How to build a skiing culture, according to Dolph Kuss

By Published On: October 7th, 2014Comments Off on How to build a skiing culture, according to Dolph Kuss

photo 2This month, Adolph “Dolph” Kuss turns 84, a birthday that will mark nearly 80 years involved in nearly every level of skiing. A member of the Colorado, Durango, Leadville, Fort Lewis College and Western State Halls of Fame and recipient to countless regional and national honors, Kuss has a thing or two to say about the state of American skiing, where it’s been and where it’s going.

If you ask him, Kuss can recount tales from the “Avery Brundage” days before sports were professionalized. He will tell about the changes that came with Title IX, or how NCAA skiing used to be a four discipline sport (Nordic, slalom, downhill and ski jumping). He can also detail the drama of the introduction of skate skiing.

After going from athlete to college coach to Olympic coach to junior coach, back to racing up to volunteer in alpine and Nordic skiing, Kuss is a primary source for almost every development in the modern history of skiing. Through his travels, coaching and community involvement, he’s developed a formula for producing successful skiers: a culture made of infrastructure, outdoor enthusiasm, and work ethic.

“That was Dolph,” recalls former Olympic athlete and Kuss protégé Mike Elliot. “If he was going to commit to something, he was going to make sure it was right.”

Born in Leadville, Colo., in 1930, Kuss entered the world in the post-Depression era, and began working for his family at the age of five. Raised in a community built on outdoor vitality, Kuss began skiing at a young age, and he grew up training with recruits in the Tenth Mountain Division up until he started to out-ski them. Then the military took him to the Far East, where, during the Korean War, he competed in the Far East Games in Sapporo, Japan, where he won, in both Nordic and alpine.

“It was tough waxing skis there because they had so much industry that the snow had a lot of ash in it,” Kuss recalled, noting that it may have given him the competitive edge when he returned to Japan as the U.S. Olympic coach for the 1972 Winter Olympics. He doesn’t care much for the memories of his successes as a racer, preferring instead to reflect on his impacts as a coach and mentor in his community.

One of the major changes he’s seen in the world of skiing is the development and positive effect of infrastructure. Comparing Sapporo circa 1950 to that of the Olympic town, he said, would be impossible. The same goes even for Scandinavia, where the first races he remembers were held at the swimming pool in Frogner Park in Oslo, which would be a sorry alternative to the facilities available today.

photo 1 (1)Back in the U.S., Kuss looked for ways to expand the ski community in his native Colorado, which started with an expansion of infrastructure. He got a job as the Durango Parks and Recreation director and began building and expanding the Nordic, alpine, and ski jumping facilities. That was the nature of the sport in his time, people who skied, skied, skied. An alpine skier was synonymous with a ski jumper who was the same as a Nordic skier.

“He had so much enthusiasm,” said Elliot of Kuss’ presence in Durango. “People liked him instantly, and he expanded the local ski hill, Chapman Hill.” Chapman is still the town’s training center for alpine, freestyle and snowboarding, now with snowmaking.

Next, Kuss wanted to build the culture and community he had grown up with and witnessed in Europe.

“My parents were outdoor people; we were always climbing mountains or going fishing or doing things that require effort,” said Kuss of his family environment. What struck him most during his time coaching in Europe, though, was the power of the community involvement in skiing.

“The Norwegians have such an incredible attitude about competition and it’s not only cross-country skiing, it’s everything. I think that it’s just not only their quality of life, but I suspect that it’s because they encourage all of the people in families and everything to do things outdoors and embrace their environment. They’re outdoor people and they do things that make them healthy and strong.”

Bringing that kind of outdoor culture was Kuss’ next step. In his career, he introduced outdoor programs to Fort Lewis College, where he taught at the time, created a mentor program for college skiers to go out into the community, and created a sense of community involvement and ownership in the infrastructure they built.

“He was an outdoors kind of guy,” said Elliot. “He brought that kind of lifestyle wherever he went.” Elliot recalled how fit and active Kuss has remained throughout his life. On a recent climbing trip in the Tetons, Kuss was the only one with the “kahunas enough” to be lead line, it was just his nature.

Of all he did in the ski world, Kuss most thrived in the leadership position in college ski racing. There, he employed a no-nonsense approach to racing built completely and utterly on work ethic.

“People who were motivated succeeded under him, but people who needed to be nurtured didn’t survive under his leadership,” remembers Elliot. “He expected a lot and demanded a lot but knew how to teach a lot.” Kuss looked to recruit athletes from areas with a strong ski history, like the East Coast, with the hopes that they would already have the diligence he desired ingrained in them.

“In endurance sports, you find those who succeed are those who were brought up with a strong work ethic and the other folks are supported and when it comes to really digging down, they don’t have that fight in them,” said Kuss, noting that in addition to hard work, athletes had to have the modesty to buy in to whatever program he designed. “In essence they would join up, whatever your plan was, they would subscribe to that program and follow it and not complain.”

Kuss demanded a lot of his athletes, but his methods worked. The programs under Kuss produced NCAA regional and national champions and podium teams, for both men and, after Title IX, women too. It seems so simple, and yet the most important piece of his formula was working hard. That, and taking care of your equipment.

“He taught anybody who’s ever been under him to clean up tools and put them away,” Elliot said of Kuss, who laments that modern day athletes miss out on the opportunity to learn through waxing their own skis, like he did in Sapporo.

Notice, in this three-part formula, Kuss does not include money. His days were the ones when the U.S. Olympic committee supported all amateur Olympic sports equally. When asked about the greatest shift he’s seen in American skiing in the last 80 years, he responded, “I guess the biggest change that I’ve seen is when all of the countries move the sport into industry, made it an economic thing.”

He laments the fact that, with the onset of TV sports like football or basketball, snow sports have lost their relevance. He recalls Nordic combined competitions in the 60s where hundreds of people would spectate, which, at the time, looked a lot like what was happening in Scandinavia. The shift began with the professionalization of sport. However, according to Kuss, if you’ve got the aforementioned culture, funding won’t be a problem.

“Work hard. It doesn’t happen without working hard,” Kuss offers as his advice to rising skiers. “You have to put in the effort and, most of the time, you’ll get back what you put in. You just have to work hard, and have fun.”

Simple.

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