Ski sunday when you were a kid.

A snowHead

Watching ski sunday on catch up at the moment.
I remember the footage of Franz Klammer, Bartelski and others. This was late seventies.
No one i knew had ever skied, working class families from the north west just never did that.
I was mesmerised and it has obviously stuck with me.
I didnt ski until some 15 years later but now it is one of the loves of my life.

Anyone else have these memories but no apparent connection?
How did you end up on the slopes?
I dont even know why my family watched it!

A snowHead

ianbradders, +1 in every respect (except North East)

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I'm sad to say that, as a kid, I only watched ski-sunday for the crashes. Like you, no-one I knew had ever skied... and I was a middle class boy in the Home Counties!

Then, in my late 20s, I visited a pal who had taken a 2 year job in Toronto. I went to the nearby slope and had a 2 hour lesson (the ski school was stunned that ANYONE needed teaching in Canada!) and I got the bug. I've been skiing once or twice a year ever since (15 or so years).

Now when I watch ski sunday I intently watch their technique (the slow-mo replays are great for this), and when someone crashes I now hate it (sends shivers down my spine).

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ianbradders, Ditto, except like holidayloverxx, with the North East. At that time whiilst I liked the idea, I always assumed that something as exclusive as skiing would always be out of my reach. It is not an out and out love of my life (horse riding has that draw), but I do enjoy it, being up in the mountains and I have always had a childhood fascination with snow, and taking on the challenge that is skiing. Stenmark, Maier and Klammer were those I remember the names of vividly.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

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Yes - I felt rather old watching the grainy footage of previous ski heros and also remember being glued to the telly in my formative years. We lived only 70 miles north of Aviemore but unfortunately we never had any money so the prospect of skiing wesn't even considered. Winter w was all we could afford but it certainly endowed me with a love of the mountains.

I then moved down to London and started skiing in my early twenties. Fortunately my wife shares my passion so now we have 3 skiing holidays a year although she is gradually losing her love of alpine skiing so we compromise and have one xc holiday

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After all it is free

I was made to start watching this by my mother, and started loving it immediately. Perhaps I'm younger than some but when I was a kid it was Alberto Tomba tearing down the slopes and winning (almost) everything left right and centre.

There was no Ski Sunday whaen I was a kid. Come to that, there was no television in New Zealand.

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I used to love ski sunday - we always had sunday sandwiches for tea, in front of the telly (big thing as we weren't allowed to eat in the sitting room normally!)

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Ah jumpers for goalposts...

Brilliant clip of Viney in the middle of this spoof vid:

http://youtube.com/v/7EHosEgUH64

Started broadcasting in 1978 on the back of the jinxed Winter Olympics (awarded to Denver but they changed their minds, so Innsbruck filled the gap instead as they still had everything in place from their 1964 efforts). I recorded practically all the broadcasts to begin with as they were great for drumming up enthusiasm for the ski trips were were running in our school as well as the ski club I ran on Friday nights at Gloucester Ski Centre (later we switched between Pontypool and the Avon Ski Centre at Churchill). Wet Games lessons were a mixture of Ski Sunday and Rugby videos - threw all of them out when I finally cleared my house before leaving the UK for good. It was a wrench but I had found that none of my videos actually worked on German machines for some reason (no sound).

I loved it with Ron Pickering and David Vine fronting it then - neither of whom really knew anything about skiing. Led to some classic howlers.

You know it makes sense.

Yep, always remember watching it in the early 80s. Think my parents would watch it for the views of the mountains rather than the skiing - neither of them have ever skied but love the alpine environment. "real flame" effect electric fire going, telly on after dad had watched the final scores for the football and a pile of toasted teacakes. Score!

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

Vine's first broadcast on skiing, and the catalyst for SS, was the ski jumping from Garmisch on Grandstand. I met him a few times and, yes, he knew zip about skiing and made up his own technical terms that died with him - I still don't know what he meant by "slaps the skis in hard". He skied once, hated it, hated the cold but loved the apres (a bit too much) yet is still the best 'tator we've had and he did it all without a technical expert in the box. I guess most of his audience didn't have a clue either so it really didn't matter.

There's very little on YouTube and, despite having all the tapes, the BBC apparently don't seem keen to let them go. Anyway, here's one:

http://youtube.com/v/S_OAU6tph_U

A snowHead

Kind of same as OP, but South East rather than North East.

Had the option of either a family ski trip or family trip to Disney when I was about 13. **** knows how but 3 of 5 voted to go skiing, but we ended up in the mouse house Puzzled

Got into skiing about a decade or so later when there were some spaces free in a chalet, so gatecrashed my brother's ski trip (and he no longer skis).

A snowHead

Bode Swiller, and Konrad managed to ski without lots of blues lines all over the slope.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

waynos, and none of that fancy A and B netting to save him.

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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

Alastair Pink, so long as the VCR was multistandard too Wink

(mine wasn't)

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I am far too old to have watched it as a kid but don't remember watching ski sunday in the late 'seventies either. My 2 boys were young, then, and we were abroad in 1979/80, with no TV, and even at home we watched very little. I had been on a school ski trip in the 'sixties and loved it, but that had used 100% of my savings since babyhood and even in the 'seventies, when I had a good job as a fast streamer in the Civil Service, the possibility of being able to afford to go skiing with two kids was still rather remote.

