Herman Smith-Johannsen

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Herman "Jackrabbit" Smith-Johannsen (born June 15, 1875 in Horten , Norway ; † January 5, 1987 near Tønsberg ) was a Norwegian - Canadian cross-country skier and supercentenarian . He was one of the first athletes to popularize cross-country skiing in North America .

As the “great old man of skiing”, he rose to become a symbol in Canada and the USA , characterized by an irrepressible, enthusiastic love of skiing. He organized races, guided ski tours, trained skiers, advised skiing initiatives, constructed ski jumps, marked cross-country skiing trails and founded ski sports clubs in 23 Canadian cities.

Life

1875-1928

Smith-Johannsen learned to ski at the age of two, which is why he took part in many ski jumping and cross-country skiing competitions as a young boy , in which he was able to achieve several victories. In the early 1890s he, whose childhood idols were Fridtjof Nansen and Otto Sverdrup , was counted among the best all-round skiers in Norway. He also gained valuable experience on ski tours in the mountains of his home country Nordmarka . In 1894 he graduated from the Royal Norwegian Military Academy as a second lieutenant . Then he went to Berlin to there Engineering to study, and in 1895 a member of the Corps Berolina.

After graduating in 1899, he took a long ski holiday in Norway and then emigrated to the USA . Smith-Johannsen settled in Cleveland ( Ohio down) and worked as a unit Dealer for Brown Hoisting Machinery Company operates. The company sent him to Canada to sell construction machinery and logging equipment. This work also brought him to the North Bay wilderness , where he came into contact with the Cree and Ojibway . Amazed by his ability to ski down heavily forested slopes at high speed, they nicknamed him “Okumakum Wapoos”, which means “ Chief Jackrabbit ”.

In 1907 Smith-Johannsen was married to Alice Robinson, the daughter of a Cleveland judge. In agreement with her, he decided to go into business for himself. As a sales engineer in Cuba , he sold products that were used to treat sugar cane . His first daughter Alice was born in Havana in 1911 . His most important means of transport on the Caribbean island was the horse, because of the climate he could not satisfy his passion for skiing here. In 1915 he decided to return. Thanks to his earlier work, this new beginning presented him with few difficulties. His family had grown to include daughter Peggy and son Bob. While they moved into their quarters in Lake Placid , Smith-Johannsen worked mainly in Montreal until 1924 and only drove to his family on weekends and on days off.

Smith-Johannsen was also active again in skiing: in 1923 he finished third in the Eastern US 25-mile race, in 1924 second, and a year later fifth in the 10-mile race. At that point he was almost 50 years old. His opponents included u. a. Bob Reid and the Satre brothers. In the Lake Placid area, he was involved in setting up ski trails and founding Lake Placid's Snow Birds Ski Club .

1928-1939

Smith-Johannsen moved to Montreal with his family in 1928 and from 1932 settled permanently in a small hut in Piedmont in the Laurentine Mountains . With the Great Depression of 1929, interest in his business collapsed, at the age of 56 he was left with nothing, but did not give up and now fully concentrated on skiing. Smith-Johannsen was one of the pioneers of downhill and slalom racing in the early days of the Montreal Red Birds Ski Club . So he led the Red Bird groups that were skiing on Mont Tremblant from 1930 onwards. On Big Hill in Shawbridge and on Hill 70 he built the first slalom courses in 1928, and in 1929 he moved the course of the first Dominion Slalom Race , which was won by the Austrian Harald Paumgarten .

In the 1920s and 1930s Smith-Johannsen set up numerous ski runs. His work on the Maple Leaf Trail , a project supported by the Québec government to connect Prévost with Lac Tremblant, is particularly outstanding . Between 1930 and 1938 at least 1,000 miles of the route were provided with signal lamps. Due to the poor map material at the time, this activity required a great deal of adventure. Even at 55, his active sports career was not over: in the 18-mile race from Sainte-Marguerite to Shawbridge, he finished fourth. The following year he was elected President of the Montreal Ski Club , founded in 1904 , the oldest ski club in Canada.

