Six Curious Facts About The FIS Alpine Ski World Championship

The FIS Alpine Ski World Championships have been running for 80 years. There were a few curious instances in that time. They include time differences between winners and runners up of almost 30 seconds, the championship that never was, one without snow, and the man who became women’s world champion.

Erika Schinegger

80 years ago, the first FIS Alpine Ski World Championship took place in Mürren. Mürren is a picturesque small skiing resort in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. While the event these days is a major happening, in 1931 seven nations took part. Of these seven, Australia, Italy, and Norway sent only one participant to represent them. The other four participants Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom split the medals in between them.

At the first World Championship, men and women only competed in two events: Downhill and slalom. A medal for the combined results of the two was introduced in 1932. The winner of the men’s downhill event took 22 seconds less than the runner up; in the women’s downhill, Esmé McKinnon representing the United Kingdom won by an even larger margin of 27 seconds.

The World Championship was held on an annual basis until 1939. Due to World War II, no events took place in 1940. The result of the 1941 event was cancelled by the FIS in 1946 due to the limited number of participants coming exclusively from the Axis Nations. No further events were held until 1948 when the first post war Championship was held in Switzerland. The host was St. Moritz in the Grisons’ Engadin Valley and it was held together with the first post war Winter Olympics.

From 1948 to 1982, World Championships were held every two years whereby the Winter Olympics counted as a World Championship as well with exception of the combined event. In 1985 the new regime of World Championships in odd years was started while retaining the biennial scheduling. Exceptional was the World Championship of 1995 to be held in the Sierra Nevada in Spain; due to lack of snow, the event had to be cancelled and was moved to 1996. The event took place at the same location without a hitch.

The World Championship of 1956 showed that it was the place where stars are born. A twenty year old Austrian by the name of Toni Sailer managed the impossible that year and won gold medals in all four events: Downhill, giant slalom, slalom, and combined. Two years later, at the Winter Olympics of 1958, he was a total failure; he won only silver in the slalom, and obviously gold in all the other events.

The 1966 World Championship was exceptional; it was held in Portillo in Chile and it is the only time so far that it was held in the southern hemisphere. Even more exceptional was the winner of the women’s downhill race. The event was won by Austria’s Erika Schinegger. Before the 1968 Winter Olympics, the women participants of the alpine skiing events underwent a medical test which showed Erika to be in fact male. Having been brought up as a girl, it turned out that he had a medical condition of pseudohermaphroditism.

The FIS took a practical approach to the conundrum, they issued a new set of medals and reissued the ranking where Erika Schinegger’s name is missing; at the same time they didn’t annul his champion’s title. While the results board of the FIS shows only France’s Marielle Goitschl as winner, there are in fact two world champions in the downhill of that year.

Erika Schinegger in turn underwent an operation and changed his name to Erik. He is married, has a daughter, runs a skiing school for children and two hotels in his home village in Austria, and writes books about skiing. In 1988, he published his story in Mein Sieg Über Mich. Der Mann, Der Weltmeisterin Wurde. (My Victory Over Myself. The Man Who Became Women’s World Champion).

The book has been bandied about Hollywood since 2007; filming of a movie based on Erika Schinegger’s life is due to begin this year after the World Championship.

Further reading
When Doping Was All Bulls Balls
Boxer On Ice
Supernatural Sherlock Holmes

Flying Without a Permit

When flying was all new and shiny, it was also still in paradise. There were no permits to get and no exams to pass; you just got into your flying machine and took off. But paradise ended when the snake came in; this snake took the form of an international body which started to issue permits.

Hubert Latham in monoplane

Everything that is new is usually imbued with that limitless sense of freedom. Flying was one of those things when it was new and adventurous and unencumbered by official red tape. But in 1905, the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale came into being dealing with heavier-than-air aircraft. By 1909, they were busily issuing permits to pilots.

They had the good grace to give away the first 14 of these permits without subjecting the recipients to any exams based on their prior flying experience. As they didn’t want to elevate any of these pilots over the other, they issued the permits in alphabetical order. The permits went to the giants in aviation at that time under the heading of the Aéro-Club de France.

1. Louis Blériot (1872 to 1936) was a French aviator, inventor, and engineer. He was the first man to fly over the Channel for which he pocketed the prize money of £1,000.

2. Glen Curtiss (1878 to 1930) was an American aviation pioneer and motorcycle racer. He made the first long distance flight in the United States and he won the world’s first flying contest held in Reims.

3. Léon Delagrange (1873 to 1910) was a French aviator and sculptor. He was president of the Aéro-Club de France and set many records in his short flying career; he was killed in an airplane accident in 1910 near Bordeaux.

