Durrance-A Close 2nd?
This story is posted on the 70th anniversary of Toni Matt's legendary schuss of the Tuckerman Ravine headwall
It was close to fifty years after his legendary schuss in the 1939 Inferno that I heard a gray, but hardly retiring, Toni Matt tell a dining room crowd in North Conway's Eastern Slope Inn that he never really intended to straight-line the headwall. He had missed his first turn near the lip and after that, there was just no slowing down. In a 1983 Sports Illustrated article by Robert Sullivan, Toni Matt tells it another way: "On the way up, I thought I would make a few turns on the headwall. When I came over the lip, the snow looked so good and smooth that I asked myself, 'Why not?' I just spread my skis and let go."
Dick Durrance, who dominated the 1934 and 1935 Infernos, was runner up that day; one minute, one second behind Toni Matt. Durrance tells the story through John Jerome, in his 1995 biography, The Man on the Medal. Durrance threw in a couple sideslips on the headwall, which no doubt would have made him slower than Matt on that part of the course, but he claimed there was no way Matt beat him in a six and a half minute race by over a minute. America's best ski racer had just skied too well to lose by that much. Some of the racers and officials agreed that Matt could not have gained a full minute on Durrance by outskiing him on the headwall alone.
Over time, the Toni Matt legend grew and Durrance moved on to become an icon in ski racing and filmmaking, but Durrance was still chewing on that one minute, one second. He tries to set the record straight in Jerome's book. Back in the day, with no electronic timing equipment, race officials relied on synchronized stop-watches to mark the times. Once started in synch, one clock was hiked to the start and the other left at the finish. Recorders at the both ends of the course had to keep the running order and the lap times straight while the starter had to see that the racers started at regular, one-minute intervals. Durrance was scheduled to start 3rd, Matt 4th. Up at the start, in Durrances words, "There was confusion about stragglers coming up and they changed the start ". Matt ended up starting 3rd, and Durrance 4th, exactly a minute later than he was supposed to.
Joe Dodge, the AMC huts manager, had a radio set up with the summit observatory and was likely running the timing that day, as he had in the first two Infernos. He was probably at the center of the controversy when the jury gathered to decide who won and by how much.
Apparantly the wireless between the summit and the finish was not as strong a link in the chain of communication as one might hope. Bill Putnam included Joe's brief account of the '39 race in his 1986 biography with the straightforward title Joe Dodge. In that paragraph, Joe says nothing of the controversy. Of course a lot of what the colorful "Mayor of Porky Gulch" said couldn't be printed anywhere, but he was known as a man devoted to "fact and truth" and one would assume that the official times that day received his blessing. Durrance would like us to believe that the start times were mixed up. He still conceded the race to Matt saying, "Matt did beat me, perhaps by exactly one second."
Pooch may or may not fare too well on the rockpile. My 7 year old black lab and only daughter does well at trailheads; lots of snacks and friendly people, and loves to hike. I usually let her do her thing in the parking lot while I rig up.
