MEMO from the publisher
Before long, on many a whitened highway and byway, automobiles with skis securely racked atop will be as common a sight as boats on trailers in midsummer.
But here now, a couple of schusses ahead of the field, is Skiing Editor Ezra Bowen, just returned from St. Mary's Glacier in Colorado. There under the firm hand of America's foremost skiing coach, Willy Schaeffler (SI, April 1), he has been relearning a sport in which he had long been accomplished.
The method Schaeffler teaches comes from Austria and is now officially accepted in most of Europe but is new to this country. Although evolved from advanced racing techniques, it turns out to be admirably suited to the purpose of the recreational skier. In next week's issue Schaeffler, in collaboration with Bowen and Illustrator Robert Riger, begins to explain it in the first of a three-part series properly described as Revolution in Skiing.
A Bavarian who fought with the Austrian underground in 1944, Schaeffler is the chief advisor for downhill racing for the 1960 Olympics at Squaw Valley and since 1948 has brought his University of Denver team, with four straight NCAA skiing championships, to the top of U.S. college skiing. Part I of his series sets the program for conditioning the particular muscles which the new technique brings into play. There's a pause—to let everybody get in shape—and then in the December 16 issue Schaeffler introduces the actual mechanics for beginners and intermediate skiers. Part III comes December 23 and takes the technique through the advanced and expert level.
On the scenic side this ski season SPORTS ILLUSTRATED will visit some of the outstanding powder-snow areas of Europe, photographed , by Toni Frissell; go to that most cosmopolitan of American ski centers, Aspen, Colo.; and to the ski resort which typifies the sort of area that makes skiing a sport for the whole family, North Conway, N.H.
But these stories and more will come when the snow really starts to fly. In the meantime, keeping company with the first of Willy Schaeffler's articles, will be another on what has happened in the world of ski equipment and facilities since the slopes thawed last spring. It tells of new lifts, new trails and new lodges at old resorts; of rubber skis, folding skis and metal skis; and of double-decker ski racks—an innovation a man might do well to know about before he meets them coming down the road, or, even better, might well want to own before he hits the road himself this winter.
PHOTO
EDITOR BOWEN, TEACHER SCHAEFFLER