Fifty years ago, rediscovering America!

Part of my new job at Look ski bindings was to assess the role and the effectiveness of its important and costly ski racing service. During the winter 1974-75, I had plenty of time to see and understand how the system worked within Europe and I found it to be pretty scattered, disorganized and highly inefficient. The missing part of that puzzle was the work done in North America. 

So, towards the end of the season I undertook to visit our respective racing servicemen in the USA and Canada, Denys Liboz and Jean-Louis Villiot. I had met them the previous Fall and saw Liboz several times with the US Team on the Alpine world cup circuit. This time, I flew from Geneva to New York JFK, then hopped on a TWA plane to Reno, where Liboz picked me up and took me to Mt. Rose where the Spring Series Races were going on. 

I was impressed by the 8 feet of snow still left at the resort and understood the complexity and the immensity of the job Denys was up against. I recall that we spent a couple of days around Lake Tahoe, I even skied and I had brought my old Trappeur boots and got them replaced by a brand new pair of Nordica Meteor the late Tony Hedgecock, then boot racer-chaser for Beconta, gave to me. 

Later on, Liboz drove me down to San Francisco and on the way down the valley I picked up a pair of cowboy boots and a Levi’s jeans. I then flew to Calgary, Canada. From there, I drove to Banff where I met Villiot. I remember seeing my very first moose half asleep on the sidewalk. We talked about the scope of Jean-Louis’s job and our limited budget to be able to run it as it should have, the size of the country and the complexity of being everywhere for everyone at the same time. 

From Calgary I flew to Montreal where I met with Nordsport’s Peter Kirby, our Canadian distributor a very pleasant fellow, then I caught a flight to New York La Guardia, where I think my friend Peter Juen picked me up and drove me to Beconta’s Elmsford office (our US distributor) where I me the principals, Jim Woolner and Karl Wallach. 

Both told me Look was wasting its money on a ruinous racing program and that instead the company would be better advised to develop good products for the masses in order to stop the onslaught of Salomon that was emerging as a formidable and hard to beat competitor. As short-term oriented merchants, both probably had a self-serving point, and obviously didn’t care about maintaining the company’ s strong racing image. 

Later on, a limo would take me to my Swissair flight at JFK as I was on my back to Geneva. I was quite pleased with my new ski boots, my whirlwind trip but quite confused about what to do next in order to achieve the best possible result for my employer... .