The 1974 French ski team crisis

Alain Lazard has done a remarkable job in chronicling a major “speed-bump” (the article is written in French) in the history of French skiing. Reading the piece brought back memories, re-ignited some past passions but reset everything in a much dispassionate context, almost forty years later. Alain's painstaking analysis goes into some fascinating and minute details that I didn't even know about. When I was done reading, I saw three general reasons behind all the upheaval...

1. Skiing may be more subtle than Joubert saw it
This sport takes a lifetime to understand, is not assimilated by just looking at photos and analyzing their nuts and bolts. Well into my sixties, I still ski a lot and learn something new all the time. The holy grail of skiing is invisible and happens as far from the skier's head as possible; it's felt under the plant of the foot, hence Killy's definition: “Feet Intelligence.” That's where the ENSA held the truth with its obsessive view of edge control. Perhaps the institution was a bit dogmatic, but when I experimented some of Joubert's teaching on students, they never worked too well, particularly on entry-level skiers.

Joubert was probably 30 years before his times; he his the one who brought the concept of carving out of the dark ages; carving skis give participants a particularly steep learning curve on groomed runs but these new skiers are perfectly unable to ski on crud and other difficult snow. Yes, in addition to being the one who put carving on a map before its time, he also rechristened the ENSA's “jet-virage” into “avalement”, made Patrick Russel his poster-boy and soon thereafter the masses thought that sitting back while skiing was super cool. He also had the merit of making the skiing narrative available to the masses by publishing liberally illustrated “how-to” books and other magazine articles.

The other element, is that one needs to really love skiing, not just be merely obsessed in its biophysics. If Joubert had truly loved the sport he wouldn't have just reduced it to some black and white, measurable issues; the essence of skiing is found in its unfathomable gray areas.


2. It always takes two to tango
The Portillo, Grenoble and the Killy's legacies weighted heavily on a mostly new French ski team from 1969 through 1973. Expectations were astronomically high and success couldn't be produced consistently on a daily basis, like a batch of fresh baked baguettes. Did the racers behaved sometimes like prima-donna? That might have happened. Further, a team spirit can only be the result of a collaborative, not adversarial atmosphere, and if the coaching staff can't inspire, lead and drive good athletes, it probably isn't as good as it should.

The coach should serve the athletes, not the other way around, at least that's my view. Suffice to look at today's politics in Belgium or in the U.S. to see how coaches and athletes can be separated by a wall of incomprehension when a situation is allowed to fester and when opposing parties get polarized. On that single account there's a lot of blame to go around in both camps, but the coaches should have played their “adult” role.

3. The rift between urban an mountain dwellers in France
This might have been the biggest issue. Mountain and City folks didn't always see eye-to-eye in the French Alps, back in the sixties and seventies. Born and raised in small mountain village of the French Alps by parents who had lived there “forever,” I could understand the views of those with genuine and deeply rooted “mountain origins.” It's true is that I would have a hard time living anywhere but in the mountains. It could be the Alps, the Rockies or the Himalayas, but I need to see some serious relief in the landscape to feel “grounded” and secure.

For reasons I can't fully explain, I look at the mountain differently than anyone who has been born elsewhere and see elements they would never suspect existed. It's not just the mountains, but the skies, the clouds, the shadows, the snow. My relationship with my environment is instinctive. I can sense avalanche and other dangers before I ever venture in places that are exposed to some kind of risk; my behavior alters itself without any conscious effort on my part. I haven't learn it at school, that sensation somehow resides deep in me. It's just in my DNA and this can't be a learned response.

So, with these observations in mind, I clearly tend to feel more “entitled” to claim the mountains as my own, as my domain, to the exclusion of the newcomer that – I feel - can't be as much in communion with the elements I know so intimately. If you read this and are from the plains, the big city or some seaboard location, you might take exception to what I'm trying to say, but I will be hard to be convinced otherwise.

This said, the more I think about it, this story is in fact all about human resistance to diversity and if, back in the days, there had been more efforts placed into meshing the various cultures, we all would have been better for it. Fortunately, since then, mentalities have evolved and differences are fading away...