Ski filmmakers, authors and historians from North America and Europe will gather in Aspen, Colorado, on April 7, 2016, for the 24th annual ISHA Awards. Presented every year by the International Skiing History Association (ISHA), the awards honor outstanding creative works of ski history, including books, films and DVDs, Websites, museum exhibits and lifetime achievements. It is the most prestigious awards program in the world for projects that add significantly and artistically to the ski historical record. ISHA has honored 166 recipients since 1993, with Lifetime Achievement awards presented to Sir Arnold Lunn, John Jay, Warren Miller, Dick Barrymore, Bob Beattie, Billy Kidd, Michael Horn and Willy Bogner, among others.
ISHA is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving and advancing the knowledge of ski history worldwide; it publishes Skiing History (a bimonthly magazine) and operates www.skiinghistory.org, the world’s largest Website devoted to the history of the sport.
The April 7 awards banquet will be held at the historic Hotel Jerome in Aspen. For more information or to register, call 802.366.1158 or go to: https://www.skiinghistory.org/events.
The winners of the 2016 ISHA Awards are:
Lifetime Achievement Awards
Broadcasting: Greg Lewis
Over a thirty-year career, Greg Lewis excelled as a network television commentator, specializing in skiing and Olympic sports. He covered World Pro Skiing, two winter Olympics, four summer Olympics, and numerous world championships, earning two Emmy awards, among other broadcast honors.
Photo: Greg Lewis
Museum Curation: Karin Berg
Karin Berg directed Oslo’s Holmenkollen Ski Museum for three decades, until her retirement in September 2015. She supervised the creation of one of the world’s best collections of skiing artifacts while researching and writing several award-winning ski history books.
Photo: Karin Berg
Ullr Awards
Presented for a single outstanding contribution or several contributions to skiing’s historical record in published book form.
Edited by Marit Stub Nybelius and Annette R. Hofmann
This book covers the 150-year-history of women’s ski jumping, from its beginnings until it debuted as an Olympic sport in 2014. It recounts the struggle of female ski jumpers, their coaches and families to achieve acceptance in international sport.
Photo: Annette Hofmann
Fra Første Stavtak: Skistavens historie
(From the Start: The History of Ski Poles)
By Karin Berg
Karin Berg, for three decades director of the Holmenkollen Ski Museum, has written the definitive history of ski poles. While it’s written in Norwegian, the fabulous illustrations are worth the price of the book even to the English monoglot.
Freedom Found
By Warren Miller, edited by Andy Bigford
Warren Miller’s colorful memoirs, including many of his essays from years past, are skillfully stitched together, with much new material.
Photo: Warren Miller
The Fall Line: How American Ski Racers Conquered a Sport on the Edge
By Nathaniel Vinton
By examining the careers of Lindsey Vonn and Bode Miller, New York Daily News reporter Nathaniel Vinton has created the best introduction to alpine ski racing ever written in English.
Mathias Zdarsky: und die Bahnbrecher im alpinen Schnee
(Mathias Zdarsky: Pioneer of Alpine Skiing)
By Otmar Schöner
A detailed biography of Mathias Zdarsky, who, beginning in 1905, invented the first alpine ski binding, created the first ski school in mainland Europe, and wrote the foundational book of ski instruction, Die Lilienfelder Skilauf-Technik.
Skade Awards
Presented for an outstanding work on regional ski history or for an outstanding work published in book form that is focused in part on ski history.
Chronicle of a Myth II: The Hahnenkamm Races
(Chronik eines Mythos II: Veranstalter Hahnenkamm-Rennen)
Kitzbüheler Ski Club (KSC)
This is the expanded second edition of an exhaustive illustrated history of the Hahnenkamm races, first run in 1931. The first edition was published in 2002, in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Kitzbüheler Ski Club. The new edition brings us up to date, including the races held from 2003 to 2015, covering 75 race meetings in all. It also expands details of race organization, technology and course development that were mentioned only briefly in the first edition.
Winter Park Resort: 75 Years of Imagining More
By Tim Nicklas & Winter Park Resort
Profusely illustrated, this is the detailed official history of the pioneering Colorado resort, conceived in the depths of the Depression as a project of Denver’s Department of Parks and Recreation.
Snowshoe Thompson: Jon Fra Tinn (Jon From Tinn)
By Halvor Kleppen
The prolific Norwegian author Halvor Kleppen brings us the most complete and thoroughly researched biography yet of skiing pioneer Jon Torsteinson Rue, who became a legendary mail carrier—nicknamed Snowshoe Thompson—across the Sierra in the pre-railroad era. Written in Norwegian.
Photo: Halvor Kleppen
Whistler/Blackcomb: 50 Years of Going Beyond
Film with accompanying book
Film produced and directed by Mike Douglas; book written and edited by Leslie Anthony and Penelope Buswell
To celebrate its 50th birthday, Whistler/Blackcomb produced a 28-minute gem of a video, supported by a 116-page book of photos and biographies.
Photo: Mike Douglas
Honorable Mention (Skade Award)
Zorn, kyrkloppen och idrottsrörelsen
(Zorn, Church Races and the Sports Movement)
By Isak Lidström
From 1907 to 1909, the well-known Swedish romantic-era painter Anders Zorn, in protest of organized skiing’s amateur rules, offered cash prizes to poor athletes who couldn’t afford to compete in sanctioned races. This is the story of how the church race series rose and was quickly banned.
Film Awards (Honorable Mention)
Jackson Hole Skiing Pioneers
By Roger Brown and Garrett Edquist
To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Jackson Hole Resort hired award-winning filmmaker Roger Cotton Brown (Summit Films)—who produced the resort’s first-ever film in 1964 with his business partner, the late Barry Corbet—to assemble a 26-minute video. Narrated by Brown, the film explores the early history of the resort, including pioneer Bill Briggs recounting his 1971 ski descent of the Grand Teton and dynamic shots of Hermann Gollner and Tom Leroy doing front flips into Corbet’s Couloir.
The International Skiing History Association
The nonprofit International Skiing History Association (ISHA) was founded in 1991 by the late Mason Beekley of Connecticut, who amassed what is believed to be the world’s largest private collection of ski books and arts. More than 1,500 members belong to ISHA, including retired Olympians and World Cup racers from North America and Europe, Hall of Famers, ski industry leaders and lovers of ski history around the world. ISHA’s Presidential Circle includes the late Stein Eriksen, Jean-Claude Killy, Nancy Greene Raine, Penny Pitou and Bob Beattie, among others.
Six times a year, ISHA publishes Skiing History (formerly Skiing Heritage), a high-quality print magazine that features profiles of great champions and innovators who have shaped the sport, early technique and equipment, resorts and historic inns, and news from the ski world with an historical perspective. ISHA also operates the world’s largest Website devoted to skiing history, www.skiinghistory.org, with a digital archive of back issues for members and many free resources for ski historians, including authoritative articles, photos, timelines, bibliographies, and comprehensive indexes to various ski publications.
For more information or to join, go to www.skiinghistory.org.
For additional information: Kathleen James at 802.366.1158 or kathleen@skiinghistory.org.