4. Robert Esnault-Pelterie (1881 to 1957) was a French aircraft designer and spaceflight theorist. He stopped flying in 1909 and instead concentrated on aircraft design. He invented the joy-stick on which he owned a patent.

5. Henri Farman (1877 to 1958) was a French-English aviator and aircraft designer. He set many records and was the first passenger on a flight when flying with Léon Delagrange.

6. Maurice Farman (1877 to 1964) was the twin of Henri, an aviator, aircraft designer, and motorcar racer. He won the world’s first Grand Prix at Pau in 1901. Turning from racing to flying, he set many records of speed and endurance in flying. With his brothers Henri and Richard he ran the company Farman Frères which produced cars and airplanes.

7. Jean Gobron (1885 to 1945) was a French motorcar racer, aviator and aircraft engineer. He won several flying competitions and constructed airplane motors. After his plane caught fire during a flight in the Sahara, he stopped flying and concentrated on his construction work.

8. Comte Charles de Lambert (1865 to 1944) was a French-Russian aviator and nautical engineer. He was the first to fly over the Eiffel Tower. His real passion, though, belonged to the construction of airboats.

9. Hubert Latham (1883 to 1963) was a French-English aviator and explorer. He set many records and was renowned for trying and executing seemingly impossible flight manoeuvres. He tried to be the first to cross the Channel but was stopped by an engine failure. He thereby became the first to water an airplane.

10. Louis Paulhan (1883 to 1963) was a French aviator, airship and aircraft constructor. He set several records in long and high flying.

11. Henri Rougier (1876 to 1956) was a French aviator, bicycle and motorcar racer. He won the first Rally Monte Carlo. He set several flying records and designed his own cars based on the Turcat-Méry.

12. Alberto Santos-Dumont (1873 to 1932) was a French-Brazilian aviator, balloonist, inventor, and airship constructor. He was the first pilot to make a certified controlled flight.

13. For superstitious reasons, permit number 13 was not issued.

14. Orville Wright (1871 to 1948) was an American publisher, bicycle and airplane constructor.

15. Wilbur Wright (1867 to 1912) was an American editor, bicycle and airplane constructor. Together with his brother Orville he built the first successful airplane and made the first controlled powered and sustained human flight with a heavier-than-air machine.

Two further honorary permits were issued later in 1909 and received the numbers 5bis and 10bis. They went to Ferdinand Ferber (1862 to 1909), a French army captain and aviator who died when he crashed near Boulogne, and to Paul Tissandier (1881 to 1945), a French balloonist, airship and airplane pilot who was involved in the development of airboats together with Comte Charles de Lambert. All later permits had to be acquired by passing an exam.

Further reading
The Race for the First Flight Over The Channel
Antoine de Saint Exupery and the Lost Prince
The First Family of Science: The Piccard Scientists

How Not to Win a Grand Slam

Andy Murray is following in Roger Federer’s and Rafael Nadal’s footsteps. He just broke the first long standing tennis record. He is the first player to have lost his first three appearances in a grand slam final without winning a single set. That is not the kind of record to inspire confidence in his ability to win one.

Andy Murray, tennis boy

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have made it part of the game to break records so regularly, chance is if you blinked you missed it. Now Andy Murray has finally set his first all-time record, and it’s not one to be proud of. To have reached three grand slam finals normally would be no mean feat, considering that there are usually two reserved tickets for Roger and Rafael. But to lose all three of them without ever winning a set is not the way to do it.

Watching Andy Murray in the Australian Open final was memorable. If ever young players have to be instructed in how not to win a grand slam, these pictures will serve perfectly well for them. Andy’s performance was deplorable, and so was his body language. Even walking out on court, defeat was already written all over him. It seemed that he knew that Novak Djokovic in his present form would walk all over him.

British media have been writing Andy’s tennis abilities up for two years now. They are doing him disfavour on two counts: His tennis is not as good as they portray it; while it is adequate to be secure in the top ten, he lacks the last edge to take him to the very top. Add to this the constant pressure the pile on him to win a grand slam (after 115,000 years in Roger Federer’s reckoning), and you’ll see that they’ll manage yet to make another Tim Henman of him.

While the media write Andy Murray’s tennis up, they write that of other players down as if they could replicate damaged British society as advocated through schools. I don’t know how far Andy has been damaged by the British educational system which is in shambles. Instead of asking the most of pupils and make them excel, the system has been constantly downgraded to let even the laziest pupil have a positive grade. Let’s hope that Andy knows that the rest of the world will not lower their tennis standard to do him a favour.

