAT THE ATHLETES SAY

World Cup ski racers are trained by their sport to be adaptable, and in press interviews they have been mostly optimistic, seemingly comforted by the egalitarian lack of information and experience. In other words, nobody will have an advantage. Some have voiced concern over the restrictions and logistical hoops that are outlined in their International Olympic Committee-issued “playbooks” and gleaned from athletes who recently returned from China. Others, like Swiss downhill favorite Beat Feuz, sum up the understandable frustration of having a third straight Olympics in a place devoid of skiing culture and fans: “They’ve been great competitions,” Feuz said of Sochi in 2014 and PyeongChang in 2018, “but after Wengen and Kitzbühel, it’s a bit of a culture shock.” The lack of spectators experienced in Korea will be even more pronounced in Beijing, to which no international fans can travel. As far as soaking up Chinese culture, if November’s SkiX and SnowboardX test event is any indication, it will be muted by the reality that all of the Chinese nationals encountered—starting with the flight attendants on Air China—will be wearing hazmat suits and masks.

THE UPSIDES

Building a venue from scratch, and designing it for convenience with a huge budget, does have its advantages. The ski runs are a 10-minute gondola ride from the Olympic village, which skiers will share with bobsled, luge and skeleton athletes. Negligible winter precipitation bodes well for blue skies and eliminates cancelation due to snowstorms.

While new Olympic venues are famous for last-minute construction scrambles and shoddy finish work, the lodging and facilities were close to complete in November, as well as convenient, spacious and comfortable. The food, while unusual, improved with feedback.

One industry veteran of many Olympics came away from the November events with an optimistic approach, asking himself, “What can we learn? How can we adapt? What are some things we need to do next time we come back?”

His key takeaway for anyone packing? “Bring more coffee!”

In 1964, the Kokanee Glacier gave birth to Canada’s national ski team.

Canadians fared poorly at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck. Only Nancy Greene had a top-10 finish (seventh in downhill). In May 1964, former Canadian downhill champion Dave Jacobs, who had retired with a broken leg in 1961, wrote a letter to Bill Tindale, then president of the Canadian Amateur Ski Association (CASA), concluding: “We have some tough problems to solve which require some slightly revolutionary solutions.”

Jacobs had experienced firsthand Canada’s dysfunctional ski racing program and witnessed the hugely successful programs of European nations. France, Austria and Switzerland had full-time coaching staffs, dedicated national teams with scheduled training camps and established programs for younger skiers to advance to the national level.

Canadians, by contrast, trained at their own hills, then gathered for a selection camp before major international events. CASA would then hire a European coach to join the team when it arrived at the events. This arrangement seemed to work for brilliant skiers like Lucile Wheeler and Anne Heggtveit, but it wasn’t a plan for consistent success. When Jacobs and his Canadian teammates arrived in Germany en route to the 1958 World Championships in Bad Gastein, Austria, they had never even met their coach—German Mookie Causing—and Causing certainly knew nothing about the Canadians.

It was time, Jacobs said in his letter, for Canada to develop a national team program, in which skiers could attend university on scholarship and train year-round with a full-time coaching staff. Unbeknownst to him, a small group of forward-thinking individuals were already working on just such a program. In Montreal, Don Sturgess, chairman of CASA’s Alpine competition committee, and B.C.-based John Platt, vice-chairman, had already agreed that drastic changes were needed. Meanwhile, in Nelson, British Columbia, Notre Dame University (NDU) President Father Aquinas Thomas and athletic director Ernie Gare had just implemented Canada’s first university athletic scholarship program, for its hockey team.

The four men saw plenty of common ground that could benefit both CASA and NDU.

Sturgess replied to Jacobs’ letter, saying CASA was likely to set up a national program in Nelson that year and, by the way, would Jacobs be interested in the head coach job? Jacobs eventually accepted the offer, with half his $6,000 annual salary paid by the association and half by Notre Dame, where he was employed to teach freshman math. Peter Webster took a leave from his banking job to serve as pro bono team manager, although he did receive $1,800 annually from the university to also serve as dorm supervisor.

So in the summer of 1964 Jacobs and Webster welcomed 15 men and 10 women to their new homes—the dorm at NDU—where the intense East-versus-West rivalry eased and one truly national team evolved.

Jacobs introduced high-intensity dryland training in preparation for hikes to nearby Kokanee Glacier for summer training, an experience few team members would forget. “You had to carry all your stuff in this backpack, and it was at least a three-hour hike that was quite rugged,” recalls Andrée Crepeau. “When we got to the top, some of the girls were in these tiny cloth sneakers and there was a foot and a half of snow and it was dark, completely dark.”

“We had those Keds, little canvas shoes,” adds Nancy Greene. “We used to go and get them at Kresge’s for a dollar forty-nine. The second year we got running shoes.”

“The boys had gone ahead, so we at least had a path in the snow to follow,” continues Crepeau. “It was kind of scary, but really exciting, and when we finally got to the cabin, wow! We were all on the floor of the top floor, no mattresses, nothing, people farting, snoring. It was such an adventure. I was a shy, well-bred little girl. I had turned 17 a couple of months before so it was quite a discovery. I loved it.”

“Each morning at 6:00 a.m. we hiked, skis on our backs, up to the glacier,” says Barbie Walker. There, a cable drag-lift awaited them, with a gasoline engine powerful enough to haul only one skier at a time. Each skier carried a tow harness that clipped to the cable. “That came in very handy to use as a tourniquet when coach Bob Gilmour, wearing shorts, sliced his calf deeply,” Walker recalls. “That accident was at 10:00 a.m., and we built a tent shelter out of ski poles and jackets to shield him from the hot sun. Currie [Chapman] ran down to the parking lot where the buses say, but, alas, the porcupines had eaten the rubber tires. He had to run further, to Kaslo, only to discover the helicopter was in Cranbrook for repairs. Four hours after the accident, Bob was riding beneath a helicopter on his way to the hospital in Nelson.”

