TRANSCRIPT (NOTE time references are not accurate)

Peter Graves: [00:00:09] Thank you very much, Tom Kelly, and welcome everybody to USA Nordic Ticket to Fly. We'll be talking to newsmakers in the sport of ski jumping and Nordic combined every month. And we're very, very happy to have all of you listeners with us. A very exciting show today. We are going to have Walter Hofer who for almost 30 years, was the FIS ski jump race director. He has done a wonderful job and at recently retired after a great tenure. First of all, Walter, let me welcome you to the show, and it's a joy to have you with us.

Walter Hofer: [00:00:59] Thank you very much for that invitation. Thank you.

Peter Graves: [00:01:01] Well, you are so welcome. So let me start at the beginning by asking you, how did you get into ski jumping? I don't believe you were a jumper. But is that right?

Walter Hofer: [00:01:17] No, but I was always involved in any kind of sport. Mostly in football (soccer) myself. But then I started to do a second educational system. I started to study physical education. And at the age of 25 when I was searching for a job to do work in between my study. And I was asked by the Austrian Ski Federation. They were looking for a physio. And they were looking for a kind of service men. And they took me. I saw this offer in a newspaper and I made a telephone call. And they took me just right away. And that was the first day of a full time job. For the next thirty eight years. So who was my stepping in as standing on the sideline watching ski jumping? I was always interested in ski jumping on TV. But I have never seen it onsite yet.

Peter Graves: [00:02:19] Very interesting. So you grew up in Austria, where did you grow up?

Walter Hofer: [00:02:25] In the southern part of Austria as ski jumping fans know it's nearby, Planica in Slovenia and nearby Villach, which is a small town nearby. My village is on the lake, Millstätter See, and the village is known. Seeboden.

Peter Graves: [00:02:48] Ok. OK. Well, Austria, of course, such a big hub of ski jumping activity. So you played such a decisive and important role in charting the course for ski jumping. And let me ask you to begin with what your you retired had plenty to. That was the final day for you. So it's near your home. And you must have been reflective of what you had achieved in the different things you did. Tell me a little bit about maybe your thoughts going in your mind that day and in the subsequent months about what you did for the sport of jumping.

Walter Hofer: [00:03:42] First of all, it brings me back to my first engagement in ski jumping when I was servicemen and the second coach for the Austrian Ski Federation, then I was asked by the Germans Ski Federation for another four year to be the second coach for the Rudi Tusch who was the head coach at that moment. So all in all, ten years I was standing on the sideline and I was watching ski jumping and whatever it takes, I saw that there is a certain value in this sport. It also very small, tiny side event - it was not very much taken by the popularity, by the spectators. And what I saw there is something in this sport which has to be shown, has to be wrapped up in another way because ski jumping was already. very interesting to see. But at that time, the TV coverage and access for the spectators onsite was very limited.

Peter Graves: [00:04:49] And you know, it's interesting to me, having spent time in the World Cup circuit and Olympic Games with with jumping and and I think this is during your tenure, the ratings. And this is particularly in Europe. But the ratings for ski jumping are simply off the charts. They are amongst the highest rated shows ever. And so maybe a two part question. What draws people in to watch it on television? And secondly, you must be very proud to have been part of that, a tremendous resurgence of what is a very old sport.

Walter Hofer: [00:05:32] I start to answer the second question. I never took it as my work. I had obviously feeling that I was just coordinating a group of people, mostly the members of the Jumping Committee of FIS. I had great support from the FIS. Yes, from from the president Gian Franco Kasper. And they let us work and do what we wanted to do. So it was teamwork starting from the athletes, the coaches, the officials. And finally, I was just kind of coordinating system and it was small enough - the discipline. So to do it n one table, this was very good in the very beginning because it started very, very deep with all the changes. Because when I started to to try and if I ask to join ski jumping in my race director's role, ski jumping had four different formats. Nobody actually knew what's going on in ski flying when they had three rounds and only two were counting. And compared with Olympic Games or championships, which was also different. And the World Cup also had enough at another regulation. So the first three years to just to unify, to form one and the same rule. And this is this was the basis to create one and the same format. And the format was actually the first step to the popularity. That means in the old days when I was coaching, we had starting fields of more than 100 or 120 athletes.

