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| Craig and his father at Willoughby 40m jump in Aspen in ’64 at age 8. |
STORY No. 41
CRAIG WARD
Age 58
Aspen, CO
My Last Five Jumps
A lot of people know me as a special cross country skier, and indeed I was on the USST cross country A, B and C teams from 1975-1984. It was, however, growing up in Aspen, Colorado, and jumping at age 7 that really hooked me on Nordic skiing. I moved to the East when my parents got divorced when I was 13, and so I moved up the junior ladder there, going to the occasional camp in Holderness, or Lake Placid all the way through high school, and then college at Middlebury.
I was on the Eastern Nordic Combined team in the first two years at Middlebury College, but my jumping ability was minimal, at best. I loved to jump, just wasn’t very good at it. In 1974 I decided, after conferring with John Bower, to just ski special cross country, and then the next year was named to the “C” US X-C Ski team. From there I had a very rewarding career, with my best international finish a 12thplace in the pre-Olympic 30 Kilometer at Sarajevo in 1983. I raced in the World Championships at Lahti in 1978 and in Oslo in 1982.
My last jumps, though, were in 1981, seven years after I had “officially” quit. I was in Lake Placid that year, and Jay Rand called me to help get the “70”, now the K90, in shape. We’d had about 4 inches of new snow, and he asked me to accompany him in raking all the new snow off the entire hill, both inrun and landing hill. I said, “Sure, if you’ll let me take a few rides afterward”. I think he thought I was kidding….but later that day after the work was done, I donned a helmet (for the first time), had to sign a waiver (for the first time), slipped into my old one-piece jump suit that I had given to the LP club, and used some old Elans that had been Don West’s. The boots I used were water-soaked size 9’s that Jay had worn to rake the landing hill. (My feet are size 10.5!) Took one ride down the landing hill, almost ran back up the entire landing hill I was so excited…. then took another just to make sure I was ready. In passing Jay and Chuck Berghorn at the knoll I yelled,” Which start?” They both yelled back, “Number 6”, which was the next-to-top start. They asked if I was going to put my hands in front or in back….”gotta use the old style inrun!” I pulled out of that #6 start with a confidence I’d never had and made two solid jumps near the “P” point, then added three more that were well past it. It was the very first time in my life that I felt the pressure under my skis lifting me up, allowing me to fly further.
The next year, when we had World Championship tryouts in Lake Placid, I skied a great 15K race, finishing I think 3rd. The combined guys skied the same race, and I believe I beat Kerry Lynch by 4 minutes. Jay wanted me to jump the next day (because in those days the x-c was first) and he said if I jumped like I did last year I could win the combined tryout, but Mike Gallagher said “No, I want you for the 15 and the 50K in Oslo!”
I can still make those jumps, in my mind’s eye! They were the best jumps of my life. No regrets.
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| USSA Chairman Dexter Paine presents Craig Ward with the 2008 Nordic Combined Domestic Coach of the Year Award. |
1 Comment
Nice story from Craig Ward, which I heard from Jay a few days after the fact, and from Craig himself many years later when he started coming to Lake Placid with his son Michael. Of course I knew Craig — I had skied with him when he was at Middlebury and he was very honest in his story about his level of jumping. He was a Class B jumper (as I was too), one of the many guys carried along in the sport by the colleges at that time.
Craig put one misleading line in his story. ". . . some old Elans that had been Don West’s." Those were still my main skis, the ones that I was currently using. I have almost always followed the cardinal rule Never get separated from your skis but for a few weeks one particular season I left my skis in the big room in Lake Placid — very uncharacteristic of me to do that — and that happened to be the time when Craig was looking for skis to use. Not long after, Jay Rand acted a little sheepish when he told me that he had let Craig use my skis. No harm, no foul.
Decades later Craig also described to me his big day and explained why it should be that he could jump so much better after a seven year break — it was a matter of confidence. Craig was working at Whiteface at the time and was on the snow every day. He was one of those guys you'd see skiing down the mountain with an immenxe bundle of race gates on his shoulder. He had finally gotten comfortable on skis and at speed. That's how he explained it, and good for him. We all have a 'best day' to recall and his happened to occur way late in his skiing life.
Don West