Tdl"H #12

[Phil]

Lauritz Bergendahl, the world's first ski king.

[Phil]

Bergendahl was unknown to me until this season's HRS postings when I shared the story of the Rottefella binding and Bror With. With was frustrated with the xc racing binding popular in his day: the Bergendahl, so he crafted something he felt would work better. As we still do, a manufacturer looks for a sports celebrity who will lend his name to boost the marketing appeal for a new piece of equipment. Olaf Selmer invented the binding in 1913, at a time when Bergendahl was at the height of his fame. In fact, this was the first use of the process described above. Bergendahl was a pioneer in more ways than one. 

Another sports star, a later Norwegian "ski king," Thorleif Haug, who was the first winter Olympic multi-medal winner in the inaugural '24 winter games, lent his name to yet another binding, a pair of which helped me date my grandfather's skis.

Bergendahl could rightly be called the "ski king" of his day and have it apply to all forms of skiing since Alpine skiing was not a discipline then. The Norwegians set the tone for skiing, worldwide, and early on did not see the different elements as being anything except part of one single discipline: "The first competitions held by Christiania SK were different from today's ski jumping in that the ski jump formed part of a course that included a 4 km stretch of cross-country skiing.. No jump lengths were measured. Instead, judges gave points for style, on a scale from 1 to 5."  

The jumping portion was later split out from the cross-country by Bergendahl's time, but any strictly downhill competition awaited the Austrian (Zdarsky) influence to gain popularity.