Roger Federer once said that talent can be learned, all it takes is a lot of work; with Rafael Nadal, you see that he is working his body to breaking point (and beyond); and now Novak Djokovic has put off his baby nappies and accepts the lessons to be learned from the two top workers in the business. Andy Murray on the other hand wants to take a few days off after having done nothing in the final to win it. He should rather spend more time on the training court, one would think.

Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal have pushed each other to unprecedented heights in tennis; and Novak Djokovic seems to gear up to join the club of excellence. All three players share something in common: Roger was allowed to develop in a small country (a tennis dwarf called Switzerland) to burst on the scene fully confident of what he might be able to do; Rafa hid behind the Swiss (and still likes to do that) to keep out of the wind; and Nole is again the product of a tennis dwarf (Serbia).

Will Andy be able to overcome the handicap of coming from a nation with an exalted notion of its tennis abilities? Will he be able to overcome the constant carping for a grand slam win? Right now, this is highly dubious.

Further reading
Giving Up: Key to Success
Jerzy Janowicz and Andy Murray
Tennis With Gay Appeal in London

Maurice Bavaud: One Swiss Alone Against Hitler

On November 9th, 2008, it will be 70 years since Maurice Bavaud tried to assassinate Hitler in Munich. After prolonged torture, he was murdered by the Nazis on May 14th, 1941, after ‘legal’ proceedings followed by a sentence to death. He was officially rehabilitated by Germany in 1956.

Maurice Bavaud

In his letter to the people and the nation of Switzerland of November, Swiss President Pascal Couchepin reminded his fellow ‘comrades in oath’ (the official term used for all Swiss nationals ‘Eidgenossen’) of Maurice Bavaud. He drew attention to the perspicacity of the then 22 year old in seeing in Adolf Hitler a danger to Humanity, Switzerland, and the Catholic Church. The passage in the text of the President’s speech was taken directly from Bavaud’s statement in the process in Germany leading to his death sentence. His exemplary sacrifice should be remembered and honoured by the nation and the world now and in future times.

Maurice Bavaud was born in 1916 in Neuchâtel, capital in the State and Republic of the same name, a French speaking canton of Switzerland. After finishing technical school in his home city, he entered the seminary at the University of Fribourg in the neighbouring canton to become a Catholic missionary and priest. In October 1938 he travelled to Germany, spending first time in Munich to establish himself as an ardent follower of Hitler and later in Berchtesgaden.

In Berchtesgaden, he tried to gain entry into Hitler’s highly secured retreat. His disguise as a fervent Nazi worked and he was allowed into the grounds, only to find that the Fuhrer had already left earlier that morning. He therefore returned to Munich and made his way to Nuremberg.

He hoped by pretending to be a fanatical follower of the Fuhrer to be accorded a place of honour at the gathering in Nuremberg to commemorate Kristallnacht, in which he succeeded as his contacts meanwhile were considerable. Concealing a pistol in his mantle, he failed to execute the deed due to a too great distance between his seat and Hitler. He was murdered by guillotine in 1941. For all that, he should have been sainted by the Catholic Church a long time ago.

It is a clear sign that the Catholic Church was run by Nazis during and after the Second World War, that he has not been canonised earlier. It is a sign of the present Nazi leadership of the Catholic Church that he has not been amongst the many newly canonised of last month. As the Pope was an active member of Hitler Youth movement, this may hardly surprise though.

Amongst the canonised of the current incumbent on Saint Peter’s chair are the, outside of Venezuela, completely unknown nun Mother Bernarda of Switzerland and the gay Cardinal Newman, a former Church of England vicar. The exclusion of Maurice Bavaud in such proceedings that include unknown and controversial figures has therefore the greatest significance. It is to be hoped that upon the succession to the present popelet a born Christian may be chosen to lead the Catholic Church.

Further reading
Cheating Hermann Goering
The Life of Irmingard Princess of Bavaria
The First Woman Employee at the Vatican

10 Best Earning Corpses

They are dead and earn millions every year. Celebrities from the recent and not so recent past are still generating huge income. Meet the ten corpses who earn more in a year than you will in a lifetime. Some of their names you will easily recognize, some of them maybe not.

Heath Ledger cover

He was one of the all-time greats of Hollywood and gave a new face to the Western genre: Steve McQueen. His cool demeanour was his label and made him an idol for young actors and fans worldwide. His first film appearance was in Somebody Up There Likes Me in 1956. His fame was made with The Magnificent Seven. One of his most famous movies was Getaway where he starred besides Ali McGraw. His yearly average income these days is estimated at $6 million.