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kat.ryb, Same here, the tea trolley used to come out and it was the only time that my equally ski addicted father ever used to make anything in the kitchen. It was the highlight of our week (oh...I was pretty keen on TOTP's too). Samerberg Sue, so right about Pickering and Vine.

After all it is free

Exactly the same as the OP but in Sheffield - I remember Klammer and perhaps Bartelski.
It could have only been Ski Sunday, or perhaps TV programmes like 'On the Piste', that prompted me to want to try skiing, as no-one in my family had ever been skiing.

I tried it first 25 years ago in Aviemore in a blizzard, and the ex-wife hated it, so had to wait another 15 years... then started again, aged 42 and sans-wife, and been at least twice most years since... I just started offpiste lessons this year... with my next trip in two weeks...

All thanks to David Vine! Very Happy

Always remember watching Ski Sunday when I was a kid with my dad and brother. My dad went skiing when he was at school in the 50s (wooden skis!), and he loved it, so that's why we always watched.

I remember the names Steve Podborski and Pirmin Zurbriggen - as well as Klammer of course, with David Vine commentating. I will always remember the footage of Klammer flailing his way across the traverse on the Hahnenkamm when he won the race.

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watching that footage of Bartelski shows how different it was even then early 80s. It just looks so unven.

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I used to watch it as a kid in London, even though like most of you above none of us skied, nor did we know anyone who did. My parents had had some summer holidays in Switzerland in the sixties so enjoyed just watching it for the Alpine scenery. It wasn't until I was 20 and lived in Glasgow that I finally had a go at the real thing....and I was so bad on my first day that I was devastated.

Although I watched it for the skiing....I admit I did enjoy the odd crash too at the time. You could always tell if there was going to be a crash as it was some no-hoper going down, a second or two off the split times early on, so there was only one reason it was being shown.........

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WayneC, how can you be from Sheffield and NOT have learnt to ski on the dry slope?

You know it makes sense.

Otherwise you'll just go on seeing the one name:

A snowHead

Always watched Ski Sunday as a young un. Dabbled a few times on the dry slope at the Ackers Trust in Birmingham (way before the days of the Tamworth Fridge).

Finally got a chance on snow in 1993 with an RAF Scholarship in Scotland which was great. Windy but great.

Then never set foot on a slope due to friends who werent interested until a newer group of mates dragged me to Bulgaria in 2012. The bug has well and truely bitten, already been to Morzine for a crafty weekend this year and off to Italy in just over a week. Booking for next year as we speak.

Oh, and I also used to enjoy the crashes but agree with jamescollings and they dont have the same appeal any more. Little Angel

A snowHead

pam w, they did not start broadcasting it until 1978. Apparently the coverage of the 1976 Winter Olympics was successful, so they just carried on from there. I think they actually did the first series in the 1977/78 season and it used to start with the Val d'Isere races then - Criterium de la Première Neige, but it was often cancelled due to lack of snow! Toofy Grin

I do remember watching some live broadcasts in France and in Germany when I was still quite young though.

Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?

I first went skiing in 1977. Ski Sunday appeared the following year by which time I was totally hooked. I even had a poster of Konrad Bartelski!

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Like others we always watched Ski Sunday as children, though no-one we knew skied, until we moved house and one of our neighbours was James Riddell, a British ski racer from the 1920'/1930s, member of the Kandahar Ski Club in Murren and I think at one time president of SCGB. He talked to us about skiing and the Jungfrau area, resulting in our first ski holiday to Wengen over 20 years ago - and we are revisiting the area next week, staying in Grindelwald this time.

Now have two teenagers who have been brought up as avid viewers of Ski Sunday and enjoying their ski holidays since they were about 3 years old.

Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.

I was too old to watch it as a child (started university the same year as it started), but I was an avid watcher once it started, and it was while watching it one year (1996) just before Christmas that my wife asked if I fancied a ski holiday for Christmas/birthday, since I enjoyed watching it so much.

She didn't know what she was starting!!!

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kat.ryb, 'cus I'm 52... think there used to be a steelworks* slag heap thereabouts when I lived in Sheffield... Ah, just seen Tarquin's, reply... and I left in '81 thanks to Norman Tebbit and co ...

*steelworks - a plant in which steel was made from iron ore before 1981. wink

queen bodecia, In 1977 aged 16, I had posters of Suzi Quatro and Debbie Harry and now have pictures of Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Anna Fenninger on my tablet... but only because of my interest in skiing... Little Angel

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Yes I watched it, thrilled me as a sport lover, had to learn to ski secretly in 6 months to imr,press my new partner; that was long ago she has gone, but skiing is my life now; "but I always look for my second wife in crowds" as the German flyer ace friend of the Great Waldo Pepper said in the end of the film.

After all it is free

Ah, the halcyon days of Rugby Special and Ski Sunday of an evening, watching en famille by the fire. Crumpets one week, muffins the next.

Did it ignite my love of skiing? I think it did. I remember when the first school ski trip was announced, my hand shot up rapidly and I pestered my parents like crazy!

It was Les Arcs, and I loved it. Of course, when 8 years old, a total beginner in my C&A onesie, we all just HAD to go right up to Aiguille Rouge on Day 2. Embarassed

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WayneC, I had a poster of Adam Ant too... wink

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Ski sunday when you were a kid.

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