The Story of Modern Skiing

By Contributing Writer, 12-18-06

Like every story, this one is told from the perspective and with all the strengths and weaknesses, personal experiences and biases and vision of the teller. And this is a story, not a history, though it is rich in detail and layered with stories within the story.

Few people in the past 50 years have been in the position to have such a broad perspective of American skiing and to tell the story of that time as has John Fry. As the former editor-in-chief of SKI and the founding editor of SNOW COUNTRY, Fry was in a unique position to record, report and comment on, influence and to contribute to the evolution of modern skiing.

Fry was right in the middle of the ski industry during the time of its most explosive growth and most extensive and significant changes, and he tells the story at the level of a participant in the plot. He worked with and made friends with many of the pivotal people of skiing, and I can’t think of anyone more qualified or in a better position to have written the story of modern skiing, particularly the industry side of it.

He did a superb job, and every skier interested in the story and the evolution of skiing will want this book in the home library. It’s one to come back to in order to check a date, a person, the development of a ski, a technique or a fashion, or how skiing has gotten from Sir Arnold Lunn to Glenn Plake, from Dick Durrance to Bode Miller, from Avery Brundage to the Winter X-Games, from fractured tibias to torn ACLs, from 7’6” Northland laminated hickory skis to Salomon’s Squaretex Spaceframe Monocoque Lite Double Wall composite Isocell Complex UHMW Graphite boards two thirds the length of Northlands, from Maria Bogner to Betty Rides, and from many other places, events, and people to many other unlikely ones.

It is a great and riveting tale, told with an Eastern United States accent, tinged with a hint of Canadian, as would only be expected of the Canadian born lifetime eastern skier John Fry. Its strength is that it is a big story well told with intelligence, heart, humor and a good journalist’s sense of objectivity.

I found a few errors of fact and a few more errors of omission that are as much evidence of the richness of the story of skiing as they are flaws in the telling (i.e. Yuichiro Miura never held the world speed skiing record as Fry says; and he neglects to mention that the presence, stature and influence of World War II French resistance fighter and hero to France Joe Marillac, Squaw Valley Ski School Director, was at least as crucial to the IOC voting that gave the 1960 Olympic Games to Squaw as was, “…the thatch-haired, lantern-jawed (Alex) Cushing, whose social training at Groton and the phony corridors of Park Avenue society perfectly equipped him for the task at hand. He played the IOC members like a violinist stroking a Stradivarius. He wined and dined them. He made an impressive last-minute plea for their votes. Finally his persistence and panache won. In a narrow 32 to 30 ballot, the IOC chose the tiny California ski area over the city of Innsbruck.”) Yes, but if Marillac hadn't been in attendance it would not have happened, and while Cushing played Marillac as well as the IOC it is a better and more complete story to know Marillac’s role. Other readers will find their own omissions they would like to have included; but for that to happen they will have to write their own story of skiing.

As the title indicates, this is a story, not a history, and all stories are simplified for the sake of the telling.

As mentioned Fry tells the story from an industry perspective, which is likely the one with the widest scope, but one of the consequences of that viewpoint is that the depiction of the impact of the ski industry on the environment is skewed, and I found several premises in the book with which I (and many others) disagree and consider disingenuous.

Here’s one example that reads like a Wall Street Journal editorial: “But a healthy environment needs a healthy economy to protect it, a fact ignored by the anti-resort agenda. In 1991, the Vermont Ski Area Association found that communities whose economies and tax rolls were bolstered by the spending of visiting skiers generated five times more tax revenue, available for education and ecology protection than did not-ski towns.”

Not surprisingly, Fry roasts Hal Clifford’s book “Downhill Slide,” which might be viewed as the story of modern skiing as told from a non-industry perspective and with a more ecologically accurate depiction of the deterioration of the mountain environment surrounding ski towns. The two books together, along with Daniel Glick’s “Powder Burn” will give the interested reader a more comprehensive perspective of modern skiing and its story than will any of them on its own.

That said, John Fry has given us a wonderful addition to the literature and the understanding of our sport and way of life, and I both loved and recommend “The Story of Modern Skiing.

Dick Dorworth, professional writer and skier, enjoys his life between Bozeman, Montana and Ketchum, Idaho.
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