From the FasterSkier archive — posts syndicated from athletes’ and coaches’ own blogs between 2004 and 2012, kept online as published. Current coverage is at fasterskier.com.

Tag: 1976 olympics

Reflections of an Old-Timer at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics

John Morton at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria (Courtesy photo)

The following was submitted to FasterSkier by John Morton, a former U.S. biathlete and two-time Olympian (1972 and 1976) who has attended 10 Winter Olympics as “either an athlete, a coach, the Biathlon Team Leader, Chief of Course or, more recently as a spectator,” according to his bio (at end of article). Today, Morton, 71, lives in Thetford, Vermont, and works in trail design.

***

I’ve had the remarkable good fortune of attending 10 Winter Olympic Games. I was a member of the U.S. Biathlon Team in 1972 at Sapporo and again in ’76 at Innsbruck (where, following a workout, a few of U.S. ski-shooters wandered over to the adjacent cross-country stadium and watched Bill Koch win his monumental silver medal in the men’s 30 km). I was an assistant coach for the U.S. biathletes at the 1980 Games in Lake Placid, where late in the schedule, I accepted a complementary ticket to a hockey game, not even knowing which teams were playing. It turned out to be the USA’s remarkable victory over the Soviet Union, probably the most inspiring sporting event I’ll ever witness. I served as Team Leader for the U.S. biathletes at Calgary in ‘88, Albertville in ‘92 and Lillehammer in ‘94. Then, in 2002, I was the Chief of Course for the biathlon events during the Salt Lake City Olympics, a volunteer position that was every bit as stressful as competing back in ’72 and ‘76.

At the most recent three Winter Games, Vancouver, Sochi and PyeongChang, my wife and I have enjoyed the relative luxury of attending as spectators, cheering on America’s cross-country skiers and biathletes. As the jet lag from out trip home from South Korea begins to wear off, I can’t help thinking about the dramatic changes these two sports have experienced over the past 46 years. It seems to me that many of these changes can be traced to three factors: innovations by the athletes, technological improvements and the influence of television.

John Morton at 1972 biathlon Olympic trials in Jackson, Wyoming. (Courtesy photo)

Back in ’72 we were on wooden skis, kick-waxed the entire length. There were two biathlon events, the 20 km individual and the 4 x 7.5 km relay. We shot large-caliber rifles on a 150-meter range using paper targets for the 20 km and glass disks for the relay. It was impossible to determine the winner of the 20 km until all the paper targets had been carefully inspected, sometimes hours after the conclusion of the event. A typical biathlon course consisted of three, independent, 4 km loops, with cutoffs for the relay. Women didn’t compete in biathlon at the Olympics until Albertville in 1992.

Men’s cross-country has been part of the Winter Olympics since the beginning in 1924 at Chamonix, France, when there was a 15 km event as well as the legendary 50 km. The first cross-country event for women was a 10 km, which debuted in 1952. In those days, Nordic race courses consisted of roughly one-third climbing, one-third descent and one-third relatively flat terrain. Well into the 1960s, courses were prepared by soldiers boot-packing or snowshoeing the course, followed by skiers stomping in the parallel tracks through the forests and fields. Competitors typically started at one-minute intervals, disappeared into the woods, only to reappear exhausted, often hours later, covered with frost and mucus. The men’s 50 km cross-country event at the 1932 Winter Olympics in Lakes Placid consisted of a 25 km loop skied twice, and was won by Finland’s Veli Saarinen in 4 hours, 28 minutes.

In my view, the first significant change came at the 1974 Nordic World Championships when Sweden’s Thomas Magnusson won the men’s 30 km on Kneissl synthetic skis. Fiberglass and metal had replaced wooden Alpine skis years earlier, but the faster, plastic bases wouldn’t hold Nordic kick wax. But in wet, heavy, painfully, slow snow, Magnusson took a chance on the fiberglass Austrian skis and dominated the race. The headline in the Oslo paper the next day read something like, “Magnusson wins gold, Norwegian ski industry in peril.”

The next major breakthrough occurred at the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics two years later. Marty Hall, head coach of the U.S. Cross-Country Team recruited Rob Kiesel from Alpine skiing as his assistant. Together they determined that it was possible to wax the tips and tails of the new fiberglass skis for speed with Alpine wax, restricting the much slower cross-country kick wax to a short segment under the athlete’s foot. This made the skis of the Americans faster than those of their European rivals and certainly contributed to Bill Koch’s memorable silver medal in the 30 km, America’s first, and only Olympic medal in Nordic skiing until Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins struck gold in PyeongChang.

