Page 58 - Winter 2018 Journal

Historical

FOR THE RECORD BOOKS:

NASTAR, HOW IT ALL BEGAN

BY JOHN FRY

IN MY NEW JOB as editor-in-chief of SKI Magazine in the impression that may have been given in Tom Kelly’s superb
spring of 1964, I found myself working across the hall from article on NASTAR in the last (early winter) issue of the
the editorial office of GOLF Magazine, whose editorial Journal. NASTAR’s origins, however, are different, and
director I would become five years later. GOLF relied heavily more nuanced.
on supplying readers with tips to lower their handicaps. In the winter of ’67, conversing with the Mount Snow,
Golfers could relate their scores to a PGA player’s sub-par Vt., ski school director at the time, Bob Gratton, I told him
round, or their putting to Arnold Palmer’s challenge of that I was looking for a way in skiing to replicate par in golf.
sinking a 10-footer. Gratton suggested that I should look into the Chamois pin
How great it would be, I thought, if I could ratchet up program in France. I did.
SKI’s newsstand sales using the same appeal! The Ecole de Ski Nationale annually brought together
At the time, resorts like Sun Valley and Mont Tremblant instructors from the French ski resorts to race in a challenge.
staged a Standard Race for guests. Entrants who ran the A special slalom, it was about a 40-second course, requiring
course within a set time limit received a shoulder patch, and two runs, with varied gate configurations, including hairpins
possibly a gold, silver, or bronze pin. A guest, however, could and flushes. To be a certified instructor, your time had to
not compare her or his time to a time at another ski area on be good enough to win a silver Chamois pin—better than
another day. By contrast, a consistent 10-handicap golfer 25 percent slower than the fastest time. The successful
knows that on any day, on any course, he’s likely to play 10 instructor was qualified to be the forerunner, or pacesetter,
strokes better than a 20-handicapper. at his home resort. But his time, in a single run, was not
In October of 1967 I wrote to complain that skiing was adjusted for how well he’d performed in the challenge. Like
virtually a “scoreless sport,” the title I used for a column par in golf it was not.
in SKI. I spent much of the subsequent winter asking Adjusting the local pacesetter’s time so there’d be a
race officials and instructors how the equivalent of golf’s national standard was a vision I had for NASTAR. Twenty
handicap could be created for skiers. years later, in the winter of 1987-88, the French Chamois
It’s often been suggested in print and on websites that program adopted the concept.
NASTAR is a copy of France’s Chamois program—an
PERFORMANCE BY PERCENTAGE

I immediately glimpsed the answer to the question that
NASTAR’s 50th Birthday Party had been gnawing at me: Use percentages of times, not
raw times, to calibrate skier ability. Moreover, unlike the
NASTAR participants will join with the Chamois slalom at the time, the NASTAR course would
International Skiing History Association to cele- be a simple open-gated giant slalom held on intermediate
brate NASTAR’s 50th anniversary at ISHA’s annual terrain, easy enough for a moderate advanced skier
awards event March 23 in Squaw Valley’s Olympic to handle.
Village Dining Hall. To purchase a ticket, visit In my mind, instructors and racers from around the
www.skiinghistory.org/events.
country would come together at the beginning of the season
to rate their performance against the top national racer of

56 | NSAA JOURNAL | WINTER 2018