Willy Schaeffler

Wilhelm Josef "Willy" Schaeffler (13 December 1915 – 9 April 1988) was a German-American skiing champion, winning coach and ski resort developer. He is best known to the public for his intensive training programs that led the US ski team to gold and bronze medals in the 1972 Winter Olympics. In development circles, he is known for his role in the development of Vail and Whistler Blackcomb.

Schaeffler was born in Kaufbeuren Bavaria on 13 December 1915. Working in the mountains as a shepherd, he was a competitive skier by the age of 8. In 1932, at age 17, he was the winner of Bavarian Alpine Championships. Schaeffler was named to the 1936 German Olympic team, but broke both legs before the Garmisch-Partenkirchen Games, and was unable to compete.

When World War II broke out in 1939, Schaeffler was drafted into the German Army as a "political unsafe," and eventually ended up on the Russian Front. Captured and tortured by the Soviets, he escaped and returned to Austria, where he joined the anti-Nazi resistance forces working in the Austrian Alps. Following WWII, Schaeffler started training the United States Army Europe, and in this role taught George Patton and other high-ranking U.S. military personnel how to ski and rock climb. This, and his romance with American Betty Durnford, his future wife of 14 years, was his ticket to U.S. emigration, and he moved with Betty to the U.S. in the spring of 1948.

In June 1948, Schaeffler wrote to Larry Jump, who was setting up the Arapahoe Basin ski resort in Colorado, looking for work as a ski instructor. Jump hired Schaeffler, who moved to Colorado that year and introduced the alpine skiing technique known as "short-swing". Short-swing remained the standard beginner training technique across North America for decades. Nearly a decade later, the national sports magazine, Sports Illustrated, would feature Schaeffler and parts of this new technique in two issues, on a 1957 cover story.

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