Episode #5: "Asking for the Opportunity"

Transcript

This episode of the Simply Brilliant Show, I interview legendary ski coach Erich Sailer. In order for this episode of Simply Brilliant to be meaningful, I need to introduce you to our special guest, Mr. Erich Sailer, because he is likely unknown to most of you. In 1969, almost 50 years ago, Erich moved to tiny Buck Hill, 12 miles south of Minneapolis. Working with young skiers from the flatlands, he produced several hundred junior national and Junior Olympic team members and medalists, collegiate All-Americans and U.S. ski team members, including his own daughter Martina. As of 2007, woefully outdated apologies, skiers from his Buck Hill program have won 12 World Cup races, 15 have made the U.S. ski team, and 4 have made the Olympics. In May of 2004, the U.S.S.A. gave him a lifetime achievement award and in 2005, he was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame. Presently, at least three of his former students are competing at the World Cup level, including Lindsey Vonn, Julia Mancuso and Resi Stiegler. I’ve enjoyed every minute with Erich and I hope you enjoy this rare interview as he is very humble. He is a friend of my family and an inspiration to all. I hope you enjoy and thank you so much, Erich.

Richard: Today on this episode of Simply Brilliant, we have the distinct pleasure to be joined by Erich Sailer, who is a U.S. ski team Hall of Famer and has taught tens of thousands, probably 25,000 or more people to ski. He’s brought people from junior levels to national to World Cup to Olympians and so on. My kids have had the pleasure of coming to his camp for a few years now starting in Mt. Hood in Oregon, which is a glacier and right now we’re in Winter Park in Colorado and we’re thrilled to have just a few minutes of your time. We’d just love to get your sense on what are the basics. You deliver these messages to these children and it’s really, really impressive what you’ve been able to accomplish, so what is the message that you tell young children on how to succeed in ski racing and I think we’ll find that that applies to many things in life.

Erich: Well, we have to keep it to very simple because there are so many facets of this, maybe the way they grow up, how the family works together, skis together, has fun together with skiing, work ethics, discipline, and the love for a sport. In this case, it’s skiing. That would be the number one.

Richard: So have some fun with it as a family initially and then, one of the messages that I hear you talk to the children about all the time is the basics and the fundamentals, and then safety, and then also repetition.

Erich: Okay, now we are talking about technique. We go into ski racing. Yes, we have the basics. We have to do the things technically right, like in any sport. Then, at my camps, we’re going to do…we have demonstrators there like world-class caliber ski racers, have been or still are, and they demonstrate in the basics, and then the repetition, like in any sport, the more often you do it, the better you get.

Richard: And you are the head ski coach at Buck Hill, which is 300-foot vertical in Minneapolis or just outside of Minneapolis, not necessarily what most people would think of as a world-class place to develop Olympians and World Cup racers. What are the benefits of being in Minneapolis on a 300-foot vertical hill?

Erich: Most of the Mall of America. Maybe the only advantage we have is that we can ski up to a thousand gates a day, which I invented and so as the flash phase of my teaching method is the repetition and the repetition we can get then they more often they can do it. If they have the right technique, that’s what develops champions. If they have the strength and the endurance and the commitment that they really want to do it, then they can make it. There’s, of course, no advantage not to live…to live in the mountains, it’s easier, but in this case, that we are living in the flatland, we’re succeeding.

Richard: Very much, very much so. Some of the names that people would recognize, I think you’ve coached Lindsey Vonn and others and do you have any thoughts on Mikaela Shiffrin and her performance a couple of days ago in Aspen?

Erich: Yes, of course. I think she also grew up on a small hill and also was a slalom specialist and that is what we are doing, slalom first, which I think is really the basis of all skiing. I was a downhiller, I couldn’t do slalom. Downhill is easy compared to slalom because you have about 120 turns you have to make while in downhill, you make about 15 turns. So Shiffrin, a slalom specialist, she’s natural. She is not show. She is for real. She doesn’t make it complicated. She skis exactly the way I did and I really like her skiing very much, as you can see. She makes it through. She doesn’t make almost no mistakes, very good, very solid. Wonderful.

Richard: And then the other night at the end of the discussion, Sara was saying that she spoke to Mikaela’s coaches and what they had said that what impressed them most about Mikaela was her commitment and her work ethic, where she tires them out before she physically tires herself out. I’m sure you’ve seen that in some of the athletes that you’ve worked with over the years.

Erich: That’s a characteristic, of course of top athletes, the total commitment. But the most important is the talent and she has the talent. No matter how hard you work, even if you have the basics and everything right, you make it to a certain point, but then that last little step, you’ve got to have the talent and that’s what she has and so does Lindsey, of course.

Richard: And how do you find that talent? How do they find you? Since you’ve done this so many times over decades, nobody’s done it more. How do you find them or how do they find you?

Erich: Well, Richard, I’m not looking for talent. Everybody can come to us and the talent we find after…we don’t know if they have talent or not. I didn’t know that Lindsey, in fact, was a real slow skier at the very beginning when she came six, seven years old and maybe at eight it slowly started coming through her. You know what happened to her. So you can’t…we’re not looking for talent. We develop them for years to good, solid skiers, make them strong technically and then it’s up to them and the talent comes out, and you probably see it around when they’re 12, 13, 14 years, but to look for talent, we don’t do it. Maybe somebody else does.

Richard: Well, I think you bring out the best in people and for viewers, Erich, in 2002, in the slalom female Olympics, all four of the contenders representing America were students that Erich coached. He continues to have three world-class skiers on the tour right now, Mancuso, Stiegler, and I forget the third, but the point is, he’s done this time and time again and he turns out champions and we’re just honored to be here. My children really enjoy coming here, but to be perfectly honest, I probably learn more from Erich listening to him teach the kids than my kids do. It’s something that we really, really enjoy and it’s a real honor and privilege to attend every year, so thank you so much.

Erich: Can I add something?

Richard: Please!

Erich: Now, of course, Mancuso and Stiegler, they are not on my team. They just went through my camps and so did Schleper. The people on my team, they have two on my team on the World Cup right now. One is Paula Moltzan, a junior world champion and the other one is Michael Anthony, the champion, and they’re both in the World Cup. They, of course, grew up in the flatlands and now they’re at the World Cup. It’s great.

Richard: That’s fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Erich. We really appreciate your time.

Erich: Want to shake my hand?

Richard: Of course. Thank you so much.

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