Walter Hofer: [00:07:19] So you can imagine in the first round then the old system, and you had to change the inrun gate after number 70 and number 71 was continuing and another 120 athletes had to jump. TV told us, do your job. We make some pictures and at the end of the day, we make it if we make a delayed summary. So it was not attractive enough to take its key jumping live. And this was the very beginning to start to cooperate with TV, because in the old days as a coach, we were always somehow hiding the athletes from the public. We didn't want to show where are the changing rooms. We didn't want to show the athletes when they are close to the starting gate. We didn't want to show them when they were exposed to their own environment. So we hide it somehow, their surroundings around ski jumping and TV, they just took the jumps, more or less wanted the same repetition. We saw three, four or five cameras. They just choose the right position, which was the easiest for them. And so ski jumping was mostly at that time just delayed or a long lasting competition. So then we started to.

Walter Hofer: [00:08:47] And then suddenly, as soon as we have found this kind of format that we use a qualification, that we use our first competition round with a certain number. And the second round was only a final round. TV started to be interested on us. And then they asked us, can we go to the athletes area? Can we go to the Warm-Up room at the start? Can we go with cameras somewhere closer to the performance of the athletes? And in the very beginning, we were very reluctant but be together as the coaches and the athletes, we were willing to move towards the TV coverage. And suddenly, when you look at ski jumping competition today for a tournament, we use more than 30 cameras to evaluate the ski jumping event. And this springs ski jumping from any angle of performance. And this is one of the successful starts. And it was one of the successful starts to have good TV coverage. And that brought us spectators onside. And that brought us some spectators on TV. And this this was one of the first steps. We still had one problem. It was the transition from the classical style to the V style. So it was a very, very difficult to lead a competition on behalf of the jury because of the performance. And the range of distances are so wide that it was almost impossible to bring a competition through the same starting gate. But they also had some accidents. We also had this safety cases and that brought us to the idea to make ski jumping safer. But you can imagine this was not very welcome by those who were watching ski jumping. The so-called expert, they told me, hey, OK, you can make ski jumping safe for ski jumping is still a risky sport. People would like to see risky sport. Don't make it smooth. Don't make you glad. But it wasn't true. We were labeling all these cards to make ski jumping safer. And the more people trusted us. Athletes, coaches and spectators, the more athletes appeared. And finally, this was one of the reasons why the females started to ski jump. And this was, of course, a great success that we could provide to the parents a team, a system a discipling which was safe enough for the athletes, for men and female athletes. This was also part of this success.

Peter Graves: [00:11:36] Very interesting. And I take particular note at the beginning of your your answer that you and it's I think it's very vintage Walter Hofer, you you give praise to others. We know these are complicated jobs. When you're FIS race director, you know, you have to be technical, but there's there's politics involved in all of that. But you have always, I think, stood above politics and shared the limelight with others and given them credit. I think that speaks a lot about Walter Hofer.

Walter Hofer: [00:12:15] Yeah. But you have to understand the ground, because I started in such a position, you can imagine it is such a closed discipline, all these disciplines which have kind of close subsystem. They don't let someone in from outside. I was an outsider and I had to. I had to convince everyday all the people that we are on the right track. And would I have done in the very beginning when I started to lead the discipline, I took immediately some real experts for ski jumping. I never, ever said anything about the performance of athletes so that I engaged people who were really ski jumper. You can you will remember in the after three, four years. I took Miran Tepeš, who was in the field of ski jumping. Well known as a very fair and the great sportsman. I took him as my assistant and this was the first great success because people trusted him. When he say yes, this day we can jump the next step. And he said, oh, today it's too difficult. It's too unregulated. Then they stopped the competition. So I took some knowledge from real experts. And I know you will go you can go back to 30 years. You'll be have you will never find a statement from me about the performance of athletes. This was always done by so-called real ski jumpers. And this is why I always say I don't do it alone. I needed a team and I created the team. And all of those people created their own me, their former ski jumpers, just to beef the athletes and the coaches, the feeling that they are treated well.