After a day of hiking and skiing, the reward was a swim in the frigid glacier lake, followed by a sauna, sort of. Keith Shepherd, Currie Chapman, Peter Duncan and Rod Hebron had found an old pot-belly stove that they incorporated into the makeshift sauna. “Three walls of plastic on a frame against a flat rock, with a flap for a door, made warming up after the swim enjoyable,” says Walker.

With all of the hiking and just the one-person lift, Crepeau said the skiers only got in about four runs a day. “I sort of said, what am I doing this for? Am I really going to learn something with four runs?” Indeed, the skiers did learn, and it showed in their results.

“We went to the first races in 1965 in Aspen,” Jacobs says. “Billy Kidd and Jimmy Heuga had just won their ’64 Olympic medals. And Peter Duncan, Nancy Greene, Bob Swan ... they pretty much cleaned those guys. Sports Illustrated wrote this big article, ‘Canadians Raid Aspen.’ And it took off from there.”

Jacobs left the team after the 1966 season to work for Bob Lange. In 1967, Greene won six individual races and the first-ever women’s overall World Cup title. A year later she defended that title and won Olympic gold and silver as well. At the time, critics said she would have won even without the program.

“For me it was the perfect situation,” Greene says from Sun Peaks Ski Resort, where she is director of skiing and operates Nancy Greene’s Cahilty Lodge along with husband, Al Raine, former head coach and program director of the national team. “I trained a lot with the guys, so I always had somebody around who was skiing better than I was, who was training harder, who I would have a hard time catching up to.”

Based on her success, the International Ski Federation awarded a 1968 World Cup race to her home hill, Red Mountain, in Rossland, British Columbia. It was the first World Cup held in Canada.

Greene retired after the 1968 season, at age 24. Al Raine took over as head coach. The program moved out of Nelson in 1969 when Raine and CASA decided the skiers needed more time on snow and less in classrooms.

But the groundwork had been laid, and the Nelson camp launched an intergenerational success story. First, Betsy Clifford became the 1970 FIS World Slalom Champion, and Kathy Kreiner the 1976 GS Olympic champion. Then Currie Chapman coached the Canadian women when Gerry Sorensen and Laurie Graham took gold and bronze in downhill at the 1982 World Championships, and Scott Henderson coached the men’s team that gave birth to the Crazy Canucks, including Steve Podborski’s World Cup downhill title in 1982 and, eventually, Ken Read’s on-snow success, followed by his longtime stewardship of Alpine Canada. 

Freelancer John Korobanik is former managing editor of the St. Albert Gazette, in St. Albert, Alberta.

The Original Team

Head coach Dave Jacobs
Manager Peter Webster

MEN
Gerry Rinaldi
Currie Chapman
Peter Duncan
Rod Hebron
Scott Henderson
Wayne Henderson
Bert Irwin
Jacques Roux
Dan Irwin
John Ritchie
Keith Shepherd
Gary Battistella
Bob Swan
Michel Lehmann
Bob Laverdure

WOMEN
Nancy Greene
Andrée Crepeau
Karen Dokka
Judi Leinweber
Emily Ringheim
Stephanie Townsend
Barbie Walker
Heather Quipp
Garrie Matheson
Jill Fish

Photo top of page:  Volkswagen contributed buses painted in national team colors and members all had a Canadian uniform. “We had never had everyone in the same uniform before,” says Jacobs. “Everyone had a sense of purpose. This was Canada’s national ski team. It gave everyone tremendous incentive.”

What to Expect When You're Inspecting

By Edith Thys Morgan

When Alpine skiing athletes head to the Beijing Olympics, they will do so with an unprecedented lack of knowledge about the venue. While Nordic and freestyle events will be contested at known recreational venues in the Zhangjiakou Competition Zone, 140 miles from Beijing, the Alpine events will be in the more mountainous Yanqing Zone. Remote Xiaohaituo Mountain, 55 miles northwest of Beijing, receives little, if any, natural snowfall. All of its facilities, including the race trails designed by Bernhard Russi, were constructed for the Games.

It is not unusual to build a venue explicitly for the Olympics, nor for athletes to have had limited exposure to the venue. Ideally, however, FIS holds at least one World Cup test event in the year prior or, failing that, a Continental Cup–level competition. In 1988, for example, the Nakiska resort was built to host Calgary’s Alpine events, and in the season before the Games it hosted women’s NorAm and men’s World Cup competitions. New venues in both Sochi and PyeongChang hosted World Cup races prior to the Games.

The Alpine venues for Beijing, however, have hosted no World Cup events because of the pandemic. The only test event was a series of FIS competitions with, at most, seven Chinese athletes—none of whom were World Cup level— in each event. They competed on a downhill course that was shortened from 890 meters drop to 470. Compounding the mystery is an air of secrecy surrounding every aspect of the Games. Those who have first-hand knowledge are tight-lipped to preserve their livelihoods, and information flows on a need-to-not-know basis.

WHY IT MATTERS

Test events accomplish many things. First, they give organizers a dry run  testing everything from the venue itself—things like terrain and safety features, snowmaking and course set—to the logistics of running a world-class skiing event. These include timing systems, course workers, safety protocols, schedules, transportation, access and many other processes.. Second, test events reveal which areas may need improvement or even wholesale change. Such was the case at PyeongChang’s Jeongseon Alpine Centre, where sections of the downhill course laid out in the summer were entirely reset after testing by top-level athletes. Terrain features, like the spectacular bumps that are typically built into new courses, can’t be called safe until run at race speed. Finally, testing also gives athletes a chance to become familiar with the courses, which can in turn help their preparation.

WHAT WE DO KNOW

Piecing together point-of-view footage and the venue’s topography—long, flattened ridges that run along spines, then dive down steep pitches—a few things are clear. Where it is steep, it is very steep—especially the 68-degree pitch out of the start and another sustained plunge with four full downhill turns. Those translate to high speeds—but how high, nobody knows. And where it is flat, especially in the narrow canyon runout at the bottom of the course, it is very flat.

