THE MOUNTAINS OF YOUTH - ARNOLD LUNN, 1st/1st 1925 - Alpine Skier Mountaineering

  THE MOUNTAINS OF YOUTH by Sir Arnold Lunn — 1st Edition / 1st Printing, 1925 — Alps Mountains, Alpine Skiing Mountaineering

 Publisher: Oxford University Press, Oxford (1925)

First edition from 1925, in well preserved condition. 192 pages, with book ads at rear. Photographs throughout. The boards and binding are solid and tight with minimal shelfwear. The pages are crisp and clean save for previous owner's inscription on the first blank page. Please see below for more information on Sir Arnold Lunn.

Biography of Arnold Lunn

Sir Arnold Henry Moore Lunn (18 April 1888 – 2 June 1974) was a skier, mountaineer and writer. He was knighted for "services to British Skiing and Anglo-Swiss relations" in 1952.

 Introduced to skiing by his father, he invented the slalom skiing race in 1922. Mathias Zdarsky had been running competitions through poles in the early years of the 20th century, but they were essentially style competitions, though they had to be completed within a specified time. In 1921 Lunn organized the first British national ski championship to include a national slalom race as well as jumping and cross-country. The 1921 slalom was decided on style, as Zdarsky's pole race had been. By 1922, however, Lunn, convinced that there was a real need for a race designed to test a skier's ability to turn securely and rapidly on steep Alpine ground, was insisting on speed being the only arbiter. "The object of a turn is to get round a given obstacle losing as little speed as possible," he wrote. "Therefore, a fast ugly turn is better than a slow pretty turn." On 1 January 1922, the Alpine Ski Challenge Cup, first held in 1920, was transformed into a challenge cup for slalom racing.

Lunn was the founder of the Alpine Ski Club (1908), the Ladies Ski Club (1923)[4] and the Kandahar Ski Club (1924), and he was the organizer of many ski races around the world. He initiated in collaboration with the Austrian skier Hannes Schneider the Arlberg Kandahar Challenge Cup in honour of Lord Roberts of Kandahar. Through his efforts, the Downhill and Slalom races were introduced into the Olympic Games in 1936.