Peter Graves: [00:14:13] Yeah. Very interesting. Do you see if you look in your crystal ball towards the future, even new innovations coming up? I mean, we certainly you know, the V style was obviously a very big deal and it really threatened for a while to undermine certain aspects of the sport. There was a lot of controversy, particularly with the judges. But do you see new things coming?

Walter Hofer: [00:14:44] Look, we they're surprised by the introduction of the V style by young populace. There are some athletes for different spice rather than style. But Boklöv was the first one who really used the V style. And even he was his restyling was not always competitive to win the competition. So for us, it was not really obviously that the restyled will take over the complete discipline. So it took two, three years until the Olympics in Albertville when a 16 year old grown up V style ski jumper Toni Nieminen won the Olympics no one was able to jump the classical style anymore. So this was a transition period which took longer than expected. Normally, the V style has an effectivity of more than 30 percent compared to the classical style. But we didn't know it at that time. And but from that point on, only V style jumpers were competitive enough to win the competition. But that brought a lot of problems with us. All the old jumping hills were specified and the profiles were made for the classical style. So it took us more than 20 years to repeat all these facilities. And the last major hill, which was rebuilt, was in 29. It was Oslo for the Holmenkollen for the championships in 2011. So that 20 years we were in force to chase the athletes with their innovations, with their technique. They found something new and we were always a bit behind, but not more than one year. After one year, we could change the regulations. So that was also visited judges. You have to understand the V style surprised the whole discipline. But you start a season with one regulation. You cannot change the regulation during a competition season. And the judges, they had to use their current actual, valid judging system. So when the V style was used. It was in the old rules. It was a mistake. That's why Boklöv got deductions. But we couldn't change the rules before the end of the season. This is a part of the game.

Peter Graves: [00:17:15] I'm old enough to remember Steve Collins from Canada with the Delta Wing. I think it was called, a little bit before Boklöv maybe around the time of the 80 Olympic Games.

Walter Hofer: [00:17:28] Yes, best some others also understand from Sweden who took this case aside, then also Matti Nykanen, and he used one ski under his body. So he he always had a kind of ski forward in mistaking the air, but it was accepted by the judges because he was so greatly performing. But Andi Felder, for example. He used also a kind of a different style when he put both skis aside on the same side. So there were some styles before the introduction of the V style. But this is just just one part of the V style and forced us to do something more with the equipment. The athletes tend to use too much front portion of skis with the V style, because this was excellent aerodynamic but we had a lot of falls. So we had to make a rule to where the binding has to be mounted. That has to be done in from a theoretical point of view. And we were lucky because the athletes didn't accept this rule that we say where he has to mount the binding. But after one season, we could prove there was no fault in the air anymore. So this was a very, very important step. And from that point on, we started to make the regulations very clear for the athletes and for the coaches.

Walter Hofer: [00:18:59] First, this skis were specified. Then the jumping suits. It took another four or five years with the jumping suits because in the very beginning, the jumping suit was just a sportswear. And then within one season, an athlete stopped to have the normal material, which was just five millimeters thick. He used one point three millimeter and the oversize suit and he was unbeatable. And that was 1995, 96. Then we started to make cuttings for the suit. So this was always a kind of step a bit after the athletes, but at least we were just late by just year. So skis were specified, the suits for specified. Then athletes started to manipulate with their weight. They knew light flies far and they started to manipulate with their weight. And that brought us to the next problem because we wanted to find a system which makes athletes, keeps athletes healthy, but in a performance in a performance that they can win a competition. So the tricky point in it is ski jumping was told in the media, did we create underweight athletes? But as a matter of fact, they're really light weight athletes like Weissflog feel like Nykanen like another one. I wanted to say. I would take the name later on. Simon Ammann. They said I can't be heavier. I am just as I am. But those athletes who are real athletic board athletes, they have the problem to go down with their weight. So it was not a light weight problem. It was a problem for those athletes who are heavier. They started to to bring their weight down and this was unhealthy. So when you see Hannawold, who was one of the discussions at that time, when you see him today, I ask him all the time and I meet him. He is not much heavier than in his best performance days.