The “Whiteface” section of the course may be an homage to the 1980 Olympic venue or to the prevailing temperatures. This past October the mercury dipped to 9 degrees Fahrenheit, and the wind, as one visitor described, “blows like crazy.”

The snow is entirely man-made and will be, Russi promises, the consistency of concrete. This is a good thing to forestall course deterioration but will make it nearly impossible to reshape any terrain features after the forerunners give the course its first real test, a few days prior to the event.

EQUIPMENT CHALLENGES

The lack of testing presents a unique challenge for ski technicians. Typically, they arrive armed with their own experience plus a database of historical snow and weather conditions for the venue. In Beijing they will have nothing to go on but the data gleaned from previous skicross and snowboard events in Zhangjiakou’s “Secret Garden” —some 30 miles away—as well as climate and geographical information. Chemist Thanos Karydas, founder of Dominator wax, gathered winter data on the area: average annual snowfall of 5cm/2 inches, high winds, very low temperatures, sunny days and clear nights. He knew it would not be business as usual. Karydas explains, “The rule with wax is that it has to be harder than the snow,” to which he adds, “and everything that is in the snow.”

In this case, that includes heavy concentrations of clay and salt in the snowmaking water (piped in 7.5 km/4.6 miles from two reservoirs), as well as the sand blowing in from Mongolia and debris from the massive earthmoving during trail construction. Dominator formulated a special series of Beijing waxes for extreme cold temperatures, extremely aggressive snow and massive daily temperature swings due to sun exposure.

WHAT THE ATHLETES SAY

World Cup ski racers are trained by their sport to be adaptable, and in press interviews they have been mostly optimistic, seemingly comforted by the egalitarian lack of information and experience. In other words, nobody will have an advantage. Some have voiced concern over the restrictions and logistical hoops that are outlined in their International Olympic Committee-issued “playbooks” and gleaned from athletes who recently returned from China. Others, like Swiss downhill favorite Beat Feuz, sum up the understandable frustration of having a third straight Olympics in a place devoid of skiing culture and fans: “They’ve been great competitions,” Feuz said of Sochi in 2014 and PyeongChang in 2018, “but after Wengen and Kitzbühel, it’s a bit of a culture shock.” The lack of spectators experienced in Korea will be even more pronounced in Beijing, to which no international fans can travel. As far as soaking up Chinese culture, if November’s SkiX and SnowboardX test event is any indication, it will be muted by the reality that all of the Chinese nationals encountered—starting with the flight attendants on Air China—will be wearing hazmat suits and masks.

THE UPSIDES

Building a venue from scratch, and designing it for convenience with a huge budget, does have its advantages. The ski runs are a 10-minute gondola ride from the Olympic village, which skiers will share with bobsled, luge and skeleton athletes. Negligible winter precipitation bodes well for blue skies and eliminates cancelation due to snowstorms.

While new Olympic venues are famous for last-minute construction scrambles and shoddy finish work, the lodging and facilities were close to complete in November, as well as convenient, spacious and comfortable. The food, while unusual, improved with feedback.

One industry veteran of many Olympics came away from the November events with an optimistic approach, asking himself, “What can we learn? How can we adapt? What are some things we need to do next time we come back?”

His key takeaway for anyone packing? “Bring more coffee!”

Eliasch to step back at Head, pledges to modernize race formats

Billionaire businessman Johan Eliasch was elected president of the International Ski Federation on June 4, pledging to re-energize competitive skiing with possible new race formats and more dynamic broadcasts.

Eliasch, the 25-year CEO of Head and an active environmentalist, was elected on the first ballot, with 65 of the 119 votes. In an online press conference, Eliasch told reporters “I think it shows the FIS family is ready for change. I always said, ‘If you want to keep things the way they are, I am not your candidate.’”

Each candidate made a 10-minute video presentation. Eliasch’s pitch included endorsements from Lindsey Vonn and Aksel Lund Svindal, both of whom raced on Head skis during their championship careers. Former U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry endorsed Eliasch’s candidacy, noting his position on the immediate need to address climate change.

Eliasch, 59, was born in Sweden but has lived in London since joining the private-equity firm Tufton in 1985. From 1999 to 2010 he held a variety of environmental-stewardship positions in the British Government, under both Labour and Conservative prime ministers. He acquired Head out of near-bankruptcy in 1995, at age 33, made it profitable within two years and took it public in 2000. Eliasch holds a master’s degree in engineering and put 3 percent of Head’s revenue into research and development. To back up his climate activism, in 2005 he established the Rainforest Trust and bought 400,000 acres (162,000 hectares) of Amazon forest, along with the company logging that land. He halted logging and replanted.

Eliasch runs Head out of its London office, but pledged during his campaign to leave his Head role if elected. “I will step down as chief executive of Head,” he said during the press conference. “And if there are any decisions which have potential conflict of interest, I will of course recuse myself.” He declined to say if he would divest his financial position in Head, according to Associated Press reports. “If we have phenomenal success for FIS, it will benefit all stakeholders,” he added.

Just the fifth FIS president in its 97-year history, Eliasch succeeds Gian Franco Kasper, who held the office since 1998 and leaves one year early. The next FIS election is scheduled next year after Eliasch oversees a majority of the medal events at the Beijing Winter Olympics in February 2022.

Rival candidates were former world downhill champion Urs Lehmann of Switzerland, former FIS secretary general Sarah Lewis of Britain (fired by Kasper last year) and FIS vice president Mats Årjes of Sweden, Kasper’s own choice. Lehmann and Årjes won elections for seats on the ruling FIS Council, which Eliasch will chair.