Her name stands for the word sexy: Marilyn Monroe. Her first film appearance was in Dangerous Years in 1947. Her fame was made with Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. One of her most famous movies was Some Like It Hot. Privately she was unhappy and lover to a President and his brother. As a singer she was just plain awful. Her yearly income these days is estimated at $6.5 million.

His name is synonymous for pop art: Andy Warhol. His colourful screen prints of celebrities such as Marilyn Monroe, Elvis, or Audrey Hepburn are known to everybody. Actually he was very talented as painter, photographer, and videographer, but these expressions of his art are widely ignored. He is estimated to earn $9 million a year.

His name is a legend in itself: John Lennon. He is one of the members of the unforgettable Beatles, husband to the aristocratic and eccentric Yoko Ono, a fighter for peace. After the split of the Beatles, he became successful as a singer and songwriter in his own right. Just imagine he is still earning $9 million every year.

His most famous figure is the Grinch: Dr. Seuss. His children’s book The Cat in The Hat is still a favourite in the United States. His many books and comics are still selling. Estimated income from his writing and drawing is at $12 million a year.

One of the most famous producers ever was Aaron Spelling. His series are cult. Whatever he took a hand to was made to money. Starsky and Hutch was a big hit even in German, after all the fun had been translated out of it. And of Charlie's Angels we must face further spinoffs, I think. His income a year is estimated at $12 million.

His name is used instead of the word genius: Albert Einstein. His physical theories changed the way we look at the world today. He was not only one of the most brilliant scientists of all time, but also one of the best earning ones as well. Put in relation to the income of the top earner of this list, it’s relatively small, but his income these days is $18 million a year.

Brokeback Mountain put his name on the map: Heath Ledger. Coming to the screen in some rather quirky films, he made it big with Brokeback Mountain. He was nominated for an Oscar for the role of a gay cowboy in that movie. His last role as Joker in Batman – The Dark Knight made a legend of him. His income this year is estimated at $20 million.

Peanuts are money, too: Charles M. Schulz. His Peanuts conquered the world and have enriched children for it. They also generate a yearly income of $33 million.

The King: Elvis. Even though he lives, he tops this list with ease. Even his awful films are still being shown. His acting potential was on a par with Marilyn Monroe’s voice power. His estimated income is at $52 million a year.

Further reading
Daniel Radcliffe
Justin Bieber
Zac Efron

FC Barcelona: Where Did It Get Its Colours From?

FC Barcelona is one of the best known football or soccer clubs in the world. One of the questions coming up every now and then is: How did it come by the colours blue and red?

Cristiano Ronaldo underwear model

The discussion about these colours has been going on almost as long as the club existed. There are several hypotheses being put forth in books, in the net and by TV stations. They all have one thing in common: They can’t be proven one way or another. I will try to sort it out by pointing out what might be at least plausible as opposed to plain flights of fancy. Some very weird claimants to fame have met my eye while I searched the net. The one person who never commented on it was Joan (or Hans) Gamper, one of the founders of the club and five times its president.

Hans Gamper was born near Zürich in Switzerland. He moved to Barcelona in 1898 where he changed the use of his given name to Joan. In 1899, he co-founded the club together with local English and Spanish friends. The colours and the coat of arms were adopted at that time and there are no records on the issue of what criteria were applied in the choice. The club’s colours were and are blue and red.

Prior and up to his move from Switzerland, Hans Gamper lived in Basel and was a member of its local football (soccer) club FC Basel founded in 1893. As he was also its playing captain in the season leading up to his move to Barcelona, a connection between the two clubs is at least plausible. FC Basel has used the colours blue and red from its inception. Depending on the language you read it in, Wikipedia either agrees, tentatively agrees, or refutes this claim. It might be added in favour of FC Basel that the design of the leather ball and the use of yellow are identical with FC Barcelona; the fact that both clubs use the shortening of FCB might have swayed Hans Gamper in that direction, too, when discussing the use of colours for the new club.

The puzzling question now is: Where on earth did the FC Basel get its colours from? Some people claim that the colours are the national colours of the State and Republic of Ticino in Switzerland. They are partly correct, as the colours of FC Basel derive from that source. As an older club had already claimed the traditional colours black and white that stand for the Canton and Republic of Basel, the colours of Ticino were chosen instead. Despite the geographical distance, Basel and Ticino traditionally had very close ties as they had been tied up into one diocese by the Vatican and the Bishop of Basel therefore was also responsible for the southernmost tip of Switzerland. The colour scheme of red and blue in Ticino’s coat of arms had been inverted by the founders of FC Basel to blue and red.

