NZSIA Technique Influences

by John Armstrong.

New Zealand Snowsports Instructors Alliance: Technical Influences to 1983 

Influences on NZSIA ski technique, from the very early days of teaching skiing in both the North and South Islands, through to at least the 1983 Interski in Sesto Italy, have these themes: 

• World class European (particularly Swiss and some French influences), and North American ski school directors and coaches, who had strong alpine ski racing backgrounds, brought very legitimate and well established techniques and methodologies to New Zealand. These ski schools and instructors developed New Zealand skiers in the 1950’s and 60’s, preparing many who would take the first NZSIA courses in the early 1970’s and form the nucleus of the alliance. 
• Ski racing and coaching influences have guided choices and preferences within the NZSIA from the very early days. 
• Professional Ski Instructors of America (PSIA) and Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance (CSIA) National Team Members, Examiners and Instructors visiting New Zealand influenced the technique and methodology of NZSIA very strongly in the 1970’s and 1980’s. 
• New Zealand instructors have been able to borrow from the best, use elements based on sound bio-mechanical principals, apply them to local conditions, and to develop their own brand of world class teaching and coaching.

World Class Ski School Directors and Racing Experience 

In the North Island, at Mt Ruapehu a series of four ski school directors had strong racing backgrounds and interests. Walter Haensli began teaching on the Whakapapa side of the mountain in the late 1940’s. He came from a racing background in Switzerland and coached the US Ski Team in both the 1948 and 1952 Olympics. Haensli’s time at Ruapehu was most notable for the role he played in developing the mountain in concert with Ruapehu Alpine Lifts to create the Whakapapa ski area. This story is beautifully covered in Karen Williams’ book “ Barrel Staves to Carving Skis”, 1999, Fire and Ice Publishing. 

Harvey Clifford, from Canada followed Haensli at Ruapehu. Clifford represented Canada at the 1948 Olympics and coached the Canadian Olympic team in 1952. He served as President of the Canadian Ski Instructors Alliance for 2 years and as its Chief Examiner for 4 years. 

Karl Burtscher from Austria followed Clifford at the Chateau Ski School, Mt Ruapehu. Karl was a member of the Austrian Junior National Ski Team and went on to compete in a professional racing circuit that preceded World Pro Skiing in its dual format. He later developed Round Hill Ski Area in Tekapo. 

Next up at Mt Ruapehu was Declan Daly, an American ski school director from Squaw Valley, California, site of the 1960 Olympics. While not a ski racer himself he came from an area with Olympic racing credentials and he brought members of the French National Ski Team to Mt Ruapehu as part of the “Ecole de Ski Francaise” (ESF) franchise he developed. Skiers took part in the Chamois de France, a standard race comparing times to French National Team Members such as Philippe and Gilbert Mollard ,and Pierre Stamos who in 1974 became a trainer at the Ecole Nationale de Ski et Alpinisme (ENSA) in Chamonix. It was during this era, around the early 1970’s,  that Jon Reveal came to teach at Mt Ruapehu. Jon had been a gifted ski racer at the junior national level in the US and had graduated with top honours at ENSA. He was a trainer at the first NZSIA course at Ruapehu in September 1971 and was a strong advocate for the development of New Zealand instructors. 

In other situations Kiwis had contact with overseas coaches and instructors with impressive credentials. Walter Haensli created a tradition with the Ruapehu Ski Club in recommending and positioning Swiss instructors who lived in the Lodge. Stan Blakely hired Hans Peter Rohr at Ski Racers Club at Ruapehu to be an in-house instructor for the season. Rohr was a Swiss Ski Team member and had 8 top 10 finishes on the World Cup. Ski Racers Club also hosted Warren Witherall from the Eastern United States who brought a group of racers to New Zealand for 3 weeks of training. As part of a reciprocal arrangement half a dozen young New Zealand racers travelled to the US to be coached by Witherall who wrote a leading technique book in 1972 titled “How the Racers Ski”. 

