FIRST COLLEGE MEET

Skiing History Made 36 Years Ago This Month

THE first intercollegiate ski meet in North America was an eight-mile cross-countrv relay race held February 22, 1914, at Shawbridge, Quebec, Canada, between teams representing McGill University and Dartmouth College.

I bis is not, as yet. a well known (act in athletic history—one which is often bandied about by sports writers like the first Princeton-Rutgers football game. Skiing is still a relatively new sport in these United States, and while many have a vague idea that McGill and Dartmouth were pioneer ski colleges, few have ever read how it all began. As a matter of fact, the report of the first intercollegiate ski meet in the files of the DARTMOUTH ALUMNI MAGAZINE is limited to ten lines in the March 1914 issue.

Fortunately, however, seven of the eight men who made intercollegiate athletic history that chilly Sunday at Shawbridge are still alive, ft is on the memories of two of them, Dr. John F. Bowler '15 of Hanover and Frederick H. Weed '14 of Miami, Fla., that this story is largely based. '

Early in the winter of 1913-14 the newly created Dartmouth Outing Club accepted an invitation from the Montreal Ski Club to send a team to compete against McGill in jumping and cross-country as a special attraction for the 21st Canadian National Open Championships, which were being sponsored that year by the Montreal club.

After several delays—one of which was caused by too much snow—tryouts for the so-called Montreal team were held and a four-man cross-country team was chosen to represent Dartmouth. The four team members were John Bache-Wiig '15, Dab ney Horton 'l5, Bowler and Weed. (According to legend, in the tryouts Horton's experiment with a new ski wax was a dismal failure and he was unable to finish the race. As he was one of the best cross-countrv runners in college, he was taken to Montreal anyway.)

In order to field a jumping team which would have a chance against Canadian competition, the Outing Club asked and received permission from the McGill captain, Lee Strathy, to bring along two Hanover High School students, John Bowler's brother, Dick, and John P. Carleton. Later members of the Class of 1922, Dick Bowler and John Carleton became two ot the most famous ski jumpers ever to compete for Dartmouth. According to some ski historians. they are the only men ever to somersault off a ski jump both at the same time—a feat w-hich they accomplished during a barnstorming trip in Canada.

The special jumping contest for McGill and Dartmouth entrants was held at Mt. Royal on Saturday, February 21. Inasmuch as Dartmouth was using two Hanover High School skiers, this competition cannot be considered the first intercollegiate ski meet. The Bowler brothers won what laurels the Dartmouth Outing Club's team received. John, with a leap of 49 feet, was second behind McGill's Captain Strathy, who easily won the jump for distance with a leap of 62 feet, Dick Bowler was third, placing behind both Strathv and Norman Williamson of McGill in the contest for both style and distance. Despite the intense cold weather. 4.000 spectators were on hand.

On Saturday evening, after an entertainment in Montreal, the Dartmouth and McGill crosscountry teams boarded a special train which had been chartered to take skiers to Shawbridge for the Canadian National Open Cross Country Championships. At Shawbridge the Montreal Ski Club had converted an old farmhouse for its headquarters.

Sunday morning the DOC's team went out to watch the start of the Canadian National Race on a course of 28 kilometers. The Dartmouth skiers were astonished to see men up to 60 vears of age competing in this race. Most of the entrants were hardy, north Canadian woodsmen, who probably spent most of their winters on skis. Here for the first time they saw the short, so-called slalom, ski pole, which such men had used for years.

As for the special Dartmouth-McGill race, which was a side attraction while the Canadian National was being run, probably the most complete account of the history-making meet was published by TheDartmouth of February 26,

Horton of Dartmouth and Williamson of McGill started the race and kept close together during most of their leg. Williamson managed, however, to give the next McGill runner. Captain Strathy, a twoyard lead at the first change-over, when Weed took up the chase for Dartmouth. Strathy's pace was too fast for Weed and at the beginning of the third leg of the race Gratton Thompson of McGill had a 20-yard advantage over Dartmouth's Bowler. "By dexterity on the turns and descents," according to the report of the race published in The Dartmouth, "Bowler overhauled and passed Thompson, giving J. Bache-Wiig '15 a lead of six yards over Hague, McGill's last runner."