Peter Graves: [00:21:27] Mm hmm. Yeah. Very interesting. Well, you're listening to Walter Hofer. This is Ticket to Fly. I'm Peter Graves. We're going to continue on. Walter, we've talked about a lot of the really good stuff. And and there has been a lot. Any thing that strikes in your mind as as a disappointment or something that the sport was not able to achieve? What are your thoughts on that?

Walter Hofer: [00:21:56] Ok. Since I was in was involved from the very beginning, I knew that ski jumping is a niche sport. You cannot compare ski jumping with any other sport. It is not fair to compare ski jumping with alpine skiing, to compare ski jumping with tennis or even football. Ski jumping is a niche sport. But we were able to take out from this possibility from the sport to value what our athletes perform, at least a TV product, because we cannot sell any piece of the equipment of an athlete to the people. It is not a mass sport. There is no industry behind and there is no tourism area which is searching for ski jumping hills. It is not so easy to finance ski jumping from the organizing point of view and the coaching point of view and for the federation as well. So our only source was to gain money through conducting ski jumping events and we knew that we have to turn ski jumping into a media product. So in the very beginning, we were told some times that we will what did we want to want us to do? But it was quite different. We started to use the TV for our purpose.

Peter Graves: [00:23:31] And successful, you were with that. I want to turn to ski jumping in America, of course, of a very broad topic, but over all. And you've been here plenty of times. What are your thoughts on on ski jumping in this country?

Walter Hofer: [00:23:50] Here, of course, on the stand, the wide open spaces over there, it's so difficult to coordinate such a small discipline to make and move things together, to make training together. It is a wide open country and and most of them start to train in Europe. These other teams, I know this is a bit difficult and. I was always a bit wondering why the USA is not able to have at least one mutual point, you know, with Iron Mountain, with excellent competition and huge media and the rest. But there was no we were not able to raise enough interest from the whole country. So when we were in Iron Mountain with one or two or three World Cup events, if we don't go there, nobody was complaining. OK. You don't come again. And there were was a second that impact, which is interesting in the States, when you host an outdoor event, you will rarely see a life transmission. But this is something which is very popular in Europe. Sport has to be live. Indoor-outdoor doesn't matter. In Europe, you see ski jumping live. In the states, you will see the very same event 14 days later in connection with the athletes personal story. So it's a different approach to the TV setup. And maybe this is also one reason, but otherwise I really can't explain. We had the Olympic Games from Lake Placid to Salt Lake City. Even Vancouver in Calgary. Can you count together? It was not really something left. No. No legacy. No after use in none. Very, very seldom. We had on the very same Olympic venues competitions again. So it it's a bit a different story than in Europe.

Peter Graves: [00:26:12] Well, and of course, I mean, we have had champions in this country. I mean, and and Jeff Hastings had a great to Sarajevo and a World Cup career, Mike Holland, Jim Holland, all of them. But I mean, USA Nordic is certainly wanting to build the program. And and they are working hard on that with depth, not just one person.

Walter Hofer: [00:26:39] Yeah, no, at the moment in the last two, three years, I do see a lot of activities and I think there is a good theme also from the official side who are going in the right direction for sure. But, of course, it be a bit of time. When you look at Finland they are suffering after their last championship in 2001. The federation almost fall apart. And it takes til now to recover. You see how difficult it is sometimes to be even in a very traditional country, to come back to the top. So that top field is very tight. And the big five, we call them Big Five, which was Germany, Norway, Finland, Austria and Japan. They have their own support from the university point of view. They have materials. They have companies in the country. So they speak five this year and last with other countries. Now we have Slovenia. Now we have Poland. You will see another. Maybe the Russians soon will come up. So it is very, very difficult to be on the top all the time.

Peter Graves: [00:27:55] Right. And it can be cyclical. But I have always thought it was great for the sport when we had many champions. I mean, you see what Malyscz, for example, did in Poland. Simon Ammann on what he did in Switzerland. And the Slovenians and what not. This is all good stuff. 