The South Island had its racing influences and backgrounds too. Otto Van Allmen came to Coronet Peak in 1958 to 1974. Otto was a ten-time Swiss Slalom champion and won the Lauberhorn Slalom three times in the 1940’s. Van Allmen was an early facilitator for the NZSIA when he travelled to Mt Ruapehu with James Isham and Colin Haffey to meet with John Ball, the Director at Whakapapa, to prepare for courses and exams. 

New Zealanders attending ski school, receiving coaching, and perhaps McKenzie Scholarships, in these two decades had exposure to very skilled overseas instructors who had a ski racing background. They developed into good racers and very capable all round skiers who could handle un-groomed snow and sometimes atrocious weather in all parts of the country. These skiers would become the first members of NZSIA taking courses starting in 1971. They arrived with good skills at a time when skiing was booming, and taking up unconventional occupations was becoming an acceptable and very inviting career choice for many folks.

Why is a technical connection with ski racing relevant? 

The question is well answered by the late Weems Westfeldt, Coronet Peak Ski School Director in an interview he gave in The Skier in 1982 and also in the Coronet Peak ski school technical and pedagogical guidelines. 

“ We still keep coming back to racing technique as the basic model for skiers. The racers simply ski better than the others no matter what the conditions. What we aim to do in the ski schools is copy the efficient mechanics of the best racers and modify them just enough to be of use to our less aggressive and less gifted students. For those who disagree on a basis of speed difference, it should be remembered that top racers because of their highly developed skills, balance and timing, ski slowly better than anyone in the world. 

The most fun is available to the best skiers and the beginners have more fun if their skiing is based on the easy, sound fundamentals of the best skiers.” 

In 1972 Warren Witherell, a coach from the Eastern United States wrote a book called “How the Racers Ski”. It would become a key text in ski school locker rooms in the US and it emphasised performance, results and carving, interpreting top athletes and applying those principals to everyday skiing. Georges Joubert wrote “Skiing, an Art, a Technique” at about the same time and again used top ski racers as examples of technique everyday skiers could emulate. Joubert’s work was widely read in the seventies and his advice for different levels of physique and mental disposition struck a chord with many instructors who were looking for progression alternatives. 

Our first Chief Examiner, Mike DesBrisay had an extensive racing background and his approach to teaching and presenting technique very much reflected the principals of performance based skiing.

In 1983 at Sesto’s Interski the NZSIA Team would be confronted by another nation over our practice of skiing with our feet a little apart, developing space to be able to use our legs independently and achieve the amount of angulation we were looking for. The other nation was stylistically focussed on skiing with feet tightly together to mimic the appearance of some of the top European nations. We chose technical efficiency and function over stylistic, aesthetic and cultural concerns, preferring technique based on biomechanics. We could prove our approach with reference to the best skiers in the world, easily and convincingly. We also demonstrated our belief making use of 3 three previous NZ Ski Team members, two or three current racing coaches and a couple of skiing Olympians. 

As time passed, racing evolved as did our understanding of technique and how we interpreted it to our students. New Zealand has been able to advocate a technique that was adaptable to particular conditions that was never presented as a rigid, stylistic national code.

American and Canadian Influences 

Our founding trainers and examiners in 1971 were from the USA and Canada and they brought their experiences from PSIA and CSIA to the first courses. Jim Isham, Colin Haffey, Bill Nicholson and Jon Reveal were PSIA certified instructors and examiners and they delivered the courses at Coronet Peak and Ruapehu. 

In 1971 PSIA still had “Final Forms” which were somewhat idealised and refined demonstrations of key turns within the teaching progressions, such as Snowplough, Stem Christy and Parallel turns. This style of teaching began to change in the early 1970’s and in the next few years the Skills Concept became widely known and represented a move to a more flexible system. The American Teaching Method represented a flexible approach based on student centred teaching, experiential learning, and a biomechanics based emphasis. The PSIA demonstration at Interski in 1975 featured this approach and it was a major move away from rigid, strictly progression based national systems. PSIA also signalled a move towards understanding the needs of students and the different ways in which people learn. Methodology would become very important and we were intrigued with this development. 

