Towards the end of my five-week instructor training in Chamonix, I must have heard somewhere that, Alexis Saudan, a member of the ENSA faculty was looking for ski instructors to accompany him in June or July to Mt. Buller, an Australian ski resort, located in the State of Victoria. I can’t remember how I learned about that opportunity or if I was contacted for it, but I became instantly interested.
Gérard, one of my future teammate on that trip, himself a recent member of the ENSA faculty was asked by Saudan to join his team. Said Gérard: “Since I didn't speak a word of English, I was a bit surprised that he’d ask me to join him, but Alexis had reassured me that, if I learned the basics, I’d pick up enough once there to be just fine, keeping in mind that one of the objectives for me was to coach the Victoria Ski Association team.”
Marcel, another ski instructor who also happened to attend the same training as me, told me that during this session, Alexis was actively looking for instructors to teach in Australia: “I volunteered for the job! A few talks with Alexis, and soon after he confirmed I was in…”
As for me, I still wonder how I heard about that opportunity and how I applies. I simply remember that Edmond Denis, Avoriaz ski school director told me: “You’re not ready yet to teach abroad!” but I simply dismissed what I took to be a mean and out-of-place remark…
Early May, fifty years ago, I drove to meet Alexis Saudan at his house, in Chamonix. This would be my first face-to-face encounter with him, following a short telephone conversation in which I expressed my desire to be a member of his Australian team and he offered me a position.
I remember that his wife was there, the discussion took place on the patio in front of his house, and wasn’t sure who else attended that meeting. Fortunately, my friend Marcel remembers it well:
“Once the choice [of the candidates] was made, we had a meeting at Alexis' place to plan the next steps involved. Gérard, Go11 and me. Alexis had to call Jean-Pierre who arrived from Megève (he was chopping wood!) Alexis asked Go11 to translate the terms of the contract. Both departure dates and means of transportation were also decided at that meeting. Go11 and JP would sail to Australia taking with them the team members’ skis, while I would fly over with Christophe, Alexis' son.”
After we had signed the contracts, I was getting excited at the idea that by the end of the month, we’d be sailing off Genoa for a scheduled one-month voyage half around the world (in those days, Suez was still closed following the six-days war)!
Initially, I was supposed to join JP Chatellard at the Orange lifts / Austrian ski school under Walter Frois leadership, but must have gotten cold feet along the way.
It’s true that my ski season in Avoriaz was a rough, contentious one, and that left me little time to plan ahead for what I would do during the following summer season, but suffice to say that I defaulted to the easy, routine choice of the known element that was Alexis and his team.
That year, only Gérard Bouvier, Philippe Coutaz and Christophe’s, Saudan’s son would be returning.
Fifty years ago, I left the French Alps on June 27 for a short ski instructing season in Australia that would last until the end of the third week in September.
In these days, the trip meant 27 hours sitting uncomfortably inside many airplanes of various airlines, from Geneva, to Vienna, Bahrain, Colombo, Kuala Lumpur, Sidney and finally Melbourne. I was so beat up and exhausted when I arrived that I never was able recover until about mid-October of that year!
The season was a good one, snow was pretty decent, but the job had become more of a routine and the process of discovery was over, so in the end it wasn’t nearly as fun. We sure drank our share and left the rest for the thirsty visitors and the French instructors who would follow us into our fun, slaloming path...
What would we say, if someone asked us “Which lifetime lessons did I learn during your stay in Australia and Mt. Buller in 1971?”
Marcel Grivel-Dellilaz:
Marcel has always been enthusiastic about life, skiing and adventure, so he only has wonderful memories of his summer spent at Mt Buller. He was stoked as soon as he learned that he would be teaching in Australia, fly for the first time, circumnavigate and discover the world.
Marcel goes on: “It was a time when friendship, cooperation and mutual support from friends was so enriching. Of course, instructing, my true passion. It filled me with joy and there was also the racing side of skiing that I practiced religiously each season into early summer, all over the Alps!”
