Once the war was over ski racing took off again with zest. In Wengen, Ernst Gertsch – who’d won the slalom segment of the first Lauberhorn Cup he’d helped create in 1930 – worked tirelessly to make the event the most important of that era. And in France and Switzerland, International weeks galvanized skiers long starved of big-time competition.
In 1948, the Winter Olympics were hosted by St. Moritz for the second time – the first had been in 1928 –. Henry Oreiller became the first hero of the post-war games by taking both the downhill and the combined title. For a good number of the pre-war champions, the long lay off during the war had hastened their retirement, as was the case with Rudi Rominger and Emile Allais. Some had paid for the war with their lives. The Austrian and German teams, especially, boasted many new faces. But many of the pre-war champions – such as James Couttet, Zeno Colo, Karl Molitor, Ralph Olinger and Edi Reinalter who won the gold medal in the slalom – were still on form. Indeed, Colo – who had already had a glorious past – went on to win in the 1950 World Championship downhill at Aspen, Colorado, and the 1952 Oslo Olympic downhill.
But new blood was pumping into the sports. Switzerland’s Georges Schneider, loose-limbed and easy going in life, superbly stylish on skis, became the world slalom champion at Aspen. Blond Norwegian Stein Eriksen won the giant slalom – an event initiated in 1946 at the suggestion of Paul Gignoux – at the Oslo Olympics.
The charismatic Eriksen soon became the post-war ski king. François Bonlieu, who came from the north of France, and learn to ski by aping others, came second to Eriksen in the giant slalom at Are’s 1954 World Championships. Ten years later, at Innsbruck, Bonlieu became Olympic gold medallist in the same event. This was a period of great progress, with Christian Pravda at the core of an Austrian team built along simple and modern lines by Fred Roessner, a geography and physical education teacher. Under his tutelage, the Austrians dominated international skiing for six winters. So powerful was the “Wunderteam” that even after Roessner abandoned it to its own destiny after the 1956 Winter Olympics at Cortina d’Ampezzo, it kept on winning.
One of the greatest epochs had begun, with Austrians Christian Pravda, Anderl Molterer, Fritz Huber, Ernst Hinterseer, Tony Sailer and Karl Schranz on one side. On the other were the American Buddy Werner, the Swiss Willy Forrer and Roger Staub, the Japanese Chibaru Igaya, the French Charles Bozon, Adrien Duvillard, François Bonlieu, Jean Vuarnet and James Couttet who had been in Competition since 1937. It is thanks to this extraordinarily high level of competition that Tony Sailer’s three gold medals in Cortina Winter Olympics had such an unprecedented reception – at a time when television was still playing only a marginal role in image making. Even in countries where snow only existed in picture books, skiing – and Sailer – gripped the public imagination.
Germany’s Ludwig Leitner, Austria’s Karl Schranz and France’s Guy Périllat then began to take their place among the ranks of the champions. Like their predecessors, these heroes still raced, more often than not, simply for glory. Some enterprising Athletes sometimes managed to cadge a few thousand Swiss francs from the ski manufacturers whose equipment they used. But most were happy enough to keep a few pairs of skis at the end of the season, which they resold at half-price to tourists in their hometown resort.
For some, financial security only came later, once their career was already over. A handful of champions learned to market their names and their technical know-how. Stein Eriksen, Jean Vuarnet, Anderl Molterer, Pepi Stiegler, Willy Forrer, Ernst Hinterseer, Toni Sailer, Karl Schranz and Jean-Claude Killy were among
Them – with Killy and Schranz being lucky enough to cash in on the beginning of the World Cup circuit.
It was to be the advent of television coverage that made the Lauberhorn in Wengen, the Grand Prix of Megève, Kitzbühel’s Hahnenkamm, the Arlberg-Kandahar, the women’s race in Grindelwald and, of course, Innsbruck’s first Winter Olympics in 1964 powerful media events – first on a national scale, then internationally thanks to the Eurovision network– . Soon the broadcasts spread to Eastern European countries, then to such unlikely place like Algeria and Morocco.
By 1966 television had turned skiing into an international spectator sport – and everything was set to usher in the World Cup – .
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