JUST ONE PAIR OF SKIS

Many years have passed since the end of my career. Sometimes it seems like it all happened in some other life. Nevertheless, every now and then some unusual detail comes to mind from the days when I was still an active skier. I put my racing skis away in 1989, and skiing has really changed a lot in just over three decades. Just the look of the skis says it all. Compared to today's skis, our two-meter skis look like some strange planks. Skiing is a kind of scientific and technical sport in which a lot depends on the equipment. Modern competitors spend much of their time testing and choosing equipment. They come to each race with a fairly large number of skis, from which they can choose those that are most suitable for the snow and weather conditions prevailing on a given day.

When I look at all this equipment I start to think of the years when I started competing in the World Cup. I remembered an anecdote that seems completely impossible nowadays, but it is real. In the 1974/75 season, I skied on a single pair of skis in all the races - in all slaloms and giant slaloms. They were white Elan skis with the green Impulse logo. I actually had two pairs, but for about fifteen races I always rode with only one pair. Back then, slalom and giant slalom skis didn't differ as much as they do today. However, the slalom skis were 205 centimeters long, the giant slalom skis were five centimeters longer. Slalom skis were made only of wood and fiberglass, while giant slalom skis had an additional layer of material. For the most part, all my competitors in each discipline skied the appropriate skis. From that point of view, I was kind of a maverick or a black sheep. I still don't know why it suited me at the time. I couldn't even say that I got more attached to a certain pair, because the other one was also excellent, and above all, the same. I didn't even consider myself particularly superstitious. I just got used to that pair and it didn't make any sense for me to change skis. And since I only had two pairs, I had that second pair, which was practically untouched, as a backup. Of course, we prepared the skis anew before each race and, of course, we sharpened the edges. At the end of the season, they were as thin as a needle. At that time, edges were not made of one piece, but consisted of many parts about three centimeters long. At the spring races, they were already so worn out that they started to fall out. I had no choice but to hammer them back into place before the race. At that time I didn't have Jure Vogelnik who took such a good care of my skis almost all my career, so I came up with some useful and handy tricks myself. Since the strategy of one pair of skis in all slalom and giant slalom races was so successful, I used it in the following season as well.

Later in my career I switched to using different skis for slalom and giant slalom. But even then, I only had two pairs of skis for each discipline in each season and one more pair as a reserve. In fact, I have never owned more than six pairs of skis in one season in my fifteen-year career. They impressed me again and again with their exceptional quality and, above all, with the fact that they were always the same. Due to their superior driving characteristics, I could completely always rely on them, which definitely boosted my overall confidence.