Skiing
Introduced to skiing by his father, he became a renowned skier and invented the slalom skiing race in 1922. Mathias Zdarsky had been running competitions through poles in the early years of the 20th century, but they were essentially style competitions, though they had to be completed within a specified time. In 1921 Lunn organized the first British national ski championship to include a national slalom race as well as jumping and cross-country. The 1921 slalom was decided on style, as Zdarsky's pole race had been. By 1922, however, Lunn, convinced that there was a real need for a race designed to test a skier's ability to turn securely and rapidly on steep Alpine ground, was insisting on speed being the only arbiter. "The object of a turn is to get round a given obstacle losing as little speed as possible," he wrote. "Therefore, a fast ugly turn is better than a slow pretty turn." On January 1, 1922, the Alpine Ski Challenge Cup, first held in 1920, was transformed into a challenge cup for slalom racing. On the practice slopes at Mürren, Lunn set pairs of flags through which the competitors had to turn, and the flags were so set as to test the main varieties of Alpine ski turns. Lunn's innovation was that the winner was simply the competitor who could make his way down in the shortest time. This first slalom was won by J. A. Joannides.
Lunn was the founder of the Alpine Ski Club (1908) and the Kandahar Ski Club (1924), and was the organiser of some of the most prestigious ski races in the world. He initiated in collaboration with the Austrian skiing pioneer Hannes Schneider the famous Arlberg Kandahar Challenge Cup in honour of Lord Roberts of Kandahar. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment in the skiing field was the acceptance and introduction of the Downhill and Slalom races into the Olympic Games in 1936, although he opposed the Winter Olympic Games of that year being held in Garmisch-Partenkirchen. He later wrote, "In 1936 the Olympic Committee paid Hitler the greatest compliment in their power by entrusting the Nazis with the organisation of the summer and winter Olympic Games." Lunn refereed the slalom in the 1936 Winter Olympics, and his son, Peter, was the captain of the British ski team, but neither marched in the opening procession or attended the lavish banquet organised by the Nazis.
The double-black diamond trail named for Sir Arnold Lunn at Taos Ski Valley, New Mexico serves as a fitting memorial. He was a long-standing member of the Committee of the International Ski Federation.
Read more about this topic: Arnold Lunn