Hubert Daberer

Athletes from around the world have converged on Vancouver, British Columbia hoping to win a gold medal at the winter Olympics. The Olympic Games brings back many memories of 1980 Winter Olympics held in Lake Placid, New York for Hubert Daberer of Westfield. He officiated the alpine events at those games.

“The Olympics was the best you could imagine,” Daberer said. “Lake Placid was a complete success.”

An Austrian by birth, Daberer said he was a rising star in the European Nordic ski world in the 1930s. According to Daberer, as a high school student he was looked upon with hope to one day beat out the ever-powerful Norwegian Nordic skiers in future Olympic games.

“I was dreaming of going to the Olympics, there is no doubt about it,” Daberer said.

Daberer’s Olympic dreams were shattered at the onset of World War II. At 17 years old, he was recruited into the German Army (the Wehrmacht). Instead of using his skiing ability to bring Olympic pride to his country, he was assigned to use many of those same talents as a member of the Wehrmacht’s Alpine ski troops.

“Thank God I am still alive,” Daberer said.  He said he was wounded five times.

Daberer was born on April 6, 1922, and grew up in Sarajevo, Yugoslavia, the son of Austrian parents. He explained that following the signing of the Versailles Peace Treaty at the end of World War I, the countries of Bosnia and Herzegovina were combined to form one country—Yugoslavia. Until the formation of Yugoslavia, the two smaller countries were part of the Austrian-Hungarian monarchy. With the signing of the peace treaty on June 28, 1919, Austria went from one of the biggest powers in Europe, to a small country trying to feed its seven million people. At the time of young Daberer’s birth, his father was working as a civil servant on the estate of King Alexander. The elder Daberer first served as the king’s hunting guide, and then went on to manage the king’s estate. During World War II, the elder Daberer served as the burgermeister of Kreinburg in the Slovenian section of Yugoslavia. According to Hubert Daberer, the locals loved his father for his fair treatment of the people of his community.

Hubert Daberer apparently was born with skiing in his blood. He said his father was the 1912 Austrian Army ski champion. The elder Daberer wanted his son to follow in his footsteps. “I started skiing when I was two years old,” Hubert Daberer recalled.  “I have skied for 80 years.” Although he has always preferred Nordic skiing, he was, and is, a very capable Alpine skier.

Hubert's Olympic ID

When the war began, Daberer was assigned to the Sixth Mountain Division. As a member of the Alpine Corps, he took part in dangerous missions into Russia.

“Our duties were to attack their supply columns, to blow up their bridges, and to blow up their headquarters,” Daberer said. Not only was he wounded five times, he was taken prisoner by the Russians in Prague, Czechoslovakia. He survived hellish treatment that killed thousands of his comrades.

“Only 10 percent of us survived the war,” Daberer said. “Nine percent of that 10 percent came back cripples. I was one of the lucky 1 percent.”

While many of his friends perished in the war, Daberer went on to lead a happy and productive life, the last several decades in the United States. About six decades after the end of the war, he still wonders what would have happened if he’d had that one opportunity to compete against the best Nordic skiers in the world. Would he have gone home with a gold medal? Or would he have gone home empty-handed? Although he was still in his early 20s when he was released from captivity, plenty young enough to compete in the Olympics, he said his war injuries made his dreams impossible.

“After the war I was out of commission,” Daberer said. Not only did he suffer painful battle wounds, including shrapnel to one of his knees, he lost an immense amount of weight while a prisoner. His post war journey eventually took him to Cleveland, Ohio, where his two sisters lived at the time. One day, while reading a ski magazine, Daberer said he was shocked to learn that fellow skier and German ski soldier Walter Foeger had also emigrated to the United States. He hadn’t even known if Foeger had survived the war. His friend was living in a place called Vermont, and was running a ski school at a fledgling ski area called Jay Peak.

“I said, ‘what is Vermont?’” Daberer remembers thinking. After being contacted by his old friend, Foeger encouraged Daberer to come to Jay. Hubert and Caroline traveled to Vermont in 1958 with barely more than five dollars between them.

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“When I went up to Jay Peak, I said, ‘Walter, why did you bring me here?’ We only had a little Pomalift.” But Daberer decided to stay and become the mountain’s first full-time ski instructor.

Daberer’s stint as a ski instructor at Jay was short-lived. He and Caroline opened the Carinthia Inn on the back side of Jay in the cozy village of Montgomery. After selling the inn, the couple began work fulfilling a new dream—Alpine Haven,  a picturesque mountainside community that straddles the Montgomery-Westfield border. With hard work, plenty of sweat, and unwavering determination to fulfill a dream, they built 83 Austrian-style chalets. Alpine Haven is located a few minutes drive from Jay Peak Ski and Summer Resort on Route 242.

