NASTAR - History

History

The NASTAR system borrowed from a French program started in the 1950s, in which ski instructors were rated by the percentage they lagged behind the time recorded by a top national team racer in slalom. Instructors five percent or less behind the fastest time won Chamois pins, qualifying them as pacesetters at their home ski areas. Unlike Nastar, the competitions were expert slaloms.

John Fry, former editor-in-chief of SKI Magazine, adapted this percentage-of-time system to a program for recreational ski racing in the United States, calling it the 'National Standard Race'. The program, given the acronym NASTAR, was introduced in 1968 as a means to compare the performance of recreational ski racers at resorts across the United States. Nastar courses are simple, open-gated giant slaloms on mostly intermediate terrain, allowing skiers of all abilities and ages to experience racing. Just as in golf's handicap system, skiers can compare their times and compete with one another regardless of where and when they compete. It takes into account varying terrain and snow conditions. The program started with 8 participating resorts and 2,297 skiers in the first year, but quickly grew in popularity, to more than 100 resorts and 6 millions skiers and snowboarders having participated by 2006. The program went through several national sponsors, the latest being Nature Valley.