In his initial post-election news conference, Eliasch promised to give FIS’s 135 national associates more voice in decision-making and more opportunities to host events. He pledged to begin work “as soon as possible” on reviewing race formats. He also pledged to modernize FIS media policies by centralizing broadcast rights and expanding broadcasts across new media.

Halston on Netflix: How fashion came to the Olympics

The five-part Netflix series Halston, released in May, follows the American designer as he transforms his name into an international fashion empire. Not mentioned in the biopic is that Halston volunteered to create the U.S. Olympic Team uniforms for both the summer and winter games of Centennial Year 1976. That kicked televised Olympics into a fashion showcase: Levi Strauss signed up to do the uniforms in 1980 and 1984, and Ralph Lauren has done it every year since 2008—and will again for 2022 (in recent years Lauren has done suits for the opening and closing marches, while Nike has provided uniforms for medal ceremonies).

As the website Fashionista notes, the designers “imbued elements of national identity into their uniforms, projecting idealized American aesthetics intended to make an impact on the world stage at crucial moments in the nation’s history.”

It wasn’t always that way. The first international Olympic Games in 1896, in Athens, featured athletes wearing their own clothes or uniforms from their athletic clubs. At the first winter games, at Chamonix in 1924, American skaters wore white pants and sweaters with a stars-and-stripes shield on the chest. Thereafter the winter teams had uniforms composed variously of navy-blue warm-ups, white sweaters and pea coats.

Montgomery Ward produced Halston’s 1976 uniforms, without the official insignia, and sold the Olympic line in its catalog. Halston pocketed a percentage. The uniforms weren’t universally admired. “Opening Ceremony uniforms for the winter games included simple dark navy jackets with hoods worn with plain loose trousers, while podium outfits looked like simple leisure suits with turtleneck tops,” Fashionista reported. A letter in the New York Times called them a “disgrace to the team and affront to the nation.”

“Despite mixed reviews, Halston is definitely worth the binge,” Forbes reports. “It’s fun to travel back in time throughout the 1970s and ’80s.”

Where are they now? The first American to win a World Cup race starts a new life.

Photo above: Kiki at the World Cup GS in Val d'Isere, December 11, 1969. Popperfoto/Getty Images.

Blasting out of her driveway onto River Road in Hanover, N.H., Kiki Cutter on her bike looks every bit the “Bend Fireball” that she was known as in her prime. Cutter is intent on prepping for her fifth knee surgery in as many years by riding up and down the Connecticut River from the home she shares with Jason Densmore, her friend for five decades, and husband of four years. Head down, focused, determined, this is the woman who, in 1968, became the first American, man or woman, to win on skiing’s World Cup Tour. Over a short three-year career, her five wins were a record until Phil Mahre surpassed it 11 years later.

OFF TO THE RACES

Cutter grew up in Bend, Oregon, the fourth of Dr. Robert and Jane Cutter’s six children. She rode her horse to grade school from their 1,000-acre property, and in winters skied for the Bend Skyliners junior race program. Coach Frank Cammack, lumberman and national Nordic combined champ, taught his charges first and foremost to ski fast. “Every morning we would meet at the top of the mountain and we would scream down as fast as we could,” Cutter says. In those two to three runs before the mountain opened, Cutter fought all the boys to follow first behind Cammack. Among those young Skyliners, who as a group became a force in junior racing, was futuredownhiller Mike Lafferty. “I was at the lift first and she was second,” says Lafferty. “I don’t know if she ever beat me.” The two rode the lift together often and Lafferty remembers Cutter as “a great competitor who did everything full-tilt.”

Tough, kind-hearted and devoted, coach Cammack assumed an important role for Cutter when she was age 12 and her parents divorced. Cutter, already outspoken and independent, was now filled with anger. “She was an ornery brat under some circumstances and I didn’t hesitate to tell her that,” recalls Cammack. “When push came to shove she could really perform.” Cammack also appreciated the bigger picture, and what skiing could offer kids, especially young Kiki. “He saw what was happening with my family and directed my anger into skiing,” says Cutter. “He changed my life.”

At age 14, Cutter remembers sitting on the rocks at Mt. Bachelor, watching her U.S. Ski Team heroes—Heuga, Kidd, Barrows, Werner, Sabich—and wanting to be part of it. When she was invited to train with the team, at age 15, she caught the eye of Rossignol race room legend Gerard Rubaud, who gave Cutter her first pair of Rossi skis and started her lifelong relationship with the brand.

After winning the junior nationals downhill at age 17, in weather so severe it was said she “skied underneath the storm,” Cutter was named to the U.S. Ski Team, but not to the 1968 Olympic squad. Seven women were named to that squad in the spring of 1967. The following season, however, they had a few nagging injuries, and fewer good results. After Christmas, coach Bob Beattie brought three youngsters—Cutter, Judy Nagel and Erica Skinger—to Europe, hoping to spark some pre-Olympic fire in his team.
A WHIRLWIND TOUR

“Ferocious,” “tough,” “ornery,” “in-your-face” are all words teammate Karen (Budge) Eaton uses to describe Cutter’s loud entrance. “She made me laugh, and she fought back,” says Eaton, referring to Cutter’s liftline assertiveness, and how the rookie famously chided French superstar Marielle Goitschel to speed up or get out of the way on a training run. “She taught me how to be tougher and more aggressive,” adds Eaton. “We all got better.”

Despite their inexperience and poor start numbers, the youngsters immediately made a mark, and none more so than Cutter. She scored two seventh place finishes, then a second and third place, earning a spot, along with Nagel, on the Grenoble Olympic team.

Cutter was the only U.S. woman to ski all three events, placing as the top American in downhill, despite a bout with measles that the press never confirmed. Later that season, Cutter became the first American to win a World Cup race, taking the slalom at Kirkerudbakken, Norway. At the awards ceremony she was congratulated by King Olav V, and came home to a caravan welcome in Bend.

