RON STEELE & SCOTT CLAYTON
Leavenworth, WA and Winter Park, CO
U of Utah and (with Kip Sungaard) 1975 NCAA champions
ron.e.steele@gmail.com & gscottclayton@gmail.com
Two Test Jumps That Cancelled a Competition
Westby, Wisconsin — February 1976.
Hard to believe we’re staring back nearly fifty years at this now. After the 1976 Olympic Ski Jumping Team tryouts. The memories come as clear as yesterday—maybe because every time we get together, this story resurfaces with new laughs. And before we dive into it, we both want to say what we’ve said a hundred times: nothing in ski jumping happens without volunteers. Everything you read here was possible only because of people who cared more than anyone will ever understand.
Ron
We’d just wrapped up the final U.S. Olympic Team Tryouts in Thunder Bay. The Innsbruck ‘76 team was set—Jim Denny, Jerry Martin, Terry Kern, Kip Sundgaard, Jim Maki, Chris McNeill and Greg Windsperger. Good men. Good teammates. And even better competitors. I’d been with many of them in Europe and through the whole tryout circuit. But I’d fallen just short—close enough to sting. That frustration rode south with me to Westby, WI, where the next domestic competition waited for all of us not headed to Innsbruck.
Scott
Let me add—Ron wasn’t alone in that frustration. A lot of us felt like we still had something to prove. Turns out the only thing we’d be proving in Westby was that Mother Nature always has the last word. A hill held together by Hope.
Ron
Winter hadn’t done Westby any favors. The landing hill looked like a patchwork quilt. The inrun? A slushy mess. The outrun was chemically frozen—solid as poured concrete.
Scott
And the flat? When we arrived that morning it was a lake. An honest-to-God lake. Volunteers were digging trenches just to drain it. Then came dump trucks with sawdust from the mill—piling it onto the flats to keep jumpers from sinking to their knees and then covered with a thin layer of snow and straw. They scoured every field for snow—cornfields included. Which meant the inrun slush had cornstalks, dirt, and the occasional dead mouse mixed in for good measure. They lined the scaffold steps with volunteers passing full gunnysacks up, empty bags down, like a fire brigade of frozen determination.
Ron
From a distance, the hill looked ready. Up close, you could see the desperation holding it together. Ed Brisson, in classic form pulled the two of us aside—me from Leavenworth, WA and Scott from Littleton, CO, though by then we were both skiing NCAA for Utah for a season. His words were either a request or an order. Hard to tell with Ed.
Scott (laughing)
It went something like: “Steele, Clayton—get up there and set some tracks. Once you get them laid down, we’ll freeze ’em.”
Ron
For younger jumpers reading this—yes, in those days we set the tracks with our skis. No pre-cut grooves. Just two ‘crazy’ ski jumpers with a sense of duty to get the hill ready for a competition.
Scott
And probably too much confidence in both of us.
Scene Set
The crowd gathers, the mud boils. By 1:00 p.m., Westby and La Crosse had emptied into the parking lot. Tailgates were popping open, Blue Ribbon was flowing, and the local four-wheeler kids were ripping donuts in the mud like it was a motorsports event. The pressure was building. Westby crowds don’t show up quietly. Who’s going first?”
Ron
We climbed the scaffold—straight up the side, no stairs, no elevator. At the top-start attic, Scott asked, “Who’s going first?”
Scott
And Ron, in that calm, confident tone of his says, “I’m not going last.” I warned him, “It’s going to be slow.” He replies, “No s*^t.”
Ron
I kicked out. Instantly I knew: speed was not going to be happening. The slush grabbed my skis like glue. My arms kept flaring out every time I stuck, then snapping back into position. I swear I could hear the crowd getting nervous (as if I wasn’t feeling the same at this point).
Scott
I truly felt like I could have jogged down a few steps and stopped you before the takeoff. That’s how slow it was.
Ron
By some miracle, I made it—barely. And I jumped about two feet early, which meant I didn’t make some tracks in that final section, not the best for Scott to follow. I literally dropped off the end. Landing on the frozen snow right on the top of the outrun. With a yell I just remember—BLAM—onto that frozen outrun. It launched me like a human cannonball all the way down the rough and frozen outrun into the sawdust and hay in the flat. The crowd loved it. The volunteers probably aged ten years, I think I did!
Scott’s Turn: The Walk of Shame That Never Happened
Scott
I’d never walked down a hill because of conditions. And I sure wasn’t starting in front of 5,000 Westby fans full of beer and hope. So I kicked out. Instant track destruction. I think I exposed the actual wooden boards of the scaffold. But I corrected Ron’s mistake—jumped at the right spot—and managed 26 feet. According to Tim Dennison, that was one foot farther than Ron.
Ron
Still not sure about the style points. Ed Brisson came down with that hands-on-hips and head tilted to one side, a look only he could pull off. To me he says, “Steele, you were going so damn slow down that inrun I almost jumped out and grabbed you before you reached the takeoff.”
Scott
Then he turns to me: “And Clayton, I can’t believe you came down behind him.”
The Cancellation
Ron
The jury met. We gave our report. Everyone knew the truth: This hill was not safe. The event was canceled. And you could feel the heartbreak. The Snowflake volunteers work 365 days a year for this event. They’d done the impossible trying to save it. Standing next to those volunteers as the announcement went out—I felt guilty, even though we all knew it was the right call.
The Aftermath
Ron
That night, sharing a white-tail venison BBQ prepared by Heide and Dave Tomten, washed down with Blue Ribbon, a guy came up to Scott and said: “Did you see the guy who came off second? Now HE was crazy!”
Scott
I guess that means I won—at least on the crazy scale.
Ron
And he didn’t let me forget he out-jumped me by one foot.
A Final Word
To every jumper, coach, volunteer, official, parent, and fan—thank you. This sport is built on your backs and your hearts. Nearly fifty years later, this Westby story still stands as proof of just how far people will go for ski jumping.
And every time we tell it, we still laugh like it’s the first time.
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