Ski-ing in N.Z. ‘uniqueand should remain so’

Press, 12 August 1985, Page 34

Ski-ing in N.Z. ‘unique—and should remain so’

Queenstown correspondent The New Zealand ski industry must be geared towards the tourists who use it, but the worst thing it could do would be to copy other countries, said the president of the Yugoslav Ski Instructors’ Association, Mr Milan Maver, in Queenstown. Some 47 top ski representatives from throughout the world have been in Queenstown for the International Ski Association meeting, the first to be held in New Zealand. The delegates include instructors, demonstrators and industry representatives from the world’s top ski-ing nations, who have spent the week discussing the latest safety and instruction techniques and testing the snow at Coronet Peak. Mr Maver, who is an authority on ski-ing in Yugoslavia and Europe, said although ski-ing was vastly different iri New Zealand from overseas, it should be kept that way. In Europe, skiers slept on the mountain in luxury accommodation and woke up right on the slopes. But New Zealand did not need this kind of facility when such

accommodation was always close by. New Zealand should not imitate other ski-ing nations, but stick with its own unique style, Mr Maver said. The lifts and slopes were the same as anywhere else in the world, but New Zealand had “vast expanses” of untouched, beautiful land. “You can travel for miles over untouched mountain ranges without seeing a building or a person.” In Yugoslavia it was difficult to travel more than about skm without seeing 100 or so houses and about 1000 people, said Mr Maver. New Zealand should aim its ski-ing facilities at the most common users, who were probably Australian tourists. Ski-ing could be either a competitive sport or a leisure activity. New Zealand had to find out what most skiers preferred. All of these needs should be assessed before developing ski-ing as a major industry, he said. Mr Maver believed there could be many more opportunities offered to children to learn to ski, and it should be part of the New Zealand school sports’ programme. In Yugoslavia children

had their first opportunity to ski at kindergarten, and at elementary school they would spend a week ski-ing as part of the school sports activities, Mr Maver said.

Ski-ing was a growing sport around the world. In Slovenia, the area from which Mr Maver came, there was a population of 1.8 million. Of those, 400,000 would be regular skiers and 35,000 children would ski at school each season.

There were about 20,000 regular skiers in New Zealand. The local industry should do more to promote its own growth, Mr Maver believed. The executive director of the New Zealand Ski Instructors’ Alliance, Mr Scott Callaway, said that, ski-ing was a good sport for children, because it did not have to be competitive. Methods of teaching in this country had changed, along with America and Yugoslavia, to adopt a more relaxed and fearless approach to ski-ing, he said.

In Austria, France and Switzerland and other more traditional ski-ing nations the “old-fashioned” method was still often used.

Learners were taught to ski in stages, practising one movement repeatedly, Mr Callaway said. This method was gradually being abandoned, as well as the idea that a “true and honest” ski-ing style could be developed only if it came naturally and was not taught. “Ski-ing has passed the stage where everyone sat round a boardroom table and decided on a style,” he said.

More instructors were ■ moving away from the “perfect position” method of skiing, to a more relaxed and natural ski-ing performance, where the emphasis was on “gliding” and ski-ing aggressively. A learner, could copy an instructor’s natural movements and develop his or her individual flair, said Mr Callaway.