According to Daberer, the Olympic Games in Lake Placid was, in a sense, a consolation prize for the Olympic dreams that he was forced to abandon because of the war. Attracting 1,072 athletes from 37 countries, the 1980 Winter Olympics was a dream come true for some of the U.S. contingent of athletes. On February 22, in a stunning victory in the semi-finals of hockey action, before a screaming mob of U.S. fans, the U.S. hockey team—a team not even expected to earn a medal in the games—toppled the powerful team put up by the U.S.’s Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. The final score was 4–3. This stunning defeat set off a national celebration across the United States. Fresh from their win over the Soviets, the U.S. hockey team outscored Finland’s hockey team 4–2 to earn the gold medal. The “Miracle on Ice” is still talked about in the U.S., and in Olympic circles, to this day.

 Mr. Daberer and other ski officials take a break from their work on Whiteface Mountain.

The Westfield man is pictured left of center with ski goggles strapped to his forehead.

As an official on the mountain, Daberer said he had little time to watch other events such as the hockey games. His workday began early and ended late. He could have attended the game that pitted the Soviets against the U.S., but he chose to have his son Mike go in his place.

“I felt very good knowing the U.S. won,” Daberer said. “It was the West beating the East.” However, he said that old grudges and current politics should never play a role in the Olympics. It should be a time in which enemies put aside their animosities. Besides that, he said that he harbors no grudge against the Soviet people. He said that the Soviet soldiers he fought during the war were only doing as they were told, as he was only doing as his commanders ordered him.

“They are actually very gentle people,” Daberer said. “But I have no use for communism. I am completely opposed to communism.”

Daberer abhors the political killings at the 1972 Winter Olympic Games in Munich, Germany, in which Palestinian terrorists murdered 11 Israeli athletes. He also objected to the U.S. government’s decision to boycott the 1980 Olympic Summer Games in Moscow, Russia, because of the U.S. government’s objection to the 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

“Sports and politics should be divorced completely from one another,” Daberer said. “There were no politics in Lake Placid.”

Another highlight of the Games was a 21-year-old American speed skater by the name of Eric Heiden. The young skater swept the speed skating events, winning a total of five gold medals.

Thirty years after the Olympic torch was extinguished in Lake Placid, Daberer is still moved when he thinks about the opening ceremony and the lighting of the Olympic torch on February 13. All the athletes filed into the Olympic Stadium, with one member representing each country, holding his or her country’s flag.

“That was very exciting,” Daberer said.  “It was quite a show. It was very impressive.” 

Daberer said he became interested in serving as an official, a volunteer job, soon after the announcement that Lake Placid would host the Olympics, the first time that community had done so since 1932. But not everybody could serve as a ski race official. As a skier in Europe, and later a ski instructor in the U.S., he was for the most part well-qualified for the role. Yet, to serve as an official, he had to have officiated at no less than two World Cup ski races. To fulfill this requirement, Daberer officiated at World Cup events held in Stratton Mountain in Vermont, and another held in Lake Placid. He then went on to officiate at the Olympics.

“It was a tough job,” he said without complaint. “But it was worth it.”

The Alpine events were actually held on Whiteface Mountain in Wilmington, several miles from Lake Placid. Daberer and the other Alpine officials arrived at the mountain and began work in the days leading up to the opening ceremonies. They worked preparing the course for the men’s and women’s slalom, giant slalom, and the men’s and women’s downhill races. This included controlling the slalom poles that were placed at various intervals along the course depending on the race.

“The courses had to be difficult but safe,” Daberer emphasized. In addition to putting the final touches on the courses, and later on keeping them in good condition, his fluency in several languages, including English, German, and Slovenian, proved a valuable asset as an interpreter for the athletes.

Come race day, two gatekeepers were stationed at each pole to ensure that each skier, who skied the course one at a time, went around the pole and didn’t miss a pole, an error which would lead to a disqualification. Although watching each pole was easy enough for one judge, Daberer explained that the reason for having two officials at each was simple—to ensure that there were no disputes and hard feelings between the skiers and their prospective countries.

All the athletes were appreciative and friendly, Daberer said. They were true sportsmen. He also commended Lake Placid and the surrounding communities for making the Olympics so memorable for everybody involved—the athletes, the officials, and the spectators.

Although officiating at the Olympic Games helped quench his thirst for Olympic gold, he said he still wonders what would have happened if Adolph Hitler hadn’t begun his march across Europe. Would he have fulfilled his dreams? Instead of watching other skiers win gold medals, would he have a gold medal of his own today?

“I think about it a lot,” Daberer said. “I always wanted to be an Olympian.” However, he finds much solace in the fact that he, in his own little way, helped make other young Olympians achieve their Olympic dreams.