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Information:
Tourism-Office:
Nearest International Airports:
Euro-Airport Basle
Nearest Train Station:
Freiburg i/Breisgau
OK Address;
SC Todtnau
Postfach 18
D-79670 Todtnau
tel: +49 (7671) 595 or 12 70
fax: +49 (7671) 85 41 |
The Black-Forest Mountains, located
in the
South-Western part of Germany on the
Swiss/French
border are modest in comparison with
the
Alps, rising only 1500 meters. Yet
its skiing
tradition is long and strong: the first
skiers
appeared there at the end of the 19th
Century,
using 3 meter-long skis cut from a
piece
of tree. Together with their neighbors
from
the Alsacian Vosges, they held competitions
in jumping and in gate racing in the
late
1890's.
Deep snow covered the mountains in those old days allowing the tourists
to ski down to the valleys. Now its mostly man-made snow produced by hundreds
of machines and unfortunately you can't ski down to the valley very often.
Both mountains have produced champion racers in the past, and some of them
won international recognition like the Leduc family from Ventron, or Hans
Joerg Schlager who reached some top-3 position on the World Cup tour in
the 1970's. It wasn't included in the World Cup calendar until 1983. Two
men's slaloms took place in Markstein, in Alsace, and the next day a GS
was held in Todnau, in the Black Forest. Big crowds attended both events
won by the best specialists in those years - Ingemar Stenmark won a slalom
and the demanding GS, Bojan Krizaj also won in slalom. It took several
years to build a reliable artificial snow facility in Todnau and now its
back on the World Cup tour.
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