Slalom, another word in honor of the Olympics.

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The word slalom appeared for the first time in English in 1921 in the British Ski Year Book. This points us to a mother-lode of information on the history of skiing.

The Oxford English Dictionary doesn’t attribute an author to that first citation for the word slalom but has a second citation in 1927 by a fellow named Arthur Lunn in a book called A History of Ski-ing.

It turns out that this same Arthur Lunn was editor of the British Ski Year Book and there are one or two other facts that make me think that he can be credited with bringing the word slalom into English.

Slalom is originally a Norwegian word which is appropriate since Norway is one of the cradles of skiing.

Arthur Lunn wrote another book in 1957 called The Story of Ski-ing in which he claims that modern slalom skiing is nothing like what the Norwegians originally called slalom.

The fact that this Arthur Lunn wrote about 70 books makes you wonder when he actually had time to ski but he must have because he is credited with practically inventing the sport of downhill skiing  and lobbied for downhill and slalom events to be included in the Olympics.

He didn’t invent downhill skiing but he sure popularized it.

He first wanted to use skis to help him get up the Swiss mountains he loved to climb.

By and large before Lunn people like the Norwegians who skied looked down their noses at downhill skiing. To them the best thing was cross-country skiing and ski jumping.

Remember that these are the descendants of the Vikings and macho was important to them.

People who skied down hills were people who weren’t strong enough to ski cross-country or people who weren’t brave enough to ski jump.

Their word slalom was only one of a group of words they had for different types of skiing.

Hoppelom was ski jumping; kneikelom was a run over uneven landscape, and villom meant “wild journey” and involved shooting down some really scary hillsides.

The word slalom was kid stuff and meant “gentle slope ski track.”

Heaven knows why Arthur Lunn chose this word to describe his invention of a race snaking back and forth down a hill as it looped around little flagpoles marking out the course.

Lunn was an amazing promoter and it seems he went further than he himself had intended. Skiing became too popular. He didn’t like all those throngs of common people swarming all over his mountains.

He was a bit of a snob. When he first set up a ski club in England it was restricted to people who’d been to private school (which in Britain is called public school).

To try and reduce the hordes of skiers he suggested hiring people “with arms in slings and their heads in bandages, bearing large placards [saying] ‘Victims of skiing accidents’ … to hobble up and down platforms at Victoria [Station] and Charing Cross, in order to persuade outgoing winter sportsmen to abandon skiing.”