Following the success of the Innsbruck Olympics, expectations were high for U.S. Nordic skiers at the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid. With a theoretical “home court advantage,” Bill Koch’s 13^th in the men’s 50 km and Lyle Nelson’s 19^th in the biathlon 10 km sprint fell short of the results which the public had been led to expect.

Discouraged, Koch elected to ski the international ski marathon circuit the following year rather than the Nordic World Cup. There, on trails groomed wide by Alpine-area Sno-Cats for thousands of citizen racers, he observed elite competitors pulling away from the throng by putting one ski in the set track and pushing off, skating-style with the other. He quickly mastered this marathon-skate technique and began to experiment by skating with both skis. When he returned to the World Cup circuit a year later, he threw the Nordic world into turmoil by abandoning the relatively slow kick wax altogether and skating entire courses on skis waxed purely for speed. The result of Koch’s persistence and innovation was a cumulative World Cup victory for the season, America’s first in cross-country skiing.

U.S. biathlete John Morton racing at the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Japan. (Courtesy photo)

When the dust (or more accurately, snow) finally settled, Nordic skiing had two disciplines, classic (the traditional kicking and gliding) and freestyle (skating). Because biathlon was already complicated enough with skiing and shooting, they decided to go with skating as their designated technique, as did Nordic Combined. In a type of mutual re-enforcement cycle, the use of large, Sno-Cat-type grooming machines on cross-country trails, which originally made the evolution of the skating technique possible, became a requirement once skating was accepted as a part of the sport.

Enter television. The first Winter Olympics to be televised were the 1956 Games in Cortina, Italy, and it quickly became apparent how powerful the new medium could be. Figure skating, ice hockey and ski jumping immediately gained popularity, largely because they were relatively easy to cover. Alpine skiing, bobsled and Nordic skiing lagged behind because they were more difficult and expensive to film. The sports favored by TV prospered, enjoying increased funding from sponsors and a wave of young Olympic hopefuls. Meanwhile, those sports that were less telegenic scrambled to make their events more appealing to the camera. Nordic skiing and biathlon added mass-start and pursuit format events, making it easy for spectators to see who was winning. In terms of spectator interest, biathlon had the advantage of the shooting range. With the adoption of the modern, knock-down targets and television cameras’ abilities to zoom in on an athlete’s targets as he/she is shooting, the popularity of the sport took off. In recent years, biathlon has become the most-watched winter sport in Europe with World Cup events rivaling the popularity of Monday Night Football in America.

In cross-country, one of the unintended consequences of the skating revolution was a focus on upper-body strength, which in turn, led some athletes to abandon kick wax in classic events and double pole the entire course, especially in the shorter, sprint races. This led the FIS (the international governing body for skiing) to require tougher courses with more challenging climbs.

Finland’s Iivo Niskanen after winning the men’s 50 k classic mass start at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, South Korea. (Photo: FlyingPointRoad)

As a result, what we saw in PyeongChang for both cross-country and biathlon, were trails 30-feet wide, capable of accommodating three skaters, side by side (without obstructing each other), with steeper climbs and faster, more challenging descents. Aside from the spacious start/finish stadiums, the traditional one-third of relatively flat terrain has disappeared. There was also an effort to loop the trails back within sight of the spectators so that they saw more than just the start and finish of the events. For example, the men’s 50km, perhaps the most iconic of the cross-country events, was conducted on two, 4.16 km loops which brought the competitors through the stadium, in front of the cheering crowd a dozen times. The men’s 50 km classic in PyeongChang was won by Finland’s Iivo Niskanen in a time of 2 hours, 8 minutes (less than half the time it took for his countryman to complete the same distance in 1932 at Lake Placid).

Perhaps the most dramatic change, was the scheduling of many of the Nordic skiing events at night (which allowed them to be televised live in Europe and the eastern U.S. at a reasonable hour). In addition to the expense of lighting and minimizing the number of TV camera platforms, another motivation for shorter ski loops is the growing need, thanks to climate change, to cover the entire trail with machine-made snow. Early in the winter the biathlon and cross-country courses were blanketed with a deep layer of machine-made snow, enough to survive warm temperatures and thaws well beyond the Olympic schedule in February.

