This week one of the oldest ski clubs in the world, the Downhill Only Club, is celebrating its centenary. Here Brian Bollen, the current DHO Hon Editor, takes a look at how the club evolved.
The Downhill Only Club (DHO) in Wengen, in Switzerland’s Bernese Oberland, was founded on 7 February 1925, and is scheduled to celebrate 100 years since its creation with a Roaring Twenties (1920s)-themed dinner at the Hotel Regina in Wengen on Thursday.
The commemorations began back on 8 November with a curtain-raising dinner in London and will continue with an 100th Anniversary Ski back to Wengen on 7 February followed by birthday drinks in the evening.
The background to the creation of the DHO is detailed in an article written by Ken (K D) Foster that was first printed in the 1938 edition of the British Ski Year Book, and reprinted in the 1946 DHO Journal (the first after World War II). Ken relates how the Kandahar ski club in Mürren issued a challenge to Wengen, and C J White managed to raise a team by taking what amounted to a press-gang round the bars of Wengen, choosing a time when many people are apt to be a little light-hearted about the plans they make for the morrow. And so the first British team to represent Wengen was made: C J White, Barry Caulfeild, Donald Dalrymple, D S Stoneham and K D Foster, with S F Fisken as reserve.
Came the dawn, the Kandahar team, led by Duncan Harvey, arrived covered with “K” emblems and accompanied by what appeared to be a highly organised service department. These outward signs of efficient organisation did nothing to raise the spirits of the Wengen team, many of whom were already doubting the wisdom of their overnight decision and the strict accuracy of C. J. White’s description of the event as an informal little outing in which a good time would be had by all.
PHOTOS: Ken Foster and CJ White, images supplied by Freddie Whitelaw
The Kandahar opened with a brisk suggestion that the event should consist of a slalom and a straight race. To this the Wengen team agreed, concealing the fact that most of them had not the slightest idea of what a slalom might be.
They learnt all about it in the course of the morning, at the expense of a defeat of 20 points to 5. During the lunch interval Ken Foster thought that something should be done to remove the inferiority complex induced by the morning’s defeat and by the glittering display of K badges. He sketched a supply of paper badges which showed a figure skiing in a rather constipated position on the top of the initials “DHO” – an abbreviation for “Downhill Only”, a phrase coined by S F Fisken to indicate his preference for railway-mountaineering.
These badges were well received by the Wengen team, who did a little better in the afternoon straight race as they were only defeated by 10.5 to 13.5 points, and managed to get the second and third places, as well as tying for the fourth.
The final result – a defeat by 33.5 points to 15.5 points – sufficed to show that Kandahar were very much better skiers and had the advantage of training and organisation for racing.
These reflections had their result in a dinner held at the Palace Hotel on the night of Saturday, 7 February 1925, when it was decided to perpetuate the “DHO” as a club whose main object should be to avenge the defeat suffered the previous day.
The original paper badge was adopted as the Club Badge (except that the constipated gent was moved from the top to the middle of the circle) and continued in use up to 1937, when a section of the Club – led by the original designer of the badge – obtained approval of the present design of initials.
Illustrious names on the club’s membership list down the century have included David Cornwell, better known to the world as groundbreaking novelist John le Carré, and Christopher Brasher, another groundbreaker. The word groundbreaker has particular significance in the context of a member who, as a young athlete, helped pace Roger Bannister to the first recorded sub-four minute mile on 6 May 1954. Brasher co-founded the London Marathon in 1981.
Other names on the club’s membership roster include Ryan Regez, the Ski Cross Olympic and World Champion in 2022, and Chemmy Alcott, the most successful British skier on the global scene in the modern era.
The DHO has a significance that stretches beyond the confines of the modern clubroom, its committee meetings, organised ski leading and racing, the DHO Journal and the club website, as specialist Swiss historian Michael Frei observes. If you look at the historical development of tourism, he writes, you can describe the Downhill Only Ski Club as a kind of perfect regular clientele: Guests who come to Wengen again and again, organise themselves collectively and not only visit “their” destination, but also help to shape it through their club and their activities.
The fact that this is possible is not only due to the initiative of the club members and the local population, but also to a whole series of developments and prerequisites that had to be fulfilled.
DHO Milestones
7 February 1925 The Downhill Only Club is founded at Wengen’s Palace Hotel to raise the standard of skiing in Wengen.
10 February 1925 The DHO launches its first Club Run on Lauberhorn.
1936 The first edition of the DHO Journal is published. Other than during the years of World War II it has been published annually ever since.
7 February 1950 The DHO marks its Silver Jubilee. Guest of Honour at the gala dinner at the Palace Hotel is Marshal of the Royal Air Force Lord Tedder, accompanied by Lady Tedder.
1965 DHO members take advantage of the Piper Cub charter service from the top of the Männlichen, as a truly downhill only way of visiting the glaciers.
1969 DHO members feature as extras in the film Downhill Racer, which starts Robert Redford, Gene Hackman and Wengen.
1975 Highlights of the DHO’s Golden Jubilee year include the accession of the club’s first female president, The Honourable Mrs Sheila Hensman (née Wakefield, daughter of 1st Baron Wakefield).
February 2000 DHO holds its 75th anniversary Gala dinner in the Regina, which attracts over 200 guests.
21 November 2024 The DHO launches its own potted history: A Downhill Only Club A History.
6 February 2025 A gala dinner will be held at the Hotel Regina in Wengen, which is set to have 151 people in attendance, including the British Ambassador to Switzerland as guest of honour.
7 February 2025 The DHO will celebrate its 100th anniversary with a refreshed vision and appetite for the future.
Categories: Club & Slope News, News, Resort News & Reports, Switzerland