Dorrance and Old-time Carnivals

By William Hughes | Wednesday, February 11, 1998

The 1920s were the golden years of Dartmouth skiing. With men like John Carleton, Dick Bowler, and Charles Proctor skiing for the College in the 1920s, Dartmouth both dominated racing and exhibited terrifically innovative skiing style. At the 1920 Carnival, for example, Dartmouth swept all nine outdoor events, blowing away all the competition, including the hated Harvard Crimson.

Dartmouth's domination of collegiate skiing in the 1920s reinforced the popularity of the Carnival. Many former Indian competitors went on to medal in the Winter Olympics, and the Carnival consequently gained even more prestige. The augmented importance of this holiday weekend lead the college to insure the weekend for the first time in 1923. College administrators insured Friday February 10 with Lloyd's of London for $2000 against rainy conditions.

The Winter Carnival provided such a magnificent display of athleticism that in the 1920s and 1930s it was one of the most popular college athletic competitions in the country. Americans didn't focus on the Rose Bowl or the NCAA Final Four. Instead, the Dartmouth Winter Carnival intrigued the nation.

Girls from Smith and Wellesley, in particular, jumped at any invitation to watch the races. They would then escort their Dartmouth man to the grand ball on Saturday night. 'To college girls in the East, South, and Middle West, a bid to the Dartmouth Carnival at mid-term is the acme of all collegiate experiences,' wrote Deck Morgan in the March 1939 Delta.

Those Carnivals were great communal productions. Varsity athletes and sedentary types alike competed this weekend.

The college even orchestrated classes all fall in the gym for anyone interested in learning to perform stunts on skis. Most popular was the famous
'looping-the-loop,' which was a reverse somersault in the air.

But even with the influx of more liberal thinking on campus, the Carnival has not changed too much over time. Many aspects of today's Carnival were present in the 20s and 30s. Deck Morgan writes in the 1939 Delta that the Carnival is a 'riotous week of house parties, dances, and winter sports events.'

Dartmouth's dominance in the winter sports of this era attracted many great athletes to Hanover. Perhaps the greatest of them all was Richard Durrance '39. He revolutionized the technical side of ski racing, and he brought many medals home to Dartmouth. Durrance was known around the campus as 'Wonder Skier,' 'Little Giant,' and 'King Dick.'

He trained before coming to Dartmouth in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, working on his high-speed skiing and his racing technique. Just his freshman year, he brought the 'tempo turn' over from Europe straight to Dartmouth. Shifting to this new move was a radical idea, but it ultimately changed the way Americans skied.

The tempo turn differed greatly from traditional turning techniques like stems and christies, in which the skier points his skis away from the fall line and thus loses speed by pushing snow to the sides. The tempo turn minimizes this deceleration. In a tempo turn, the skier does little side-slipping and instead gets up on his edge to change direction. The skier must use his knees in order to shift weight from one ski to the other and thus to fight against the centripetal acceleration inherent in a turn. This innovation works best at high speeds in light snow, so that the skier can make arc turns with large radii.

Durrance used his newly discovered maneuver and his raw talent to propel him to the top of the US amateur rank. Three weeks in a row he set the record for time down the Richard Taft Trail in nearby Franconia Notch.

Soon thereafter, in the '36-'37 season, he notched victories in the Dartmouth Winter Carnival and then at the US Open. He went on to capture first place in the downhill and slalom races at the US Amateur Championships at Sun Valley, Idaho. He further advanced to win on both the downhill and the slalom courses at the Intercollegiate Ski Union at St. Marguerite, Quebec.

The Delta, from March 1939: 'Believe it or not, this Dartmouth lad... probably had more to do with the popularizing of the skiing than any other American.'

In his time at Dartmouth, contemporaries reported, the girls flocked to him, yearning for just a glimpse of this magnificent skier and gentleman. Young American boys, with any experience skiing, immediately idolized him and emulated him. He intrigued much of the country in his era, and still today, he is a legend to knowledgeable American alpine skiers.

With the tremendous '36-'37 season under his belt and several more after it, it is safe to say that Dick Durrance was the best racer at this time in America. He was arguably Dartmouth's greatest skier ever and definitely one of the great American skiers of all time. For all that he did for skiing at Dartmouth and for life in Hanover, the college has named a street in Hanover after him.

Dorrance and Old-time Carnivals

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