While there have been advancements and technological improvements in other Winter Olympic sports, I can think of none more dramatic than what we’ve experienced in Nordic skiing. From a single biathlon event held at the 1960 Squaw Valley Games, there were 10 biathlon competitions on the schedule in PyeongChang. With the advent of the skating technique, fiberglass skis and fluorocarbon waxes, times for cross-country events have been cut in half in less than a generation. Thanks to machine-made snow, the 2022 Winter Olympic Games will be hosted by Beijing, China, a city previously not known for winter sports. And through the development of LED lighting and high-definition television, the excitement of Nordic skiing events can be broadcast live, in prime time, to homes around the world.

*****

John Morton has participated in ten Winter Olympic Games as either an athlete, a coach, the Biathlon Team Leader, Chief of Course or, more recently as a spectator. He has published two books and numerous articles dealing with Nordic skiing.

After 11 years as Head Coach of Men’s Skiing at Dartmouth College, he founded Morton Trails, and has spent the past 28 years designing more than 220 recreational trails and competition venues across the country. He currently has projects underway in a dozen U.S. states as well as two projects in China. More information regarding his trail design work can be found at www.mortontrails.com. He lives with his wife Kay, at the end of a dirt road in Thetford, VT, surrounded by trails.

John Morton, U.S. biathlete (Courtesy photo)

March 2, 2018
Nordic Community Remembers Rob Kiesel

Rob Kiesel — Photo courtesy of Sun Valley Ski Heritage Museum

“Perhaps it was the wine of the cool autumn breeze. Or perhaps as climbers sometimes we meet, we met. Rob Kiesel was an aggressive downhill racer. Perhaps it was his single-minded drive, which induced success. Nevertheless he was somewhat new to climbing and this would be no leisurely climb.”

— Excerpt from Gregory Lowe’s “Half Dome in the Winter” as it appeared in The American Alpine Journal (Vol. 15, Issue 1) by the American Alpine Club.

***

Note: This story has been updated to include additional photos and comments from Harald Bjerke, as well as a quote from Ruff Patterson.

One of Kiesel’s longtime friends, Bob Rosso, laughed as he remembered a photo of the climb — one of the first winter ascents of Yosemite’s 4,737-foot granite dome. A rope jutted straight out from the rock to support Kiesel and his companions as they hovered in a cloud 3,000 feet above ground.

Rob Kiesel built his first log home in Ketchum, Idaho, as pictured here in 1977. Photo courtesy of Harald Bjerke.

That year in 1972, Kiesel was a mountaineer as well as a skier. He started as a competitive alpine racer, making the U.S. ski team and breaking his leg in Sun Valley, Idaho. Upon leaving the hospital there, he decided that was the area he wanted to live in. That was the story he told Marty Hall, his predecessor as head of the U.S. national cross-country ski team. It was Hall who more or less discovered Kiesel through their interactions in Sun Valley, where Kiesel helped found the first nordic team around the time he summited Half Dome.

Kiesel always had questions — good, pointed ones — and great ideas, Hall said. His extensive knowledge of alpine wax gave made Kiesel a nordic pioneer in the glide-waxing revolution, and he went on to a 28-year career with Swix Sport.

On Monday, Kiesel died suddenly near his small ranch in Joseph, Ore., after apparently having flu-like symptoms. Private and unassuming by nature, he did not worry too much, delayed a doctor’s visit and may have passed away while outside exercising. Friends estimated he was 65 or 66 — a testament to the fact that he never drew attention to himself and preferred seclusion.

That’s why he chose Joseph as his home upon retiring from Swix a few years ago.

“He just loved being there, removed from everybody and everything,” said Rosso, who owned an outdoors shop in Ketchum, Idaho. “He’s just one of those people with enormous accomplishments, but just shy.”

Born in Ventura, Calif., in 1945, Kiesel was the son of an Olympian — Bob Kiesel — who won gold and set a world record in the 4×100-meter relay at the 1932 Los Angeles Games.

The younger, more snowbound Kiesel moved to Ketchum in 1971. There in the same building that Rosso now owns, Kiesel started a climbing and backpacking store called Snug Mountaineering with Bob Gorton, who went on to a lengthy career at North Face. Rosso helped them develop a climbing school, and it wasn’t long before Kiesel delved into nordic.

Recognizing a rising interest in backcountry ski touring, Kiesel decided to sell cross-country items. He also kept an eye on what was going on in Sun Valley, where he first started working with children in alpine. In 1971, Leif Odmark initiated the area’s first nordic team, attracting a small group of high-school athletes to the sport and coaching them for one race of the season — the Sun Valley Club race — with about 30 competitors.

