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Introduction
International alpine ski races in Scandinavia started in early 1930s, with
Kongsberg meeting in February of 1933 being the first one. In the 1930s
the major event became Easter Spiterstullen Rennet, held at Galdhoepiggen,
where a very long, though not much selective downhill course, with a respectable
vertical drop, attracted quite a few of the best downhillers of that time.
After the war, alpine races added to the Holmenkollen program (the Holmenkollen-Kandahar
Cup) gained a considerable popularity among the alpine skiing champions.
Specially in early 1950s, when Olympic Games at Oslo, were followed by
the World Championships at Aare.
All these races, held closer to the end of season, from mid 1950s, got
a very powerful rival – the American tour, where races in Aspen, Sun Valley
and Stowe attracted the best of the best skiers. So it was only in early
1960s, that other races, aside from the Holmenkollen-Kandahar, could count
on massive presence of the best racers from the Alps.
Yet,
despite such a rich history of international alpine racing, nowhere on
the web results of these major races could be found. This website is conceived
as a place where this can be corrected and this rich heritage saved from
the oblivion. As a first step, you can find some fragmentary results, almost
as a part of some large jig-saw puzzle. So this will be a kind of permanent
work in progress, until all relevant data are gathered and posted.
The idea is that everybody interested in restoring the full picture would
help by sending an e-mail (or mailing some copies through the "ordinary"
post) with some of the missing results, or at least with the dates and
other relevant information about all the major international alpine ski
races held in Scandinavia in the pre-world cup era. (The results of major
races held from the inception of the World Cup in 1967, of course can be
found at the official FIS web site - www.fisski.org).
So, if it would be too optimistic to assume that You would be so enthusiastic
to establish a separate web site devoted to some of the mentioned major
races of this "Scandinavian alpine tour", and yet you do have some of the
missing data, please do send them to the following address: [email protected].
I guess that it would be quite an achievement to reconstruct the entire
picture from the scratch.
Contents
The Scandinavian tour results for the pre World Cup era, that is from 1930s
till 1966, gathered up to now, are regrouped by decades in which the races
were held. And since the collected data are rather scant and quite incomplete
there is no real need to separate them by events. That is specially the
case with the 1940s, when due to the war time races were not so frequent
as in other decades.
Instead of separating the events by the different ski resorts in which
they were held, they are all grouped by the year in which the races occurred.
Occasionally, though, only the names of the winners, or just some famous
participant, or even the mere date of the event, or a single line, notifying
that some event happened at all, are given.
Which means there are numerous interesting clues to start a search of your
own.
1930s
1940s
1950s
1960s
Kongsberg 33, 34
Galdhoepiggen Rennet
34-38, 48
Myrdal (Voss) 37-39,
52
Holmenkollen 46-66
Aare 48, 51-54, 64
Narvik 63,66
Oestersund 64
Gaellivare 64
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