It’s official, the Kandahar has the green light for the 29/30th Jan. We’ve just had a press trip out at Sous Les Bois ahead of the race and one of the guys put together this history of the event.
From Afghanistan to La Verte des Houches
When the Alpine Ski World Cup was launched in 1966/67, the nucleus of the original schedule was three legendary downhills, the Hahnenkamm (1933), the Lauberhorn (1930) and the grandfather of them all, the Arlberg-Kandahar, born in 1928 in St. Anton. The Hahnenkamm and Lauberhorn races remain the blue ribbon events of alpine skiing, but the significance of the Arlberg-Kandahar, although still on the World Cup calendar, is probably recognised today only by a small inner circle of skiing cognoscenti. So what was the history of this famous race and where does the name come from?
Lord Roberts of Kandahar and Sir Arnold Lunn
The town of Kandahar in Afghanistan traces its history back to Alexander the Great, by whom it was founded during his monumental march eastward to India and beyond (Kandahar is an Afghan corruption of Alexandria).
The link with skiing comes much later. In August, 1880, Frederick Sleigh Roberts, a British General, marched 10,000 troops 313 miles in 22 days from Kabul to Kandahar to relieve the siege of a British garrison stationed there. He was promoted to Field Marshall and in 1882 raised to the peerage, choosing in keeping with custom the name of his most famous campaign. Thus, the General became the first Lord Roberts of Kandahar.
Perhaps the most influential figure in the early history of alpine skiing was Sir Arnold Lunn. Arnold Lunn’s father, Henry, had established the Lunn Travel Agency towards the end of the 19th century. Foreseeing the possibilities of winter sports, he engaged a number of Swiss hotels for the Agency’s exclusive winter use. However, only the well off could afford such travel and they were not inclined to take such organised tours. Henry then formed the Public Schools Alpine Sports Club and turned to an old acquaintance, Lord Roberts, whom he had known in India (where Lunn had worked as a missionary at one time) to join him as vice-president of the newly formed club. Although the club was effectively the Lunn Agency in thin disguise, it was a great success, quickly establishing winter sports centres in many parts of the Alps.
Various winter events, including ski racing, were organised for members, and Lord Roberts put up a cup for the best skier. Eight years later the cup, the Roberts of Kandahar Challenge Cup, was awarded to the winner of the first recorded downhill race in Europe, held by a group of Englishmen in Montana-sur-Sierre (Crans-Montana), Switzerland on January 11, 1911.
In January 1924, a group of British alpine ski pioneers decided to form a ski club in Mürren to promote alpine combined racing. They decided to take the name Kandahar and used a block “K” for a badge. The driving force behind the Kandahar Ski Club, was Henry’s son Arnold, by now a power in the sport and the man who invented and named the slalom ski race. In January 1922, in the grounds of the Palace Hotel in Mürren, he had persuaded some friends to race against the stopwatch through a series of paired short wands stuck in the snow. He used the old Norwegian name ‘slalom’ for this new event, although strangely enough, he claimed later to have always regretted this, believing that the German world “torlauf” (gate race) would have been far more appropriate. With slalom gaining popularity, it became possible to run alpine combined races, scoring slalom and downhill together, as jumping and cross country had been scored jointly for Nordic combined titles.
The Arlberg-Kandahar
The Arlberg-Kandahar race is, together with the Inferno (also held for the first time in 1928 (on 29th January) and still organised today by the Kandahar Club at Mürren), the oldest surviving ski race in the world. It was first run in Mürren in March 1928, a full two years before the FIS recognised downhill and slalom racing and three years before the first World Championships.
The race was the brainchild of Arnold Lunn and his friend Hannes Schneider of the Ski Club Arlberg, whom he had got to know in 1927. Considered by many the father of modern skiing, Hannes Schneider, born in Stuben am Arlberg near St Anton, was responsible for the introduction of the stem christie turn to alpine skiing in 1911 and for the development of the so-called Arlberg Method, which later came to dominate the world of skiing (the Arlberg Method was a systematic method of ski instruction, which lead skiers from a simple snowplow, through the stem christie turn and on to a parallel turn). He founded one of the first dedicated ski schools, the Skischule Arlberg in St Anton in 1921.
The immediate product of the meeting between Lunn and Schneider in 1927 was a ski race that same year in St. Anton, for which Lunn laid out a slalom course, a discipline until then unknown in the Arlberg. The event was a success and so the following year, on 3rd and 4th March at Galzig (St Anton), the first running of the Arlberg-Kandahar was inaugurated in St Anton by the Arlberg Ski Club and the Kandahar Club.
The event was made up of downhill and slalom races for both men and women with the times of each combined. Forty-five racers took part, with representatives from Austria, Switzerland, England and the USA. This was the first international competition to combine downhill and slalom events. A combination of the spectacular and the very difficult, it was considered the ultimate measure of excellence in alpine skiing. The Combined discipline is still retained today in the Olympic Games and the World Championships, and for the Arlberg-Kandahar meeting in Chamonix. By preserving the Kandahar name, and the Combined discipline, Chamonix stands out in its desire to continue the Kandahar legend.
The Arlberg-Kandahar was rerun in 1929 and 1930 in St. Anton and then from 1931 until the Second World War alternated between St Anton and Mürren, although the 1938 event was cancelled by Sir Arnold because of the annexation of Austria by Hitler. The 1940 event was to have been hosted by Chamonix, but had to be cancelled because of the outbreak of war.
After the war, the Arlberg-Kandahar resumed in Mürren in 1947, before Chamonix finally got its chance to become the third host venue in 1948. In that year the race was not run on the famous Kandahar course in Les Houches (‘La Verte des Houches’), to which it later moved, but on the ski slopes above the hamlet of Les Bossons. A young Chamoniard named James Couttet from Les Bossons won a famous double on his home hill by taking both the downhill and combined events.
Sestriere became the fourth host venue in 1951, followed by Garmisch-Partenkirchen in 1954. Through the 50s and 60s each of these five venues took it in turn to host the AK races each year until Sestriere and Mürren withdrew in the early 70s.
Skiers who achieve five podium finishes in an Arlberg-Kandahar event in five separate years, or who alternatively achieve three podium finishes and a win in the Combined in four different years, receive a special award, a diamond pin known as the ‘Kandahar Needle’. Past winners of the Kandahar Needle include James Couttet (of Le Bosson, Chamonix), Jean-Claude Killy, Annemarie Moser-Proll, Ingemar Stenmark and Franz Klammer. There have been no winners of the Needle in the modern era (post 1985), although Lindsey Vonn is just one podium finish away.
Now incorporated into the World Cup calendar, the Arlberg-Kandahar continues to take place each year at one of the remaining three venues. Although today it is perhaps only the Kandahar downhill in Chamonix which continues to enjoy some of its former blue riband status, for several decades, until the introduction of the Alpine Ski World Cup in 1966, the Arlberg-Kandahar races were the most prestigious in the calendar, equalled only by the Winter Olympics and Alpine Ski World Championships, and winning the title, with medals inscribed with the magical letters “AK”, was the supreme accolade in alpine skiing.
The Kandahar name survives in the titles of the Garmisch, Chamonix and Sestriere World Cup races.
