The hotelier, the politician and the skier. On the founding moment of alpine skiing in St. Moritz

Abstract

ABSTRACT Beyond the competition between several alpine states (Austria, Switzerland, France, etc.), the emergence of the alpine version of skiing is a complex process that combines the rise of winter tourism, technical developments enabling access to the mountain regions and the increasing sportification of leisure practices. Thus, it focuses on a period of time from the end of the nineteenth century up to the interwar, with specific attention to the late 1920s. Straddling tourism study, sport history and elite sociability, it is a process that has not been studied that much in the historiography. Through this contribution, our aim is to analyse the local conditions presiding over the emergence of ‘alpine skiing’, considering an episode played out in St. Moritz at a particular moment – the years leading up to and after the organisation of the 1928 Olympic Games – as indicators of more global processes. We based our analysis on the rich archives of the city of St. Moritz (political authorities, tourist office, hotel infrastructures, ski club), never really used in historical work on the birth of alpine skiing, and several other institutions such as international sports federations and national organisations.