Freestyle skiing
past and present
Young innovators
propel
skiing’s public appeal
"Every
single sport like this has its generational progress. Maybe it’s
something in the way the sky, stars and moon line up, but it happens, and
it can be really big. It’s happening in skiing right now."
Michael
Jaquet, publisher
of Freeze magazine
"Back
then, it wasn’t freestyle. It was hot dogging, so to speak. The places
to ski were steep runs beneath lifts, where there were moguls. We didn’t
do anything, per se, other than ski, get air and have fun."
Pat
Bauman, 1970s
freestyle skiing film star
By GREG
STAHL
Express Staff Writer
The
"D-Spin," "Underflip" and "Cork Seven" aren’t
exactly household names for many skiers. Ask a coon-eyed teenager or
twenty-something, however, and you might just get an explanation about
what these "new school" aerial tricks are about.
Freestyle
skiing, a sport with substantial roots in Sun Valley, has grown and
evolved significantly since its early days, when spring-kneed men and
women shredded moguls while performing miraculous series of linked
recoveries as snow cascaded into the cold, alpine air around them.
"Before
the freestyle movement, skiing was seen as recreation, as a
vacation," said Michael Jaquet, publisher of Freeze magazine, a
periodical devoted to the 21st century’s revolution of
freestyle and extreme skiing. "Now it’s seen as a progressionary
sport. It’s seen almost as a culture or style movement as well. That’s
the contribution these guys have given to skiing."
Jaquet said
there are definite parallels between the present ski culture’s new
innovations and those of the early 1970s freestyle movement.
"In
the `70s, it was such an exciting sport. It was an old and such a new
sport," Jaquet said. "The kids now don’t know who John
Clendennin or Dick Barrymore are, but they’re exactly like those guys,
pushing the limits."
The
late-1960s and 1970s were a different time in ski country. Skiing, and
freestyle skiing in particular, were just beginning to appear on the
nation’s radar screen, and Dick Barrymore, a Sun Valley-based ski film
producer, helped propel the sport to new levels.
For his
film, "The Performers," Barrymore assembled a five-man K2 Skis
demonstration team, four of whom were Sun Valley skiers: Charlie
MacWilliams, Bob Griswold, Jim Stelling and Pat Bauman. John Clendenin of
Lake Tahoe rounded out the package.
Barrymore
traveled the United States with the K2 demonstration team, skiing and
filming at different resorts. He and the group staged the first hot dog
contest in Aspen and even claim to have staged the first ever wet T-shirt
contest at the Boiler Room in Sun Valley. A new breed of ski film, and
culture, was born.
"The
project would take the entire winter, 100,000 feet of film, and 10,000
miles of driving, but the result would be a 26-minute film titled ‘The
Performers,’ " wrote Barrymore in his autobiography, "Breaking
Even." "It would be the largest budgeted film that I had ever
produced and would also become one of my most popular movies."
The
five-man crew affectionately came to call themselves The Performers after
the film they had made.
"Back
then, it wasn’t freestyle. It was hot dogging, so to speak,"
remembered Bauman, who’s still a Sun Valley resident. "The places
to ski were steep runs beneath lifts, where there were moguls. We didn’t
do anything, per se, other than ski, get air and have fun.
"What
defined it was going out and having a good time on the mountain, in the
bumps, doing what felt comfortable."
Bauman, who
at 57 still skis more than 100 days a year, said aerials moves like the
"Daffy," "Spread Eagle," "Back Scratcher"
and 360 degree spin were commonplace in the 1970s. And not to be outdone
by his 21st century counterparts, he added, "We were doing
inverted stuff, as well."
The modern
freestyle movement owes a lot to early film making pioneers, Bauman said.
Barrymore, Warren Miller, Roger Brown and others packaged and screened hot
dogging freestyle for the general public, energizing the sport.
"Basically
they were the innovators of what we call freestyle skiing. They’re the
ones who put it out there in front of everybody," he said. "It
was back when the scene, too, was really growing."
"The
Perfomers" went on to earn a place in skiing’s annals as one of
freestyle skiing’s most important milestones.
Gordy Skoog,
who appeared in several Barrymore films, remembered the K2 demonstration
team and "The Peformers" in an interview with Mountainzone.com:
"In Sun Valley I skied with Stelling, Burns—those guys were the ski
gods. The Performers was a big deal. I saw that movie and knew that was
what I wanted to do."
Early hot
dogging eventually evolved into a sanctioned sport and was introduced at
the Olympics as a demonstration event at the Calgary Games in 1988. Mogul
skiing became part of the official program for the Albertville Games in
1992, and aerials were added in 1994 during the Lillehammer Games. Both
moguls and aerials were featured in Nagano in 1998 and will be again in
Salt Lake City this winter.
However,
Bauman is quick to point out that the rigidity of the sanctioned events
is, in his opinion, "not freestyle."
"The
(sanctioned) freestyle is more like a diving event anymore," he said.
This is
where Freeze, Jaquet, a booming new film industry and skiing’s 21st
century evolution come in.
"There
is a huge connection between what’s happening now and what happened in
the `70s," Jaquet said. "It’s come full circle, for
sure."
A new breed
of freestyle featuring free skiing is the focus of the entire industry, he
said.
"If
you’re reading any of the magazines, and you’re looking at the
advertising, there’s some kind of freestyle element to 75 percent of the
ads out there.
"I
think it’s growing because, as a consumer group, teenagers and twenty-somethings
are as powerful as any group out there. That generation of kids is setting
the trends, and, luckily, we’ve been able to generate some strong
personalities, some heroes."
Today’s
freestyle skiers, with help from new twin-tip skis, are throwing
increasingly difficult aerial tricks in which they can launch or land
backward. A multitude of forward, backward and off-axis flips, twists and
spins are featured in the new school’s bag of tricks.
To add
style, skiers are grabbing, crossing, or grabbing and crossing their skis
in mid-air.
"That’s
putting elements of style into these tricks, and that’s really
important," Jaquet said. "To these guys, it’s all about style.
Being able to do a trick and make it look really cool."
And a lot
of skiing’s new school style is rooted in skateboarding as well as early
freestyle skiing and present-day innovation.
"Skateboading
dominates this world of action sports," he said. "Skateboarding
sets all the trends. What they’re emulating is the style that
skateboarding has. The style in skateboarding is so powerful and so
amazing to all these kids, that they want to bring that into their
sports."
One of the
latest crazes for young skiers is "jibbing," Jaquet said.
Jibbing consists of performing skateboard-related tricks just about
anywhere on the mountain or in the back yard. However, an example involves
sliding on specially made rails (or hand rails along stairs), similar to
skateboard and snowboard "grinds."
Another
example of a jib is featured in the current issue of Freeze. Renowned
skiing trickster J.P. Auclair is pictured skiing up the roof of a house,
jibbing on a chimney and riding back down cleanly.
"It’s
one of the most impressive jibs of the year," Jaquet said.
With
impressive new talent and names like Auclair, Cusson, Dorion, Holmes,
Olsson, Thovex, Hall, Szocs and many others, freestyle skiing’s tomorrow
appears to be in progressive and competent hands.
So skiing’s
evolution and revolution continues, as it did in the 1970s, led by
innovators who learn from the past, borrow from the present and forge
paths not yet trodden.
"Every
single sport like this has its generational progress. Maybe it’s
something in the way the sky, stars and moon line up, but it happens, and
it can be really big," Jaquet said. "It’s happening in skiing
right now."