Bache-Wiig kept his lead until he was within 50 yards of the finish line. There he tell headlong and McGill's Kennington Hague passed him. McGill's anchor man, however, had lost one ski and tumbled himself 20 yards further on. By this time, Bache-Wiig had righted himself and was able to pass Hague. Dartmouth won by a few feet in a time of 1.06:45 for an approximate eight-mile course.

In recalling that first intercollegiate cross-country course, Dr. Bowler relates: "It started on a small knoll with a short grade to the base of Shawbridge Mountain, then slabbed the east side of the mountain from south across an open plateau on top, and finished with a downhill run on an old logging road in the woods for probably one-half to three-quarters of a mile. I recollect starting out behind my man, who was about three times my size, and rapidly losing him on the up-mountain course. He may have burned himself out before hitting the down course; but, anyway, he took a couple of fine loops on some turns,, which, combined with my luck, gave me a chance to catch up.

"The outstanding recollection of that first ski team visit to Montreal, and again re-enforced by any contact I ever had with McGill hockey or ski men, was their grand spirit of sportsmanship."

Interestingly enough, it may have been the sportsmanship of the McGill captain, Lee Strathy, that enabled Dartmouth to win the race. "I sized Lee Strathy up," Mr. Weed, his Dartmouth opponent on the second leg of the race, recalls, "as the best runner of the four McGill men. Normally the best man runs last and the second best man runs first in a relay race. I was the poorest of the four on the Dartmouth team and ran second. Lee Strathy seemed to take a liking to me in the sports and social events before the relay race and I to him. He offered to run second on his team so that he would be running against me and it seemed to me that he handicapped his team by doing so. His was the friendly or gentlemanly spirit rather than the desire to win at all costs. In later years whenever I told this story to Canadians or Englishmen, no one ever raised the question: Who won the race?"

Aside from the ski meet, the Dartmouth men also took away lasting impressions of Canadian women skiers. "I remember," Mr. Weed says, "that the girls to whom we were introduced were dressed very appropriately in white doeskin jackets and brilliant woolens and were most attractive. And when they skied with us boys from the States, we certainly learned something from them. Those girls would ski with a boy just as a girl might dance or skate with a boy, arm in arm, except, of course, on the turns. Taking the lead from her partner, if he did a Telemark or a Christy, she did it right beside him in perfect unison. It certainly showed us a control of skis and skiing of which I had no previous knowledge."

As a postscript to their visit, the Dartmouth team attempted to shop for Kerr skis, made in Montreal and then the envy of the ski world. Unfortunately, they proved to be too expensive and the team returned to Hanover without them.

The impression, however, which Dartmouth gained of Canadian sportsmanship in general and McGill sportsmanship in particular far outlasted any tangible evidence that the DOC's team might have brought back from Montreal. The next year, 1915, Dartmouth invited McGill along with several American colleges to take part in the first intercollegiate ski meet in the United States. And while the number of skiers has mutiplied many times since the days of the Canadian and American pioneers of the early 1900's, team competition in the sport for the U. S. at least is still largely confined to intercollegiate competition.

Of the four McGill men in that first intercollegiate cross-country race, Norman Williamson is dead; Kennington Hague moved West and is now living in Hollyburn, British Columbia; and both Gratton Thompson, an architect, and Lee Strathy, who was wounded in World War I, live in Montreal.

As for the members of the first Dartmouth team, John Bache-Wiig, a paper manufacturing engineer, lives in Hallowell, Maine; John Bowler is a surgeon on the Hitchcock Clinic staff in Hanover; Dabney Horton is an author in Northport, New York; and Frederick Weed is chief of the planning division, Department of Water and Sewers for the city of Miami.

ENTRANTS IN THE FIRST McGILL-DARTMOUTH SKI RACE: From left to right, Dabney Horton '15, Frederick H. Weed '14, John P. Bowler '15 and John Boche-Wiig '15, all of Dartmouth, and Norman William son, Gratton Thompson, Lee Strathy and Kennington Hague, all of McGill. Dartmouth won a close race

START OF THE FIRST INTERCOLLEGIATE SKI RACE: Norman Williamson of McGill and Dabney Horton 'l5 (skier nearest the camera) begin the first intercollegiate ski race in North America, held February 22, 1914, at Shawbridge, Quebec, as a special attraction during the annual Canadian National Open.