Downhill Racer
Last night I made Kim watch A History of Violence, the 2005 film directed by David Cronenberg and staring Vigo Mortensen, Maria Bello, Ed Harris and William Hurt. While Cronenberg leans more to the macabre and gory than I generally prefer, I have always like Vigo and there is always something appealing about the guy who wants to be at peace but gets dragged back into his violent past by circumstance (John Wick, Jack Reacher, Liam Neeson, Jason Bourne). I read an article today where Vigo explains why he likes acting for Cronenberg so much and that is what drove me to watch this film. I figured Kim would be OK with it since it had Ed Harris, who is one of her favorites. But after the violent ending I decided I owed it to her to let her choose the next movie.
Kim was a bit nonchalant about her choice but quickly landed on the old 1969 Robert Redford movie, Downhill Racer, which co-stars Gene Hackman (who is now 92 years old!). I’ve seen the movie a number of times and first saw it in 1969 in Rome when it was released. When I saw that the U.S. Olympic Ski Team that Redford arrogantly leads to a gold medal in the downhill, used Head skis with Look Nevada all-steel bindings, it took me back to my European skiing days. It was the winter of 1968 and I got my first taste of European skiing when my family went up to Zermatt for Christmas. We all skied then (even our mother, who had been weened on the slopes of Tuckerman’s Ravine before there were even mechanized lifts). My Christmas present that year was a new pair of Austrian Kneissl White Star skis with all-steel Look Nevada bindings. Those skis were 215 centimeters long (today no one skis on anything longer than 190 centimeters) and they weighed a ton even without those solid steel bindings. Put those monster contraptions on them and those skis were a prodigious weight to either strap yourself onto and fling around the mountains and certainly a ton to carry on your shoulder after a long day of alpine mostly off-piste, ungroomed European skiing in the late 60s. To this day I have a notch in my right shoulder from carrying those skis in the winter after three years of caddying and carrying big heavy leather Kangaroo golf bags and clubs in the summer.
While it was a hoot seeing all those extra long skis (only jumping skis are longer than downhill skis) with the Look Nevada bindings, what really got me excited in the movie was watching the U.S. Ski Team come down the mountain with their protective helmets. In those days only downhill ski racers wore helmets, certainly not recreational skiers. That changed in the 1990’s with all the slope grooming that led to much faster skiing. Gradually, everyone who skis does so with a helmet these days. BUt back then it was more special and the U.S. Ski Team had helmets that were silver with black block letters in the front that declared for the judges that they were from the U.S.A. I thought that was very cool. You see, I was one of those expats that longed to be in America and wanted anything that said America. I wore a U.S. Army jacket with an American Flag on the shoulder. That seems funny now because it is more the sort of thing a redneck or MAGA person might wear, but as ant-war as we were at my age in those days, I needed to declare my patriotism and my affiliation with the greatest country on earth.
Since no non-racers wore ski helmets (I don’t even know if they sold them), I did ride a motorcycle and I did have a helmet. So I took that helmet down to my basement garage where I wrenched on my motorcycles, and painted that helmet silver with big block letter that said U.S.A. Just like Robert Redford. I’m not sure I ever thought it would make me look like the idol of the silver screen, but it sure made me feel good to fly my national colors, so to speak, on my helmet. The only problem was that very few Italians had seen Downhill Racer and probably didn’t even know who Robert Redford was. More significantly, since they knew my country as either America of Estati Uniti, the term U.S.A. Meant nothing to them. I would always get Italians asking me, “Que significa USA?” It sort of takes the steam our of the whole national pride play and especially out of the I’m as cool as Robert Redford play.
When I went off to college at Cornell, I took those White Star skis with me and stuck them in the basement of my fraternity house, pulling them out in the winter to go take a run or two at Greek Peak, the local upstate New York ski area frequented by Cornell students. It was certainly not the Alps or even the Dolomites. After a few years of hiatus from skiing as I started my career in banking in New York City, I got back into skiing by taking a trip to Vermont with some banking buddies. It was the year of the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid and everyone was getting exited about winter sports (Miracle on Ice and all that). Those White Stars were, by that time, more a liability than an asset, so I ditched them for lighter, shorter skis. Those held me over until a few years later I was introduced to western skiing in Utah.
This was not the blue ice of New Hampshire’s Franconia Notch (technically, Cannon Mountain) or even the hard pack of Killington. This was the powder-light dry snow of Utah and it was like skiing on a cloud if you had the right gear to keep you on top of it all. I started skiing Utah in 1986 thanks to some Mormon friends who worked for me and organized a trip where we stayed at a cabin at Robert Redford’s Sundance Ski Area. We actually even saw Redford eating dinner in the Oak Tree Room one night. I ws hooked on Utah and never looked back. In 1992 I bought a condo on Deer Valley Mountain and over the next fifteen years traded that up to a ranch house, a Monster 11,000 sf reproduction Frank Lloyd Wright home, a townhouse and then a small (4,000 sf) ski house. I skied on average 35-40 days per year in Utah and spent all three weeks of the 2002 Winter Olympics out there. It was a dream realized, but it ran its course just as all thing tend to.
In 2007 when my Bear Stearns Asset Management juggernaut that had grown so fast and done so well hit the proverbial wall of the subprime crisis, I went down hard, as hard as a downhill racer catching an edge. During the 6 months when I thought there was a chance I was going to get indicted for one thing or another (guilt has little to do with these things when the pain is great enough on the public), I sold my Utah house and probably got the last good sale off in 2007 in Park City. Who says there isn’t a silver lining to tragedy at times? That ignominious end to my Utah career was also the logical end to my ski career. I had been a pretty decent skier. People would be amazed at how graceful a guy my size could be on skis when they saw me coming down the mountain. I was able to imbue all three of my kids with a love of skiing, so I had passed on my mother’s sport to my kids and that all felt both right and enough for me.
I have never looked back at either Park City or at skiing with anything like longing. I enjoyed the hell out of it while I did it. ANd when I stumble onto a movie like Downhill Racer, well, that does take me back to the slopes, but also to my adolescence in Europe and my motorcycle days playing a downhill racer roaring down the Cristofero Colombo highway at night.