Ski racing always ranked high on Marcel’s list and he remembers organizing races with Gérard and coaching kids with Jean-Pierre at Mt. Buller. Marcel couldn’t get enough of our fun, collective daily life, not to mention our festive evenings that followed.
Thinking for a moment, Marcel adds: “...the cherry on the cake was the return trip, especially that road-trip we took with Gérard, between Melbourne and Sydney, traveling through the Pacific Islands and the West Coast of the USA! If it were not for my becoming a husband and a dad upon returning home, I would gladly have repeated that magical experience!”
Gérard Bouvier:
From a young age, I wanted to discover new horizons and was eager to get his full instructor certification before setting out to explore the world. As he got his first level, he left his hometown in Savoie, to teach at Club Med in the Pyrenees during the winter of 1967/68. The following season he picked Val D'Isère and finally, Morzine, in 1969/70.
“That was a tough decision for me to make,” said Gérard, “Should I give up going to Canada and forever relinquish the opportunity to work abroad or should I take that great job?” Well, he did the latter, but opportunity had its way of knocking again.
Gérard recalls: “As I began teaching at ENSA, sometime in January, Alexis Saudan asked me to accompany him to Mt. Buller, as long as I could brush up on my English. While this possibility wasn’t a sure thing yet, I sensed that my dream was now within reach. The first lesson I drew from this experience was that, beyond my wildest dreams, persistence could open many doors.”
Gérard reflects, “This Australian experience that happened so far away, sure in another ski resort, was so much different from the standpoint of its environment, climate and culture. Further, the constant fun and discovery that hit us, influenced my life forever and stayed etched in my mind, and would play a crucial role in shaping up my professional career.”
The rest of this story will continue tomorrow...
Fifty years ago, during June 1, 2 and 3 we were splitting our days on the Galilei Galileo, our ship, and killing time in the bustling harbor of Naples, Italy, the birthplace of the pizza. I remember the place to be filthy, smelly and crowded.
We had to be careful and watch every dollar we still had in our pockets! Again, we had to go through another two-extra days strike, and that weird state of affair now seemed to be a continuing problem that would seriously delay our arrival in Melbourne, but there was nothing we could do about that, except make the best of it and enjoy the moment.
Going back briefly to Mt. Buller, the ski resort where we were going to teach skiing, had two competing ski lift companies sharing the mountain, the “Blue Lifts”, where we were going to teach, and the “Oranges Lifts” which employed an Austrian ski school ran by Walter Fröis, from Wolfurt in Voralberg, himself ski school director at Alpine Meadows, a resort today merged into Squaw Valley, near Lake Tahoe.
As we were leaving Naples and heading towards Messina, JP noticed that our competitors from the Austrian ski school had gotten the royal treatment, as they all had been offered a passage in first class. We had spoken to them craning our heads from our second class lower deck and could sense some condescension emanating from them.
I remember JP was pretty furious at the way Alexis Saudan had treated us!
I’ve always been interested in ski teaching technique. Perhaps this is due to the fact I was self-taught as a kid, and didn’t benefit of any guidance until I began working in a ski-school and attend the training programs at ENSA in Chamonix.
This lack of early education must have been behind my curiosity and my interest in the matter. The French Ski School at Mt. Buller was totally focused on teaching the French technique, especially since from the beginning, its lead instructors from Maurice Jaun to Alexis Saudan or Gérard Bouvier, were all member of the ENSA faculty.
Next door, at the Austrian ski school, things were different and maybe less orthodox than the true Austrian skiing technique. Yet, because we were neighbors, they were too hard to ignore and I must say that their mere presence perked up my interest in knowing more about their teaching method.
So, I’d like to first spend a few moment explaining the Austrian approach to ski instruction. It developed after World War II, when Professor Stefan Kruckenhauser took over the leadership of the Ski Home (the Austrian ENSA) at St. Christoph, just over St. Anton. Starting in 1955, he became the evangelist for his "Wedel" technique and spread it all over the world.
