Skiing / Bob Lochner : Steadman Elected to Hall of Fame

Dr. Richard Steadman, who is known for performing near miracles on injured racers, is one of three skiers elected to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame this week.

Joining the South Lake Tahoe orthopedic surgeon are Charles Ferries of Sun Valley, Ida., and H. Devereaux Jennings of Waterville Valley, N.H. They bring the membership total to 275 since the hall was established in 1954 at Ishpeming, Mich.

Among the U.S. ski team stars who have been treated at one time or another by Steadman and sent back to continue successful careers are Phil and Steve Mahre, Bill Johnson, Cindy Nelson, Tamara McKinney, Debbie Armstrong and Christin Cooper.

Ferries, a former racer who won the Hahnenkamm at Kitzbuhel, Austria, in 1962, has also held a number of executive positions with both the U.S. ski team and in the ski industry during a 30-year career.

Jennings, who grew up in Salt Lake City and fought with the 10th Mountain Division in World War II, has been prominent in New England ski marketing since 1970.

Sixteen years after he was banned from the Olympics, Karl Schranz has gained a measure of revenge on the late Avery Brundage.

In a ceremony the other day in Vienna, Juan Antonio Samaranch, president of the Internatonal Olympic Committee, presented Schranz with a medal as a participant in the 1972 Winter Games at Sapporo, Japan, and officially reinstated the former Austrian racing star.

Of course, Schranz, who now owns the ski school at St. Anton and covers international races for the Austrian media, could have made more use of the reinstatement back in ‘72, when Brundage, then the IOC president, declared the downhill favorite a professional just before the Games opened.

“I was 33 then, and I knew I couldn’t win a gold medal after that, even if I had the chance,” said Schranz, who had been receiving large numbers of schillings from Franz Kneissl and other Austrian industrialists for using and endorsing their products.

During the Vienna presentation, the IOC said Schranz had “behaved in a fitting manner” since 1972, and they had therefore agreed to his request for reinstatement.

It also helped that Olympic athletes today are openly being paid much greater sums while retaining their “amateur” status.

“I think the whole organization has changed in thought about professionals and amateurs,” Schranz was quoted as saying after the ceremony. “It doesn’t make any difference anymore. I am happy to see these athletes, like Carl Lewis and Florence Griffith Joyner, making millions as champions. I think I helped start that, with my disqualification.”

A recent note that five long-range weather forecasters had predicted a warmer and dryer winter than normal in the Sierra Nevada drew this response from Pam Murphy, a spokeswoman for Mammoth Mountain:

“It’s always interesting to hear the different forecasts. . . . Just before I saw the article (originally in Snow Country magazine), the Scripps Institute in San Diego predicted a wetter, colder winter. . . . We certainly hope that forecast is the one that’s right.”

Skiing Notes

So far, this winter has been cold and wet enough to provide good skiing in both the High Sierra and the Southland, where nearly all major resorts are operating daily through the Christmas-New Year’s holidays. . . . Northstar-at-Tahoe has been put up for sale by Fibreboard Corp., which wants to get out of the ski business.

The 105-room Wawona Hotel, near the south entrance to Yosemite National Park, is open through Jan. 2 for cross-country skiers and other overnight guests, for only the fourth Christmas since Galen Clark established Clark’s Station on the site in 1857. . . . Dave McCoy, founder and owner of Mammoth Mountain, won the 70-and-over class of the Dave McCoy Slalom, opening race in the U.S. Ski Assn.’s Far West Masters series, recently at Mammoth. His 2-run total of 104.62 seconds was more than 36 seconds ahead of the second-place time.

ESPN’s skiing lineup this Sunday: Women’s Pro Tour races from Waterville Valley, N.H., at 2 p.m., taped; Bob Beattie’s “Ski World” at 2:30, and the World Cup men’s downhill from St. Anton, Austria, at 3, also taped.