In an era when news stories referred to women as “girls,” called one champion skier “a hefty lass” and referred to the “good looks of the ski damsels,” the press loved the spirited Cutter. Dubbed by the French team “La Dangereuse Américaine,” she was simply “Kiki” in the local Oregon headlines. Elsewhere Cutter was described as a “105-pound fireball,” “fiercely tiny,” “pocket-sized,” “pixie-like” and “no bigger than a bar of soap.” Sports Illustrated asserted that Cutter “belies her ladylike cuteness with a fighting temperament,” and called her “the embodiment of the American skiing spirit.”

Much of this lives in scrapbooks kept by Cutter’s mother, Jane, who then lived in Geneva, Switzerland. Also preserved are letters from Kiki to Jane, recounting her travels, conveying how much she missed her, and defending her choice to interrupt her studies at the University of Oregon to commit to ski racing. Racing in Europe allowed Kiki and Jane to reunite, and provided a home base that was a respite for Kiki and her closest friend, Judy Nagel. Traveling by train with all their gear, as ski racers did then, was “a blast, that never felt like a job,” but was nonetheless exhausting.

Cutter notched three more victories in 1969, two slalom and one GS. She finished that season fourth in the overall World Cup standings, and second in slalom, while teammate Marilyn Cochran won the GS title. The following season, despite struggling with early season injuries, she managed to score her fifth World Cup win (and 12th podium) in St. Gervais, France, and many assumed her best years were ahead of her. But she had different ideas: “I was pretty burnt out and it wasn’t fun anymore,” she says. She quit in 1970, at age 20. Nagel quit the following year, with three victories, at age 19.

EARLY (AND BRIEF) RETIREMENT

Part of Cutter’s decision was the tense atmosphere on the U.S. Ski Team. Created by Beattie ten years earlier, the team was still establishing itself. Another major factor was that, to her mother’s displeasure, she had started dating Beattie, who in April 1969 had been ousted from the U.S. Ski Team. They married in July 1970.

At the 1972 Sapporo Olympics, which might have been Cutter’s Olympic moment, she attended as a spectator, while Beattie commentated for ABC-TV. She remembers Barbara Ann Cochran’s gold medal–winning performance: “I watched from afar and she made every turn perfect--so low down to the ground. I remember watching her and how proud I was of her.” Cutter says she was not a bit envious. “It was over for me.”

Cutter started racing on the pro tour, Beattie’s 1970 creation. She described the women’s competition as “a frill to the men’s race,” where the women were “stuck in after the men made their big ruts.” Cutter suffered her first serious injury in a collision off the six-foot-plus bump at Hunter Mountain.

While Beattie was traveling, a group of kids from Aspen High School asked Cutter to coach them. She would later coach junior skiers at Sunlight, and tennis at Colorado Rocky Mountain School. Working with kids was rewarding—especially with the rebels. She could redirect their energy positively, as Cammack had done for her. “Those were periods of my life I absolutely loved,” she says.

Meanwhile, the marriage with Beattie, who was often on the road, was not going well. “What can I say about it? It happened,” Cutter offers. Their life in New York, where Beattie did much of his work, was especially chaotic. “I don’t think we ever had dinner alone together. I hated it.” They divorced after two and a half tumultuous years.

STARTING OVER

Cutter emerged with nothing but a condo in Snowmass (with two mortgages), and her name. She needed to make a living, doing whatever she could.

She soon teamed up with Mark McCormack of International Management Group, Jean Claude Killy’s agent and Beattie’s archrival. McCormack secured endorsements for Cutter with Nutrament, Ovaltine and Ray Ban, and was instrumental in getting her into the lucrative ABC Superstars competitions in 1975 and ’76. She excelled, thanks to months of intensive multi-sport training. In writing about that event for his 1976 book Sports in America, James Michener called Cutter “the best athlete pound for pound of the whole excursion, men or women.” When Martina Navratilova was heard to say “Who needs this?” of the grueling competition and training required to win the $30,000 purse, Cutter responded, “I do!”

Other endorsements she got on her own, including Busch CitySki, and citizen race clinics through the Equitable Life Family Ski Challenge. After her second knee injury racing on the Women’s Pro Ski Tour (started in 1978), Cutter reserved her competition for dominating the tamer celebrity events. She won the Legends of Skiing GS in 1987 and the initial Tournament of Champions series in 1990. Throughout, Cutter kept up her relationship with Rossignol, leading the women’s clinics they started. In 1994 she took on the role as Ritz-Carlton’s Ski Ambassador.

Cutter supplemented her promotional business by producing special inserts for SKI Magazine that doubled as on-site programs at World Cup events, and also hosted a monthly “Ask Kiki” column in SKI. She founded The Spirit of Skiing, a nationally televised fundraising event for People magazine, where the ski and celebrity world convened to raise money for ovarian and prostate cancer. Cutter was elected to the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1993 and to the Colorado Ski Hall of Fame in 1998.

BACK TO BEND

After 30 years in Aspen, Cutter returned to Bend in 2000. There, she parlayed her publishing experience into her own magazine venture, Bend Living. The hefty quarterly averaged 160 glossy pages, filled with premium editorial, ads and photography, and became the top selling publication in central Oregon, winning awards for both design and editorial. It was a perfect fit for Bend, which was experiencing a spectacular real estate boom.

Managing the magazine and 14 employees was also an enormous amount of work, and all-consuming for Cutter, who took no time off. “It goes right back to why she was good at ski racing,” says Lafferty. “Her competitive nature is what carried her through.” In 2008 the financial crisis, and the collapse of the real estate market, hit publishing—and Bend—especially hard. As advertisers reneged on their agreements, and the magazine struggled for cash, Cutter scrambled to get loans and enforce contract payments. Eventually, however, the magazine folded, leaving her in substantial debt. “I had never experienced a loss like that,” says Cutter, who felt that she had failed her employees and her town. Once again, she faced rebuilding her life.