Walter Hofer: [00:28:14] But I can tell you, at least the I learned from the TV production point of view a lot from you guys. Salt Lake City when we had our TV briefings before the competition. It was a team event. I was told from Peter Diamond, I don't know if you know him.

Peter Graves: [00:28:35] Yes, I know him well. Yeah.

Walter Hofer: [00:28:37] He was responsible for the TV production. And he said to me, look, Walter, when an athlete is jumping down, why do you release all the data already before the before the TV commentator can say because the TV commentator, he has to wait for the repetitious. He cannot release the distance and the scores and their rank during a video slo mo. But the commentators in the stadium, they can do. And you will hear over the TV microphone what this commentator on it on this in the stadium will say. I realized and I kept back the data and until the TV production, after the slo mo, went back to the athletes close up for a picture. And we were so successful because a team event, the Germans long and the Martin Schmidt is the last jumper. He made his shout in the outrun. And we could have missed it if he wouldn't have made it with the data until we come back to him.

Peter Graves: [00:29:47] Yeah, that's so interesting and I remember that I made being I was one of the P.A. announcers for jumping at Utah Olympic Park then, so I, I remember that well, and and that builds drama. That's a great thing.

Walter Hofer: [00:30:02] And I was told by the media, by the so-called TV experts, whenever you see something on TV which appears smooth and fine for the spectators, they don't know why. But you'll need time. And that's why we also use a flexible in the live. We don't we don't let the athletes go down in a certain interval of one minute. For example, we play with the the TV production. That means when an athlete jumps very far, the director would like to make one or two repetitions more intimate for the next athlete a bit longer because the next athlete know that and he gets his and he deserves to get the same amount of time like the previous athlete. So this is very smooth run down. Incorporating between the jury, between the starter and the TV production. That makes competition on TV very smooth.

Peter Graves: [00:31:00] Yeah, that's so fascinating. Walter, to hear that I wanted to segue to Michigan again, to Copper Peak Hill, that has had a long legacy. It was very early in ski flying. And you've been up there at least once because they're trying to get it. Excuse me, organized again and going. What do you know now? What's happening up there and how important is that that we get this going? To me, it's very important.

Walter Hofer: [00:31:32] Look, I am so long waiting for because I knew it. Is that, oh, opener for the states. And it is the opener of ski flying in the states. And it is the open up for the females to to jump on the flying hills in the States because it would be the first time where a ski flying will be covered with plastic and we could then change our regulations which at the moment allow only to compete in a competition on the flying hill. And when you have plastic covered hill you can make training sessions during the summer seasons. You will be prepared for the winter season. You could start in December with ski flying because the athletes would be prepared for. And I am quite sure in summertime in in Copper Peak in September when the Indian fall is creating beautiful colors. We have to be there when the people are coming to this venue. And I know that all their holiday week would show up at the moment. They do it because they want to go up to the to the shaky inrun tower. Here's the challenge for them. But we want to fly there. We have to fly there. We need Copper Peak for the international field, not only for the states.

Peter Graves: [00:32:58] Yeah, that's great. And we're all hoping the best. Let's talk about women's ski jumping. I mean, it was maybe IOC was a little bit slow to embrace it. This was a little quicker to embrace it. But in my view, not only was it absolutely imperative that women come to the sport and you can see that many of them oftentimes are out jumping the men in some cases. But I it's certainly made the sport better.

Walter Hofer: [00:33:34] Look, it was never a female case because from the sporting point of view, it was never, ever a doubt that the female can do the same like the boys. But the female itself they were not from the number point of view not enough athletes in the very beginning. You know, if you would like to be taken seriously, you need a certain number of athletes when you want to have a winner you also need a couple of losers. So the group of female jumpers in the very beginning was very in game. We had some adult athletes. We had some 12, 13, 14 year old, and they were very performative. And when you remember that young lady was fifteen, sixteen becomes a women that she probably sometimes is taken over by a 13 year old girl, which is a very slim, very light. And this is a very, very difficult period to keep the athlete into the system. So we still have to leave. It's a very limited number of female athletes and we are at the moment still not able to have one or two serious at the very same time like we do for the men. So we still talk about quality, not about quantity. From quality, there is no doubt the ladies, they can do everything, but you cannot create jumping competitions on the on the large hill when you don't have enough athletes who are entered to this competition. So it has nothing to do with the performance. It has something to do with the organization and the development of the discipline.

