Bob Howard (freestyle skier)

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bob Howard Freestyle skiing
nation United StatesUnited States United States
birthday 1955 (age 65)
place of birth Reno , USA
size 183 cm
Weight 86 kg
job Skier, entrepreneur
Career
discipline ballet
status resigned
End of career March 1981
Placements in the Freestyle Skiing World Cup
 Debut in the World Cup January 9, 1980
 World Cup victories 13
 Overall World Cup 14th (1980/81)
 Ballet World Cup 1. ( 1980 , 1980/81)
 Podium placements 1. 2. 3.
 ballet 13 1 0
 

Bob Howard (* 1955 in Reno , Nevada ) is a former American freestyle skier . He specialized in the no longer performed discipline ballet (acro) , in whose development into an athletic competitive sport he played a key role. In this discipline he won two disciplines in the World Cup and 13 individual competitions.

biography

Athletic career

Bob Howard learned to ski at Sky Tavern, a ski resort between his hometown of Reno and Lake Tahoe . After graduating from high school, he went to Santa Rosa Junior College on a football scholarship . According to his own statements, he sat too often on the substitutes' bench, whereupon he left school. He invested his college money in a pair of yellow Nordica ski boots (later known as "Banana") and switched to freestyle skiing.

In the mid-1970s, Howard competed for the first time and drove from one venue to another in his pickup truck . After having learned all three freestyle disciplines, he specialized in ballet and won the Grand Prix in this discipline in 1979, the overall season ranking as the predecessor to the World Cup. Unlike many of his companions, Howard remained loyal to competitive sport when the FIS launched the Freestyle Skiing World Cup and transformed freestyle into an amateur sport. Bob Howard mastered the ski ballet from the start and won all five competitions in the first season . In the following season, he continued his dominance and won eight out of nine events. Only in Seefeld did he have to admit defeat to the German Hermann Reitberger in February 1981 . Since he had given freestyle lessons in Tignes the summer before , he was invited by the French national team - according to an article in the specialist magazine Ski - and started the 1980/81 season due to better financial support for France. However, this change of nation is not recorded in the FIS database.

Efforts by the restructured US Ski and Snowboard Association to bring him back were unsuccessful because Howard ended his active career in 1981.

Further career

After finishing his sports career, Bob Howard contacted a friend who organized ski shows in Europe for Volvo . Howard, inspired by the Harlem Globetrotters , brought his own ideas to the shows and soon went on tour with freestyle tricks in front of up to 10,000 spectators. He also drew ideas for his choreographies from music videos on MTV and old Fred Astaire films. In addition, he continued to work as a trainer and ski instructor and looked after the future freestyle stars Lane Spina and Ellen Breen , among others .

Howard still lives in Reno and runs an insurance company in addition to his work as a ski instructor .

Style and reception

Bob Howard is considered a pioneer of freestyle sports in the USA. The ballet discipline in particular remained closely linked to his name, thanks in part to his long-standing shows. As one of the first freestylers, he specifically trained trunk and arm muscles on bars and parallel bars and implemented this athletic advantage in competition. Through his appearances with shoulder-high ski sticks, he shifted the focus from free dance to gymnastic jumps and flips ( pole flips ). In addition, he showed sophisticated dance steps and jumps, often with crossed legs, and the complexity of his tricks gave himself another advantage over the competition. It was not uncommon for him to present new tricks to the audience in competition, such as one of the first 720-degree turns on skis in 1979. The Howard Around trick was named after him.

The curly haired Howard also stood out off the competition slope. For example, he used to train on a 12 × 9 m, so-called ski deck, a kind of flat treadmill in a ski shop. He was often seen strapped to his chest with a portable music player while training in the snow. In the 1970s, Howard toured the US venues with his pickup truck, which he also used to stay overnight and which was affectionately nicknamed "Sixpack Motel". Another peculiarity was his brightly striped “lucky trousers”, which later helped his protégé Lane Spina to his first World Cup victory and which is said to have shaken the heads of the Germans Richard Schabl and Hermann Reitberger.

successes

World Cup ratings

season total ballet
space Points space Points
1980 15th 100 1. 100
1980/1981 14th 150 1. 150

World Cup victories

Howard achieved 14 podiums in the World Cup, including 13 wins:

date place country discipline
January 9, 1980 Poconos United States ballet
January 10, 1980 Poconos United States ballet
March 1, 1980 Oberjoch Germany ballet
March 13, 1980 Tignes France ballet
March 29, 1980 Whistler Canada ballet
17th January 1981 Livigno Italy ballet
January 23, 1981 Tignes France ballet
January 31, 1981 Laax Switzerland ballet
February 14, 1981 Oberjoch Germany ballet
February 28, 1981 Mont Sainte-Anne Canada ballet
March 14, 1981 Poconos United States ballet
March 15, 1981 Poconos United States ballet
March 21, 1981 Calgary Canada ballet

More Achievements

  • Overall ballet victory in the 1979 Grand Prix

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Ballet: Baryshnikov take note. In: Ski. September 1979, p. 132 (English).
  2. ↑ Around Tahoe Ski Map. (PDF) Around Tahoe, accessed on March 28, 2020 .
  3. ↑ a b c d AJ McDougall: The Boom and Bust of Ski Ballet. Tahoe Quarterly, 2019, accessed March 28, 2020 .
  4. ^ A b Doug Pfeiffer: Freestyle Flies Again. In: Ski. December 1981, pp. 62 and 65 (English).
personal data
SURNAME Howard, Bob
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American freestyle skier
DATE OF BIRTH 1955
PLACE OF BIRTH Reno (Nevada)