In 1956 the "Austrian Ski Curriculum" was published and that book proved to be a bestseller translated into many languages. Let’s say that he was the equivalent to the French tandem Paul Gignoux – Emile Allais, except that their “Ski Français” that came out in 1937 was to my knowledge never translated and hence, the widespread notoriety of the Austrian technique can be traced to the effort made to translating an essential technique.
To simplify, “Wedel” was sacrificing appearance for efficiency, which wasn’t far or different from the French’s obsessive: “Christiana léger”. That curriculum was in force until 1970, but Kruckenhauser and his instructors did their best to observe the confluence of racing technique and an ever changing technology to draw their own solutions and evolve their method.
All these technical developments and especially the "Wellen Technique" (which could have meant “riding the waves”) had just appeared following the 1968 Aspen Interski, when we arrived at Mt. Buller in the newly published "Austrian Ski Curriculum". It was published by the Austrian Professional Ski Instructors’ Association.
At about the same time, Georges Joubert “Teach yourself to ski” was published and validated the new wide-track approach proclaimed by Kruckenhauser, “the Pope of skiing”. Joubert was smart enough to get it translated into English, by Curt Chase, at the time the Aspen ski school director and was able to get his views out of France.
In Austria, Kruckenhauser's own son-in-law, Franz Hoppichler who began managing the Federal Sport Home at Obergurgl in 1959, would take over the leadership of the Federal Sports Home at St. Christoph in 1972.
In a nutshell, that new direction was born from observing Killy and his effective, if not iconoclast skiing form and began a departure from the Austrian dogmatic philosophy of “perfect-looking style obsession” and “reverse-shoulder”, into wide-stance and a more utilitarian way of skiing. This was also a defensive response to the growing popularity of the French ski technique. There was of course a questionable “down-unweighting” element, but, I guess, no one is ever perfect!
One thing that was notable though, was Kruckenhauser advocating to keep beginners on short skis until they understand the basic element of the sport and have decided that this game can really be fun after all—something nice in 1.50-meter skis for ladies and 1.70 for men. This latter part was a very good idea, and I still can’t understand that the French way of teaching never addressed the excessive length of skis as a tyrannical hindrance to learning. I remember that at the French Ski School, all male instructors were always on 207 cm skis!
At Mt. Buller, his team included Austrian, of course, but also Swiss like Pierre Pfister, from Glion sur Montreux, René Zeller and some Americans like Mike Porter from Vail, and the whole group was teaching a mixture of Austro-Swiss-American technique to their students, including down-unweighting along with “wide-track” turns.
Absent modern ski sidecuts (we’re still in 1971) down-unweighting didn’t quite work with novices because that new theory required a significant amount of speed beginner skiers were totally incapable of. The old French method using down-and-up un-weighting was still much more appropriate and adapted to teaching new skiers…
If you followed this 50th anniversary story about Australia, Gérard Bouvier, Marcel Grivel-Dellilaz, Jean-Pierre Chatellard as well as Alexis Saudan and his son Christophe were the only protagonists you’ve read about.
This is simply because we were unable to track him down. Fortunately, a bit of investigating work and some luck led us back to him. As our 1971 ski season was well underway, Philippe arrived to us from Chamonix.
We all knew his dad, the Chief Inspector of French Ski Instruction. Upon getting to Mt. Buller, Philippe, who was around 20, went to work immediately.
However, because he was a late-comer, it wasn’t easy for him to fit inside our circle, and we didn’t put too much efforts into integrating him into our group, which was a shame.
He also was more introspective than the rest of us and the age difference, however slight, played a role too. Philippe would end up returning in 1972 with Gerard and I.
Later on, in 1985, he got a PhD in economics at NYU and pursued his career in the economic and financial sectors.
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