“I wouldn’t be coaching today, nor begun coaching if it weren’t for Rob. Both my sister Susie and brother Pete wouldn’t have had the Alpine skiing careers they had if it weren’t for Rob. My brother Pete wouldn’t be guiding in Greenland or Nepal if it weren’t for Rob. More importantly, Rob was an integral part of our family.”

— as written in an email by Ruff Patterson, Dartmouth College men’s nordic ski coach

The following winter, Kiesel took over the program after convincing the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation to incorporate nordic. At the time, it was an alpine-only operation in an area that had just recently discovered cross-country skiing.

The organization agreed to let Kiesel head a nordic team, and he chose Rosso — who said he only knew how to coach swimming — as his assistant. Over the next few years, Kiesel developed the program and attracted skiers to Sun Valley for its racing culture and innovative grooming.

According to Rosso, Kiesel liked to tinker and experiment. He spent time finding new ways to set cross-country track, perhaps most notably along the 32-kilometer Harriman Trail. There in the Wood River Valley, Kiesel helped develop one of the country’s first distance races for cross-country skiers — the Boulder Mountain Tour — in 1973.

“There were these epic stories of Rob grooming a point-to-point trail with archaic 1970s snowmobile stuff,” said SVSEF Nordic Program Director Rick Kapala.

One of the first to dream up a year-round trail from Galena Lodge to the Sawtooth recreation area near Sun Valley, Kiesel had to route the trail. Kapala recalled stories of him driving into the river on his snowmobile.

In recent years, the annual race closed out at about 1,000 participants. Since Kiesel did not want a memorial service, Rosso said the race organizers intended to quietly dedicate the 2012 Boulder Mountain Tour to him.

“It’s so hard for the rest of us to have closure,” Rosso said. “You want to celebrate his life and his accomplishments.”

Excerpt from a blog entry on JohnnyKlister.com:

“Young and stupid, I didn’t realize then how valuable Rob’s largesse was to our small program. (Young and stupid, I also didn’t know then how largely Rob had contributed to skiing.) Older and slightly less stupid, I know now that I’m indebted to Rob, very personally for the time and kindness he showed me, but also as a member of the larger US ski community, since Rob belonged to a very select group of US skiing pioneers, who help to carve out a place for us at the larger table of skiing and who invited anyone who cared to pull up a chair.”

– Andrew Gardner, Middlebury College head nordic ski coach

Forward Thinking

Not long after Kiesel began working with young skiers and creating programs to certify adult instructors, he made an impression on the USST. Regular rendezvous in Sun Valley gave Hall — the U.S. head coach at the time — an opportunity to meet Kiesel, and he noticed Kiesel’s direct contributions there.

Meanwhile, the U.S. team was eager to get on snow as early as possible. Around 1974, Hall and his staffers discovered a small patch of snow at the northeast entrance of West Yellowstone in Cooke City, Mont. The team began a season-opening ritual there, beginning as early as October and staying in a nearby hotel for almost month. While the racers skied in circles, the coaching staff experimented — most notably with the wax pocket.

Kiesel came onto the national ski scene in 1975, when Hall hired him as assistant coach. His extensive knowledge of the alpine glide wax, which was leaps and bounds ahead of nordic technology, gave the U.S. team an edge and helped them gain recognition internationally.

“We had a wax combination that I’m sure the Europeans knew about,” Hall said of their trip to the 1976 Innsbruck Olympics. “But they didn’t pay much attention to us.”

That February in Austria, Bill Koch put the Americans on center stage, winning a silver medal in the 30 k. He finished an impressive sixth in the 15 k, and his relay team missed the podium by about 30 seconds in the 4×10 k relay.

“We had some guys on radios, and they said these (coaches) out here don’t have a clue what we’re doing,” Hall said. “But the athletes were screaming at their coaches saying their splits are screwed up. … Not only had we hit the wax, but out skis were way faster than their skis.”

It wasn’t long before their competitors realized what the Americans were doing in their wax room. Soon, the brown universal blob of wax was out, and Kiesel’s use of alpine wax, with different temperature and humidity ranges, was the norm.

“He was the perfect guy at the perfect time,” Hall said. “The kids loved him. He and I got along real well. … He was really instrumental at that time.”

