A unique and historical ski-binding combination

Recently, Marielle Goitschel, the boisterous French ski champion, gave away to some charity one of the skis (200 cm long) she used when her sister Christine and herself got a gold and silver medals at the 1964 Innsbruck Winter Olympics. 

What is striking in the ski shown here by Christine is that it’s a Dynamic Compound RG5, not the iconic VR7, manufactured in at the Dynamic factory in Sillans, France, but also made further north in Sallanches by Starflex in what would become the Dynastar factory. 

What’s even more meaningful to me is that one year later I purchased a pair of a similar Compound RG5 model sold under the new Dynastar brand, that was a contraction (Dyna-Star) of Dynamic and Starflex. 

Finally, these boards of mine, just like the Goitschel sisters’ were mounted with a crude Salomon single pivot “Emile Allais” toe, combined with a lightweight Look turntable. 

Use of such a bear-trap by bona fide champions had been enough to valide my choice. Purists who know ski-bindings well, an illustrious group I would belong to later on, would have called this a “recipe for disaster or a bone-breaker”. 

This said, if the Salomon toe-unit couldn’t release the boot by overpowering the pressure from the ball under tension, it could still break if the skier were facing a live-and-die situation as evidenced on the photograph!