This primary inversion by the club’s founders makes the claim of FC Basel as a model for FC Barcelona more acceptable to me than the Canton and Republic of Ticino’s direct claim. FC Barcelona’s colours are inverted, too, and there would have been no reason to do so in the case of the Catalan club. Any reasonable link between Ticino, Barcelona, or Hans Gamper is completely missing, which puts this claim into the area of flights of fancy. Nice try, though.

Further claims I found were those made by FC Zürich in Switzerland, as Gamper was one of the co-founders of that club in 1896, too. The club’s colours are blue and white; the red seemingly just appeared out of thin air. There are many other curious claims and stories on the net with some of the legends dating back to the earliest years of the club. Most probably the colours were chosen on a whim by the founders without any thought to precedents, but in Catalonia at least the FC Basel is considered as precedent.

FC Barcelona owns and runs the largest stadium in Europe, with a capacity of up to 98,000 fans. The stadium is also held in the colours of blue and red. It is known by the name of Camp Nou, though it had been planned to call it Camp Joan Gamper in 1957 when it was first built at its present location. At the time, Dictator General Franco vetoed the name on grounds of his personal hatred against the founder of FC Barcelona.

FC Basel has the largest stadium in Switzerland with a capacity of up to 40,000 fans. It is also held in blue and red. It is officially named St Jacob’s Park, but nobody bothers with that. It is just called ‘Joggeli’ (pronounce it ‘yoggaelee’) in Alemannic.

As both clubs have been playing against each other in the European Champions League in 2008, the colour question has been readdressed several times from all sides. FC Barcelona’s archives give no answer to the question, wherefore we may look forward to many more discussions on this topic and probably many more spurious claims, too.

Further reading
Europa League: Chelsea FC vs FC Basel
Borussia: Not (Quite) Soccer History
Gay Soccer Players

High School Musical, it’s Just That

Walt Disney’s High School Musical 3 has started in cinemas all over the place. Zac Efron is in every glossy magazine for his starring in it. Zac Who? If you don’t know, you don’t have girls aged four to 14 at home.

Zac Efron

The opening night of the movie in London was memorable. Thousands of teenage girls and younger were waiting for hours for Zac Efron, the star in High School Musical 3 and it’s two prequels. These prequels weren’t planned as cinema movies but for Disney’s own channel. As it sometimes happens, the concept was more powerful than its makers and had to move out into the world. More space, more money.

High School Musical tells the story of an idealized dream high school. This tells you the story of all three parts of the musical. Because all characters are clichés, the stories are as well. You name it you get it. No surprises, but then no bad surprise either. It’s definitely a pretty little filmlet with pretty stars that sing prettily pretty little songs. That’s it. It all reminded me of the 1970s touring show Up With People, nice songs, nice people, nice show, otherwise utterly not memorable. Even the style of the song material was the same in the show as it is now in the musical.

But then, what can you expect from a film called High School Musical which, like its two prequels, tells the story of a high school musical that should be performed? But now comes the turn-around you didn’t expect. I’ve seen all three of them and I liked them.

The films are utterly enjoyable, because you need absolutely no brains to follow. You even might walk out for 30 minutes and come back and won’t be lost in the story, the plot is so predictable. The music doesn’t offend or excite, you may read a book with it and never even notice it is playing. The acting is just good enough for high school, so nothing to complain there either. It’s a pure Disney product in a fantasy world high school. But time and again I was reminded of my own high school. So all in all, it’s good value for the money. Just don’t expect any depth in story or acting.

The newest Disney product has been selling millions of DVDs and CDs in the United States and millions more worldwide. No wonder it went movie, the merchandizing potential is enormous. It is just surprising that such nondescript music is selling like that. But probably it’s also because of Zac Efron who has become the load stone of many crushes.

Zac Efron and his girl friend and co-star Vanessa Hudgens have presented themselves as very likeable and clean young actors in London; as Britney Spears did when she was employed by Disney. They both seem to be mother-in-law’s dream matches and as squeaky clean as the movie they just played in. It is to be hoped they remain that way.

Being such inoffensive persons, it beats the imagination why they were attacked during a night out in London. It is quite unutterable, what spite can do to a person. Another unsavoury side link were topless photographs of Zac showering offered on eBay by a user zerimarr. That’s just plainly tasteless, and probably Photoshop; and eBay took ages to clean these bids out, as usual. It is time that people started to respect the right to private life again, even if somebody is a star. The film is a good start to instruct your children about that as well.  

Further reading

Zac Efron Reinvented

The Paperboy

Fake Coming Out for Taylor Lautner