NEW LIFE AND AN OLD LOVE

It was just around then that Jason Densmore got in touch. The two knew each other from their days in Aspen, when Jason (former member of the U.S. Nordic Combined team) owned a woodstove store, The Burning Log. Then, each of them had been in other relationships, but they became friends and had stayed in touch. As her business was folding, so, too, was his marriage. While consoling each other they realized that rather than trying to resurrect a marriage and a business, they could instead try starting something new. They did, and it was a life together. Kiki moved across the country with Jason in 2010, to his home in Hanover, New Hampshire. The two have lived there ever since, marrying in 2017. After selling properties in Colorado and Oregon she is now debt free, and the couple has time to enjoy the outdoors with their shared menagerie of animals that match their demeanors. The terrier and cat are Kiki’s. The retriever is Jason’s.

Looking back on what she is proud of, there are the ski racing accomplishments, but what resonates more are the less celebrated products of her lifelong hard work, like the magazine and helping others, as when coaching rebellious teens. When asked what she is proudest of in her life, Kiki responds without hesitation: “Jason. I truly have been blessed, starting with Frank [Cammack] and then with Jason.” Whatever comes next, Cutter, now officially Densmore, will live by one of her friend Jimmie Heuga’s favorite mantras: “Keep on keepin’ on.” 

Ski racers take extreme measures to get—and keep—a winning boot. 

Ingemar Stenmark spent almost his entire World Cup career in Caber’s blue Alfa boot (top of page). He ran his first World Cup race, at age 17, in 1973. The Alfa was introduced in 1974, and Stenmark won his first slalom championship in 1975. Caber killed production of the Alfa in 1979, but when he ran his last World Cup race in March 1989, Stenmark still wore a banged-up pair of Alfas. Cindy Nelson, another Caber devotee, held onto her Alfas past her own retirement in 1985.

That kind of loyalty isn’t exceptional. Dozens of racers swore by the original Nordica Grand Prix, introduced in 1972 and gone from the market by 1976. But over the next decade, Nordica was forced to run off a few dozen pair each year to keep its contracted racers happy. Into the 1990s, guys like Felix McGrath were still scrounging around for original-stock examples of the GP. “When you get a pair of boots right, you don’t want to give it up,” he says. “There was something about that plastic that I preferred.” McGrath could nurse a pair of GP shells through two seasons, and he learned to grind and shape each new-old shell to fit. Eventually, in 1999, Nordica revived the GP design elements to produce the Dobermann—a boot still in production today.

Boot loyalty isn’t just a matter of athlete conservatism. Racers, and their boot-fitters, work hard to perfect performance and fit, a process that can take weeks or months of trial-by-error. Once victory is achieved in a customized boot, no racer wants to repeat the laborious process starting with a different model.

The objective of all the work: Get the boot shell to fit as closely as possible, often by squeezing feet into boots one or two sizes too small, with flex, cant and forward lean precisely calibrated. No cushy liners allowed to accommodate the bony protrusions of a particular foot, because a soft liner allows the foot to move inside the shell.

Racers haven’t always had the luxury of marriage to a well-loved boot. Leather boots didn’t last long, so racers suffered the agony of de feet every season when breaking in a new pair. Achieving a race-ready fit was torture. For instance, it was common to stand in a tub of hot water to soften the leather, then walk around while the leather dried into a new shape. But this made the tender foot into the final mold. Penny Pitou, double-silver medalist at the 1960 Squaw Olympics, says customizing involved “your foot doing all of the work. It took your foot to figure it out, and the pain was excruciating.”

Later in her career, after Pitou had established herself as an international star, Austrian boot companies took foot measurements for custom-fitting boots they hoped she would wear. Eventually, Koflach came out with a Penny Pitou model, which Pitou believes was the first boot specifically designed for women. Earlier in her career, with no women’s boots available, she at one point acquired boots so large from a male racer that she had to stuff paper in them to prevent her feet from floating loosely in the extra space. She wasn’t alone. Her teammate Joan Hannah also used paper-stuffed boots, borrowed from ski-racing brother Sel.

In the early 1960s, when Billy Kidd was rising through the ski-racing ranks, he used the hot-water method. Most top US racers at the time were given Heierlings (because coach Bob Beattie’s brother was the importer). Kidd filled each new pair with hot water to soften the leather, then laced his feet into the warm boots to allow the

cooling leather to conform to the idiosyncratic shape of his feet—in what was a DIY version of future flow or injected boot liners. And he had to do it often. The leather broke down in a matter of six to eight weeks.

Across the pond, Jean-Claude Killy had plenty of help breaking in his leather Le Trappeur Elite boots. His friend, mentor and ski technician Michel Arpin suffered in new boots for a few days until the boots were “ripe.” Then Killy got a few races in while Arpin repeated the process with the next pair.

Plastic boots arrived at the advent of the World Cup circuit—actually, a year before, when the Canadian team showed up at the 1966 Portillo World Championships with a few pairs of Langes. From the start, the boots needed work to get the flex and forward lean right. Langes improved edging power immensely (they were part of Nancy Greene’s success), but didn’t conform well to any human foot, so they hurt like hell. The term “Lange bang” was born. Painful as the boots could be, skiers won five medals in Langes at the 1968 Olympics.

Kidd won his gold medal in combined at the 1970 World Championships with Lange boots, customized by master fitter Denny Hanson (later that year Denny and brother Chris left Lange to launch their own boot company). Denny fashioned metal plates for the backs of Kidd’s boots to add stiffness for slalom. He removed the plates for more flexibility for downhill.

Boot-fitting as an art form hit its stride with the introduction of plastic. Bootfitters could reshape shells by grinding and heating. Tools were invented to punch out tight spots. The durability of plastic meant that once the work was done, and the boots made to ski well, a racer could treasure that pair for years.