Peter Graves: [00:35:29] Ok. Thank you for that, Walter. Ah, time is drawing a little short, but I wanted to ask you before I get to my final question, maybe you give me one or two names and why who are your most intriguing, interesting jumpers that you interacted with?

Walter Hofer: [00:35:54] Oh.

Peter Graves: [00:35:56] Tough Question because there were so many.

Walter Hofer: [00:35:59] Look, I was that man I was coaching, I was so close to Matti Nykanen because he only accepted one athlete in the whole field and that was Andreas Felder because Andreas Felder B team. And so he was many times together with Andi Felder. And I was a service man from from Andi. So I knew Matty probably closer than anyone else. So I even him I wouldn't be called to name him alone because there are so many in my period and it would not be fair to take one of them. But there are so many great jumpers. I mean, in each country you can find five to 10 athletes who were really great. All these ski jumpers are ambassadors for our discipline. We this is our treasure. This is our value, this key jumpers and their performance because we have this saying in ski jumping. When you look at the TV ski jumping competition, you easily can see that in ski jumping. The hat is a hat. And this has something to say. A ski Jumper is very mentally orientated. He know that he has only one hundred percent to calculate. He cannot see like a wild Ruki. Oh, today I give one hundred and ten. One hundred and ten means an injury. So these are very mentally orientated athletes. And all of them. Doesn't matter what the performance say or the place or the rank. They who travel down in Planica. When you see them on site to jump off from the take off. It's unbelievable what they are able to do. So all of them are great ski jumpers.

Peter Graves: [00:37:53] Yeah. Thank you for that. Maybe finally, I'd love to explore any thoughts you have or even advice on growing the jumping sport in America. You already alluded to the great distances. This is very different from Europe. Of course, the other thing is, is we and Canada are on the other side of the great pond. And but any any kind of final thoughts about American jumping?

Walter Hofer: [00:38:27] Yeah, I mean, it was finally then a bit too short, my period, because the last the carb, we started to use the former from the eastern part of Europe. After the falling apart of Soviet Union, we had almost 20 nations who had background in ski jumping from Russland to Kazakhstan. We had almost 20 nations starting from the middle of Europe with Czechia with Slovakia with Poland. Further on to Russia, to Kazakhstan. And we had to develop them there because they started to to come back after 20 years of silence. And that brought a lot of work for us. Sochi was a part of it. And now we have beautiful facilities in Russia, in Chaykovskiy, in addition to in Kazakhstan, in our motha and Chechen's. So here we are ready to start for the international presentation. And now we have to come back to the western hemisphere to USA and Canada. We have to! Because this is very, very important. And I'm 100 percent convinced that there will be a battle between Russia and USA in their future on the field of play of ski Jumping. And this we just have to create. We have to build up the tribune and then the athletes will appear anyhow. So you cannot create athletes but you can provoke them in in in a way that you build up the stage where they can perform because ski Jumping is popular because of the tribune the athletes have. There are so many other disciplines for athletes train as much as ski jumpers, but they are not known. You need the stage to be do for you for your performance. And this is what ski jumping does - building up the stages.

Peter Graves: [00:40:28] Walter, it's been such a delight to have you with us. I can't thank you enough for sharing your thoughts. It's all fascinating. And thank you so much for for the leadership you gave for so long and so freely to ski jumping.

Walter Hofer: [00:40:45] It's a pleasure to talk to you.

Peter Graves: [00:40:48] All right, that's Walter Hofer as we reminisce about his career and the sport of ski jumping. We want to remind you that you can subscribe to Ticket to fly on your favorite podcast platform. Thanks to Walter Hofer, our producer Tom Kelly will have more great interviews from the world of ski jumping. Coming up for all of us, this is Peter Graves. Have a wonderful day. And thanks for listening.