Several PSIA National Team members worked in New Zealand and were welcomed into our system as trainers and examiners. Weems Westfeldt, Shawn Smith, Bruce Bowlin and Tim Petrick all contributed tremendously to our early identity. At the same time we enjoyed theSwedish presence and contributions from Christer Lidgren and Ingegerd Franberg. Sweden was also an early adopter of the Skills Concept from PSIA. 

At the same time CSIA was working on dynamic movements and a centered stance transitioning from the rigid postures of earlier decades to more natural and athletic movement patterns. CSIA seemed to us to represent an approach that was a blend of the PSIA approach and that of European nations, particularly France. 

Jon Reveal, Norm Crerar and John Armstrong ( NZSIA examiners and Chief Examiners) all attended the Ecole Nationale de Ski et Alpinisme in France and saw what a large and formal state operated school looked like. They also experienced the extensive technical curriculum and examining systems of ENSA. 

French Connection 

In the early 1970’s France proposed a more natural way to ski than several other European nations. Austria, for example, promoted the “reverse shoulder” highly twisted, hip angulated, feet locked together position on their skis. France pointed out that when we walk down the street we face the front and use our legs in an independent and unrestricted fashion, and that we ought to ski the same way. This made sense to us. Remember that in in 1968 Killy won three gold medals at the Grenoble Olympics and other French skiers dominated international skiing. Jean Noel Augert, Patrick Russel, Guy Perillat, Annie Famose, and Brit and Ingrid Lafforgue were winning races and captured our imaginations with their wild and exciting performances. French skiing was hot and we liked it. 

Borrow from the Best

In 1975 Clive Manners Wood signed the Alliance up with Interski International and the International Ski Instructors Association, declaring we would attend Interski in 1979 in Zao. We took part with PSIA and CSIA in the Manza Festival in Japan in 1978, further developing our blend of teaching and then were able to arrive at Interski in Zao in 1979 to present to the world, and more importantly soak up everything the world had to offer. We became more cosmopolitan and were able to blend ideas from everywhere into our system and teaching.  

One of our complementary reviews came from PSIA’s Stu Campbell in the March 31 1979 issue of SkiPro and he described our technical situation accurately: 

“New Zealand made its first appearance at Interski and their presentation was a thoughtful concoction of Canadian and American teaching methods, well-seasoned with some outstanding demonstrations. One of the more exciting things they did was to compress whole progressions into single runs. In many ways the Kiwi demonstration, put together by John Armstrong who teaches at Mammoth Mountain during our winters was a fine depiction of ATM as it existed 2 or 3 years ago.” 

Interski for New Zealand was profoundly important. It represented our debut on the world stage and it seemed to us we were accepted into the family of ski teaching nations. From our early days, New Zealand instructors have been able to borrow from the best, use elements based on sound bio-mechanical principals, apply them to local conditions, and to develop our own brand of world class teaching and coaching. 

There is one other important key factor in our development as a ski and snowboard teaching nation: New Zealand instructors have been the “true full time year round professionals” as many have followed winter to the northern hemisphere, solving a potential problem of isolation due to distance. They have been able to experience two full-time seasons a year as a result of work in the northern winters. Coupled with an enthusiasm for accepting and learning from North American and European visiting instructors, these factors have produced a very high degree of technical understanding and a rapid evolution of ideas. 

We had many friends in the 1970’s who helped us immeasurably, and for that we are very grateful.New Zealand instructors have been able to borrow from the best, use elements based on sound bio-mechanical principals, apply them to local conditions, and to develop their own brand of world class teaching and coaching.