But plastic had its drawbacks, and not all plastics were created equal. When brothers Phil and Steve Mahre took center stage on the US racing scene in the late 1970s, Lange’s XL-R model was their boot of choice. Lange subsequently came out with a new and supposedly improved Z model, but “it was a different plastic, more brittle—a completely different feel,” says Phil. He stuck with his old XL-Rs. Good move. He went on to earn three overall World Cup titles.

Lange, of course, wanted to promote its newest technology but also wanted to keep its top athlete happy. The solution: Keep Phil in his XL-Rs but swap out the logos to make them look like Zs. (Both models were orange, so the deception was easily executed.) Phil took one extra measure to customize his fit: He replaced the Lange tongues with unanchored Garmont tongues, allowing them to float freely within the boot, held in place only by the snugness of the fit.

Loyalty to a boot can outlast any other relationship. Over 13 World Cup seasons, Franz Klammer used three different Austrian ski brands­—but kept the same customized Dynafit boots. And World Cup and World Champion Tamara McKinney stuck with heavily modified Nordica GT boots—a model discontinued a year before she ran her first World Cup race. McKinney had unusually small feet and slim ankles. The GT cuff was easily detachable and lent itself to tailoring for her pipestem lower legs. When an injury ended her career in 1990, she’d been married to the same boot for more than half her life.  

The Skiing Cochrans turned their passion into a Vermont institution. And they aren’t slowing down.

When Ryan Cochran-Siegle won the World Cup super-G in Bormio, Italy, last December, he ended a 14-year drought for American male skiers in that event. He also became the first Vermont-born skier to win a World Cup since 1973. That race was won by his aunt, Marilyn Cochran Brown. At home, nervously watching, was his mother, 1972 slalom gold medalist Barbara Ann Cochran—along with the entire Cochran clan which, including Ryan, boasts 10 World Cup skiers and six Olympians across two generations.

(Photo top of page: Ryan Cochran-Siegle on course at the 2019 US National Alpine Championships. Courtesy USSA/Jamie

Walter)

The Cochrans aren’t just Vermont skiers—they are Vermont skiing. To understand what that means, one need only take in the scene at Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond, Vermont. On any winter day, the little hillside just off I-89, between Montpelier and Burlington, is buzzing. Race teams from youth through collegiate, plus school learn-to-ski programs and families, converge to lap the rope tow and T-bar and learn to ski “The Cochran Way.”

A Legacy Is Born

Cochran’s mission starts with a simple statement: No child will be denied the opportunity to ski or ride. This was the ethos from the start, in 1961, when Mickey Cochran installed a 400-foot rope tow behind his house. He not only wanted his kids to be able to ski after school, but also wanted, with his wife, Ginny, to invite the community. In so doing they created something more than a ski area. They created a Vermont institution that now provides year-round affordable recreation in a 100 percent home-grown environment that embraces Mickey Cochran’s philosophy of working hard and, above all, having fun.

The original Skiing Cochrans are, in order of birth, Marilyn, Barbara Ann, Bob and Lindy. Mickey coached them on the tow during the week, then at Smugglers’ Notch on weekends. “We had modest means, and did with what we had,” says Lindy.

The alchemy of Mickey’s engineering mind and teaching skills, along with his Depression-era work ethic and love for the sport, cultivated a kind of magic in the community, and world class talent in his kids. All four became World-Cup and Olympic skiers. Marilyn had three World Cup victories and was World Cup GS champion in 1969; Barbara Ann won three World Cups and Olympic slalom gold in 1972; brother Bob earned one World Cup win and podiums in all three disciplines; and Lindy scored a World Cup podium and was the top US finisher in slalom and GS at the 1976 Olympics.

All four went on to graduate from the University of Vermont, like their parents. Barbara Ann and Marilyn coached the UVM ski

team, as had Mickey. Bob and Lindy raced—Bob while on the US Ski Team and Lindy on a full athletic scholarship (one of UVM’s first to a woman). As the kids built their own families and careers, Mickey kept the tow running, adding a T-bar and a lodge, while Ginny continued running the learn-to-ski program she had started when Cochran’s first opened. When Mickey passed away in 1998, Cochran’s gained 501(c)(3) status to open up fundraising opportunities.

As the first generation of the Skiing Cochrans took over the area, the next generation made their mark on US skiing. In 2002 Lindy and Steve Kelley’s oldest child, Jessica, made the US Ski Team. Bob’s son Jimmy was next, followed by Marilyn’s son Roger Brown, then Tim Kelley. Jimmy, his younger sister Amy, plus Tim and Robby Kelley also raced for UVM, while Roger raced for Dartmouth and brother Doug for St. Lawrence University. In 2011, both Robby and Barbara Ann’s son Ryan made the US Ski Team, where they would compete together on two World Championship teams and enjoy the privilege of being teammates, competitors, best friends and family.

Robby would blaze a new trail in US skiing. When he and brother Tim were dropped from the team in 2014, they, with two fellow Vermonters, created a Vermont-based self-funded, self-coached independent team, Redneck Racing. With camo and red flannel/denim-themed racing suits, epic frugality and ample humor, the Rednecks built an enthusiastic fan base and broad community support. The following year, Tim and Robby regained USST nominations, but Robby declined, folding into

the US Ski Team at World Cups but otherwise going it on his own. “I enjoyed being liberated and free to do things how I thought they should be done,” he says.

Robby enrolled in Castleton University, adding college football to his resume while finishing up his studio art degree. Last season he raced as much as he could domestically. “Racing is great, but when you take it too seriously it can be bad for you. The whole thing with Cochran’s is, we always try to make it fun.”

He recently built a house in nearby Duxbury with help from his dad and YouTube, and he’s over at Cochran’s almost every day it’s open. Compared to the “one course, no snowmaking, no grooming, no lights” after-school training experience he grew up with, the area now is “turning into the real deal.” In addition to snowmaking in 2006 and lights in 2010, the area added a new beginner trail last season. Five years ago, Jimmy took charge of managing the area with, as Robby describes it, “more skills than any person I’ve ever met.”

