The Austrian mountain guide shot four Olympics, four Himalayan expeditions and countless scenes around his Vermont home.
Photo above: “At the downhill, I got frostbite on my nose from pressing the camera too long against my face. Next morning, I wiped the skin away.” [Photo taken by Dick Needham at the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics.]
The slalom world champion and Olympic bronze medalist has won her second term in Australia’s parliament, as a Green/Blue independent.
Photo above: A pioneer throughout her career, Zali Steggall became the first Australian woman to win a World Cup event in Alpine skiing, a 1997 slalom in Park City, Utah. She also won Australia’s first Olympic Alpine medal and first FIS World Championship title, both in slalom.
"How old are these skis?” We get this question via email several times a year, often from a non-skier who found a dusty pair of fossil planks in grandma’s attic. For all we know, the skis may have belonged to grandma’s grandma.
Photo above: Vintage Ski World stock includes homemade skis (foreground) and, left to right, 10th Mountain Division skis, round tips (1940s) and “sugar cube” tips (1930s).
Justice Served: Jim Thorpe’s 1912 Gold Medals Restored
In my article “Pro vs. Am” (July-August 2022), I discussed the historic conflict between the concepts of amateurism and professionalism in skiing and Olympic sports. The most tragic victim of this conflict was Jim Thorpe, who won two gold medals in the 1912 Olympic Games in the decathlon and pentathlon, two of the most difficult of all sporting events.
Leonetto Cappiello has been called “the father of modern advertising” because he broke the norms of poster art. Early advertising tended to look like a painting, too cluttered sometimes. Cappiello often depicted individual figures in motion. In this ski travel poster, he was not afraid to leave the white slope open. It intensified the illusion of speed.
In 2019, long-distance runner and ski mountaineer Kilian Jornet—with the goal of just testing “how his body will perform”—completed 51 laps on Tusten ski area in Molde, Norway, in 24 hours. He climbed 78,274 feet, crushing previous 24-hour records by a ridiculous margin. To be clear, Molde is at sea level. Jornet climbed 1,535 feet, 51 times, on roughly a one-mile piste. That works out to skinning up at about 2.25 mph for 25 minutes and resting a couple of minutes during a 36-mph schuss. Fifty-one times.
Gunstock, one of the nation’s oldest ski resorts, suffered a near-death experience over the summer. Management pulled off a heroic last-minute save, but right-wing politicians may still try to close the county-owned property.
Photo above: County-owned Gunstock Mountain Resort built the first chairlift in the East in 1937.
This induction class (Class of 2020) was recognized in 2022 after Covid-related delays. The Class of 2021 will be recognized at a physical event in the Fall of 2022.
Mark the dates: ISHA and Hall of Fame events, March 21-27, 2023.
Plan now to attend ISHA’s 31st Annual Awards Banquet, scheduled for Big Sky, Montana, March 22, 2023, with ancillary events beginning March 21. It’s a chance to hang out and ski with the ISHA crowd and our award winners. As part of Skiing History Week, the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame will honor 13 inductees, including Bode Miller and Lindsey Vonn, with banquets on March 24 and 25. The week is filled with events on and off the slopes.
Jewish immigrants Avram and Dora Sandler opened a shoe store in north Boston before 1900. It grew into the shoe and boot factory A. Sandler Co. (later Sandler of Boston). With the boom in Alpine skiing of the mid-1930s, Sandler’s ski boots were endorsed by celebrities like Hannes Schneider and Birger Ruud. By early 1941, as German forces swept through the Soviet Union and then the mountains of Albania, the U.S. Army began equipping a few hundred troops for winter warfare, and Sandler was one of the early vendors.
With dramatic Day-Glo colors and the skier's legs-locked form, this promotional poster for Dick Barrymore's film The Last of the Ski Bums (196) well represents its era.