Kiesel as the USST head coach in 1980. Photo courtesy of Harald Bjerke.

In 1978, Hall left the USST and put Kiesel in charge. He filled the head coach role through the 1980 Olympics in Lake Placid, N.Y.

One of his athletes, Tim Caldwell, remembered him as an innovator in the mid ’70s, when the world was switching from wood to fiberglass skis.

“He knew a lot of stuff about this part of the sport that we knew nothing about,” Caldwell said. “He helped us a lot certainly with that transition … and trying to lead us, but without being too overly controlling with what we were doing. I think we all enjoyed working with him.”

Known for his steady attitude, Kiesel reacted similarly to good and poor performances, which Caldwell liked. Kiesel wasn’t one for excessive attention and seemed puzzled when he received any.

“He wasn’t interested in talking to the press; he was just a quiet guy,” Hall said. “Great worker, great thinker. It just popped into my own brain, ‘Marty, you did a good thing (hiring him).’ I liked him.”

Keep on Giving

After leaving the team in 1980, Kiesel moved back to Idaho and landed a research and development position with Swix Sport. Through the company, he worked closely with his college roommate from Denver University, Harald Bjerke, now the chief hardgoods product manager at Swix.

The two met regularly in Norway during Kiesel’s annual trips to the mountains to brainstorm waxing methods with the gurus. Roger Knight, the director of team and eastern operations at Boulder Nordic Sport, said Kiesel might have been the only American invited to the exclusive meetings with the Europeans.

“He was sort of a mythical figure, so to speak,” said Knight, who was personally mentored by Kiesel.

Former USST alpine racer, Kiesel showing off his downhill skills at Winter Park in 1964. Kiesel was on the alpine team at Denver University before taking up nordic in the 1970s. Photo courtesy of Harald Bjerke.

When Knight began working for Swix in the late ’90s, he said it was Kiesel who helped him earn a full-time position as the Swix USA nordic product manager. Later on, Kiesel regularly came to help at big racing events, such as nationals, Knight said. He wasn’t paid, but wanted to work.

“He’d never tell you what to do, but he’d always offer wisdom if you needed it,” Knight said. “People would say, ‘Who is this old guy in the way room?’ and he would leave, and I would say, ‘That’s the guy who invented fiberlene and fibertex.’ ”

Another one of his disciples, Chris Hall started as an assistant ski coach at Sun Valley. Kiesel knew he was interested in ski service and recommended him to Swix Norway. From there, Chris began working with the Swix Racing Service on a special project before the 2002 Olympics, and went on to become the head service tech for the USST.

Now the nordic race director for Fischer Skis US and also the Swix US nordic racing service director, Chris said Kiesel gave him the opportunities and confidence to move forward.

He remembered thanking him at an SVSEF team banquet about eight years ago.

“One of my speaking points was to thank Rob for the opportunity to take the ball and run with it, so to speak,” Chris wrote in an email. “Rob was a little taken back, as I believe he saw it as just doing the right thing.”

Last January, Kiesel was inducted into the first annual Sun Valley Ski Hall of Fame. Kapala and Rosso were among those who helped select the nominees, and both were nervous Kiesel wouldn’t show.

“When we talked to him about it, he couldn’t have been happier,” Kapala said. “He was just so gracious.”

For many, it was the last time they caught a glimpse of the man, whom a few described as reclusive. Rosso said he occasionally drove 5 ½ hours from his ranch to visit him at the shop in Ketchum, but the visits dwindled once he retired.

Kiesel was survived by his two children: his 28-year-old son, Jess, and younger daughter, Kaelin, 26, who had her first child a few months ago. Kapala said he coached Kiesel’s two children at Sun Valley, and both won junior national championships. Back then, Kiesel kept a respectful distance while supporting Kapala was in the coaching role he founded some 30 years earlier.

“It’s just sort of a very abrupt ending,” Kapala said.

“There’s just a lot of people out there that knew him well,” Rosso said. “He was just larger than life.”

***

An excerpt from an email written by Harald Bjerke, Kiesel’s longtime friend and college roommate:

Rob never talked loud about his achievements. He did not want to be in focus. Rob had a lot of interests from gardening, reading, mountain climbing, cycling and food to motorcycles. It was always interesting to discuss with Rob because he had such a broad perspective of life.

October 27, 2011

Tag: 1976 olympics

Reflections of an Old-Timer at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics

Nordic Community Remembers Rob Kiesel