SnowNews

Critérium de la première Neige Celebrates 50th Birthday

Snow cover permitting Critérium de la première Neige at Val d'Isère will be celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. The event started small, just a small article on an inside page of the local paper The Dauphiné Libéré. The brains behind the event were two Alsatians who had moved to the Savoie: Charled Diebold and Louis Erny. Debold was a force behind the development of winter sports in France.

The idea was to kick-off the winter sports season with two weeks of training followed by a competition. On the 17th of December 1955, fifty five competitors launched themselves down the Solaise mountain and a historic event was born. Amongst the competitors, 23 British nationals. The winners of the mens events were local man Mattis and Jean Bourdaleix from Chambéry a top skier of the time in his last international season. However the winners of the women’s giant and slalom throws up two unexpected names: Zandra Nowel and Jean Stanford, both Brits. Jean Standford went on to found Stanford Skiing based in Megève.

Competition was nothing new to Val d’Isère. Since the creation of the first lift in 1934 the sports club organized a Grand Prix de l’Iseran on the eponymous col. In 1957 the French women’s team went on strike, considering the course to be too dangerous. At the time women used the same course as men. The event was run the following day allowing the ladies time to check out the descent. In 1959, during training, Emile Viollat had a serious accident and the prognosis was that he would loose his right hand. He recovered and won a world downhill medal in 1962. The point where Viollat crashed is still known as the “Bosse a l’Emile”.

In 1961 two locals won the event, Marielle Goitschel, just 16 years old and daughter of a professional footballer from Olympic Marseilles who had moved to the resort and the legendary Jean-Claude Killy. Both went on to great triumph as part of Honore Bonnet’s “dream team”. Goitschel taking Olympic gold at Innsbruck in ’64 and at Chamrousse in ‘68 and Killy making history with Olympic golds in all three downhill events at Chamrousse (only the Austrian Toni Sailer in 1956 has done the same). Killy slid into controversy after the Chamrousse games for contravening amateur rules. His face and name appeared in publicity photographs… Killy told journalists “I sell Killy and my face sells well” – the Tignes/Val d’Isère ski area is today known as l’Espace Killy.

posted by davidof @ 11:23 AM