06.01.2008 Vrchlabí

SIMPLE WOOD, UNVARNISHED

Sport finally led him to fame, but the beginning was tough. During his high-school studies he had to keep his sports hobbies a secret.

The teachers regarded sports as a strictly forbidden vice like smoking or drugs today, and so Josef appeared on sports grounds under the pseudonym Ořovský (The German word Ross means charger which in Czech is "oř"). At only twenty years of age he and his friends founded the Skaters' Club. They proudly wore white caps and struggled with the ice on the Vltava river and far from perfect skates. In the end Josef "could stand it no longer" and wrote to the Norwegian firm of Heude & Gustafsson asking for a pair of proper "fast blades". At the end of the letter he signed as "the Skating Club Prague", and interpreted the letter as a request from a Mr. Skater from a Ski Club somewhere in Bohemia. They therefore send a pair of "fast blades" of quality wood together with rush and leather bindings to Prague. The parcel containing the skis, marked by the customs officers as "simple wood, unvarnished", reached Prague on the 5th of January 1887. The very same night the surprised Josef and his brother Karel went to try out the skis on Wenceslas Square. They put on the skis by the still half-completed National Museum building and skied down to Můstek by the light of the gas lamps. That night was the beginning of the history of skiing in Bohemia.

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