With money that Sidney Dawes had collected, Smith-Johannsen led the clearing of the Kandahar and Tachereau routes in the Mont Tremblant Resort in 1934 and smaller runs in Sainte-Agathe-des-Monts , Sainte-Marguerite, Saint-Sauveur and Shawbridge. A year later he worked as a development consultant for areas such as Le Relais , Mont Orford and Mont Gabriel , and helped Joe Ryan design the Mont Tremblant Resort, Collingwood in Ontario and Whiteface Mountain in New York .

Smith-Johannsen also designed and built many ski jumping hills, including the 250-foot Seigneury Club Hill in Montebello (Québec), as well as ski jumps in Sainte-Marguerite, Shawbridge, Lac-Beauport , Saint-Gabriel-de-Brandon , Grand Mare Lac Mercier and ski jumps around Lake Placid. He also advised the construction of the Olympic 60-meter hill in Intervales in 1932 and was considered one of the leading proponents of the first real ski lift in North America, which was built in Shawbridge. In 1934 he helped Fred Papst to install ski tugs in Sainte-Marguerite and Saint-Sauveur.

In 1932 Smith-Johannsen assisted in training the Canadian Olympic team. He put on a 50-kilometer course at the Seigneury Club in Québec and led the team to Lake Placid. There he organized training trips from the Adirondack Lodge through the Avalanche-Paq and around Colden and the Marcy Mountains. He served as an official at the 1932 Winter Olympics . In 1936 he won a five mile veterans race at Shawbridge.

1939-1987

With the outbreak of World War II , Smith-Johannsen offered the military his services in troop training, but was turned down - although still in excellent physical shape - due to his age. In order to prove his efficiency, the then 65-year-old then kept a diary of the cross-country trails that he had covered. Up until 1943 he drove around 1,000 miles a year, but that didn't change the mind of the military either. His racing career was coming to an end. Now 71 years old, he finished third in a 1946 cross-country skiing competition from the top of Mount Mansfield to Stowe ( Vermont ). He made his last official race when he was 75 when he finished third out of twenty participants in the Red Birds championship.

The number of ski lifts and downhill runs increased enormously after the war, while classic long-distance running and mountain tours did not appeal to the masses. Smith-Johannsen, however, continued his work in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s and laid out routes far away from the organized ski villages and lifts in order to offer an alternative to the few who wanted to escape the crowd. In the 1970s, however, there was a surprising resurgence in long-distance running. Numerous new paths were built, hundreds of new skiers took the stage. The two-day, 100-mile Canadian Ski Marathon , which Smith-Johannsen helped organize, had to be limited to 2,500 participants. It ran within Québec from Lachute to Cantley . Smith-Johannsen took over the patronage of this event in the first few years. On December 22, 1972, he was named a member of the Order of Canada for his contribution to the development of skiing and his support of generations of Canadian skiers . The Jackrabbit Ski League , a national cross-country skiing program, has been held in his honor since 1979.

He was active as a skier until he was 106 years old. The Canadian Sports Hall of Fame accepted him into their ranks in 1982. In addition, Smith-Johannsen was one of the bearers of the Order of St. Olav awarded by the Norwegian king . As the oldest living man in the world, he succumbed to pneumonia on January 5, 1987 in a hospital near Tønsberg. He had traveled to Norway to visit his son Bob. Smith-Johannsen was buried next to his wife in Saint-Sauveur. Today the CCC Youth Program bears his name in his honor . His home in Piedmont, where he spent the last 28 years of his life, now serves as a room for a Jackrabbit Museum.

literature

  • Brian Powell et al .: Jackrabbit His First Hundred Years. Collier Macmillan Canada 1975, ISBN 0-02-976680-X
  • Phillip Norton: Jackrabbit Johannsen. The Pioneer of Skiing in Canada . Canadian Geographic Magazine, April / May 1987, pp. 18-23.
  • Alice E. Johannsen: The Legendary Jackrabbit Johannsen. McGill-Queens University Press 1993, ISBN 0-7735-1151-2

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Obituary notice of the Corps Berolina . In: Die Wachenburg - News from the Weinheim Senior Citizens' Convention , 35th year, 1987, issue 2, p. 51