Carrying the Name Forward

Jimmy Cochran represented the United States in two Olympics (2006, 2010) before finishing his mechanical engineering degree while coaching at UVM. As general manager at Cochran’s he is immersed in every aspect of keeping the resort running. With help from his employees, the community, and Mickey’s detailed notes on every piece of equipment, that may mean staying up all night making snow or solving any number of unexpected problems that come up. “It’s such a great job,” he says. “It’s a ton of hours. But it’s so fun.”

Jimmy was 16 years old when Mickey passed away, and while he missed fully experiencing his coaching genius, he remembers the joy on his grandfather’s face while watching kids ski at Cochran’s. That motivates his primary mission to get kids recreating. “You need to make it work so the kids can come skiing.”

Donations of money as well as equipment, time and expertise have helped keep Cochran’s afloat and growing. Jimmy credits support from the community as well as from bigger ski areas. He ticks off resorts like Sugarbush, Killington, Smugglers’ Notch and Berkshire East, as well as snowmaking giant HKD for generously contributing to Cochran’s success.

Last summer, in conjunction with Richmond Mountain Trails, Cochran’s added a pump track and beginner loop to its existing mountain biking trail network. The biking gets rave reviews

and, in keeping with the Cochran’s ethos, is a free community resource. Nonetheless, “We’ve benefitted as an organization from biking,” says Jimmy. Cochran’s also boasts its own community-accessible outdoor dryland training facility, the lush “Field of Excellence” (Robby’s playful alternative to the US Ski Team’s $24 million Center of Excellence). It’s sprinkled with barbells, tires to jump through and plenty of natural obstacles.

Branching Out: Slopeside and Untapped

Cochran’s sits on Mickey and Ginny’s original land plus two adjoining parcels acquired over the years. When doing a current-use study in 2009, a forester noted the potential for 22,000 maple taps on their nearly 600 acres. In 2010, Jimmy, Tim, Roger and Doug built a sugarhouse, and in 2011 Slopeside Syrup was born. Today, the sugaring operation is run by Tim and Jimmy while Marilyn’s sons, Doug and Roger, run UnTapped, selling maple products aimed at elite athletes.

Meanwhile, Barbara Ann teaches the Ski Tots program on weekends and Lindy coaches the U-16/U-19 program, though both have scaled back to part time. The extra time has allowed Barbara Ann to do more sports psychology work with athletes, combining her own training on mindset and process, with lessons from Mickey who advised his kids to “concentrate on the skill and let the results take care of themselves.”

The next two generations live locally for the most part. Only Jess and Bob’s daughter Amy, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, lives outside of Vermont. Ryan’s sister Caitlin and her two kids live in Jeffersonville. Jimmy, his brother Tom and Roger—with eight kids among them—all live on the land behind Cochran’s. Roger is a fixture at the ski area and Jimmy often makes his rounds with his infant son strapped to his chest.

Amidst Covid, Cochran’s manages to thrive. Last season, the lodge was closed, as were equipment rentals, but the snack bar served food through the former rental shop window and Jimmy kept the firepits lit for guests to stay warm between runs. A new beginner’s trail winds from the top of the newly extended T-bar. The $265 family pass is a popular bargain. Hundreds of kids from surrounding towns learn to ski in after-school programs, while Cochran’s Ski Club and seven high school teams train day and night. High on Jimmy’s wish list is an FIS homologated GS course, which is possible but would require significant work and expense. “It would be a huge undertaking,” says Jimmy. “To max our potential as a nonprofit area we need to get there.”

This One’s on Ryan

As the first Cochran of this generation to win a World Cup, Ryan assumes a new responsibility. As Lindy explains, the family joke

from the older generation was always, “You can buy us dinner when you win your first World Cup.” Unlike the older generation, which logged formative miles on bigger mountains, Jimmy points out that his cousin Ryan “truly is a product of Cochran’s. When he was little he just skied Cochran’s.” Ryan took full advantage of Cochran’s as a viable training venue and is the first of his generation to excel in speed events.

As Bob explains, ski racing is the second hardest sport in the world. Being a ski racing parent is the hardest. When Barbara Ann follows her son through livestreams and live-timing, she enlists her best mental imagery to handle the stress. “I call on the angels and ask them to keep him safe and healthy. What else can I do?”

The angels were with him in January when Ryan, who had won the final training run of the treacherous Hahnenkamm, crashed into the fences on race day. Ryan says he was “lucky to walk away with nothing more than a minor broken neck,” a description that would not bring much comfort to most moms. He had to sit out the 2021 World Championships, where he would have been a favorite in Downhill, super-G, and a contender in GS.

What Ryan will get when he returns to Cochran’s is a hero’s welcome. And the dinner check. 

Global Intrigue

When Marilyn Cochran won the GS title in 1969, neither she nor the US Ski Team nor K2—for which she scored the first World Cup win—made a big deal out of it. “I’d gotten second so many times that year that I didn’t think I’d done that well,” she recalls. She, Bob Beattie and Kiki Cutter (2nd in the slalom standings that season) went to Evian, France, to get the award, which, for her, was not a crystal globe. But she now does have one of Karl Schranz’s globes, thanks to a man she met through her property management business.

Schranz, who had won the overall and DH titles in 1969 and 1970, and the GS title in 1969, came to the States in summer 1971 for a PR tour with three of his globes. Rather than take the globes through customs on the return, he opted to leave them with his ski company representative.

The son of that man worked for a cleaning company Cochran met through her property business. They had contacted Schranz multiple times over the years about the globes, but Schranz never retrieved them.

Eventually the cleaning company guy offered one to her. It was for the wrong year, and the
bottom is broken but, as Cochran says, “I do have a globe—sort of.” Today, her official award lives at the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum in Stowe, while the globe lives in a Slopeside Syrup box beneath her desk at UnTapped. —ETM