ALONE WITH THE SKIS - AN INDIAN AND HIS TALE AT THE WINTER OLYMPICS

At the 1964 Winter Olympics held in Innsbruck, Austria, India had a representation. It was the first time an athlete from India was participating in such an event - Jeremy Bujakowski, known by his nickname 'Jerry'. He was born to a Polish father in Lithuania before acquiring citizenship of India, courtesy of his father's involvement in building oil refineries in India and subsequently becoming its naturalised citizen.

Jerry was sent to the United States for higher education after his preliminary education at St. Joseph's North Point, Darjeeling and St.Xavier's College, Kolkata. Language barriers, coupled with occasional cultural jolts, did not deter his love for skiing. He started out skiing in Boise, Idaho, and soon, he was offered a full scholarship at the University of Denver.

Apart from mere representation at the 1964 Olympics, he had his share of injuries, which threatened to shorten his career in skiing. At the Olympics downhill event, he suffered a broken back and concussions.  Damaged internal haemorrhages along with a badly fractured leg ended his maiden Olympics. It was an uphill battle to complete the recovery.

At an interval of every six months since that dreadful accident, Jerry went through four operations in that period - each time, surgeons re-tied the nerves to prevent bleeding. He was eager despite this setback and resumed training at the Mammoth Mountains with one ski and his left leg under a cast! All these efforts were in order to regain fitness and participate in the next edition at Grenoble, France.

By the time he became fit enough to compete (though not completely healed), he had met Janet Evans, popped the question and was married to her. At this juncture, Jerry also had the opportunity to meet Dave McCoy, former coach of the US ski team and also the owner of a resort at the Mammoth Mountains. Dave took a keen interest in Jerry, which resulted in him being the mentor/coach at the Grenoble Olympics.

On the day of the parade of nations,  Janet accompanied her husband, Jerry, who held the Indian flag proudly. He was the 'sole' representative of India once again at the Olympics in the capacity of an 'athlete'.

Apart from being the athlete, he was also India's 'Chef de Mission' ( head of the delegation) and aptly appointed his American wife Janet Evans as 'Chef d'Equipe' - to coordinate matters related to the technical aspects of the sport. I am not sure what her credentials were apart from the fact that her father, a real estate broker, comes from a skiing family, and her first meeting with Jerry happened in the mountains.

In total, Jerry participated in three of the skiing events - Downhill, Giant Slalom and Slalom. He finished with a rank of 53 at the downhill event, 65 at the giant slalom event and did not advance further at the slalom event.

I am not sure how many in India remembered when he went into the race that day in Grenoble. A family from San Diego woke up early that morning (4 am) to catch their friend Jerry on his downhill run. ABC cut to a commercial at the time of Jerry's run. A furious lady, mother of Jerry's friends, called up the local ABC station; endlessly she tried to catch hold of the responsible person who made the call to show commercials. She did manage to get hold of somebody in New York city and by the time she returned to her children to the living room, the sportscasters on the mountainside of Grenoble were making an announcement about them replaying the run of the 'Indian' skier, Jerry Bujakowski, for his fans in San Diego, California!

India had to wait a good twenty years before there were to be any athletes at the Winter Olympics. Since 1988, except for the 1994 Lillehammer Games, there has been consistency, even though the numbers never swelled beyond four for a single edition.

The Sochi Olympics 2014 would have been an occasion to celebrate for the Indian contingent. The event would have coincided perfectly with the 50th anniversary celebration of an Indian athlete participating in the Winter Olympics. There is one problem, though - no visibility of India flag during the event.

The four athletes who have qualified for the event from India include a four-time Winter Olympic participant by the name of Shiv Keshvan, who incidentally will be participating for a fifth time at the event.

The decision to hold the IOA general elections on February 9^th and not before the start of the event (7th Feb is the deadline set by IOC) is appalling to say the least. No doubt, the four athletes will participate, but with the generic flag under the Olympic flag.

It would have been interesting to see how Jerry would have reacted (he passed away in 2010), for the current state of mess the Indian Olympic Association is in and for the incumbent officials failing to look at the bigger picture of the athletes.

Nevertheless, I will celebrate the occasion and writing this article is one such way to acknowledge the man, Jerry Bujakowski and the painstaking efforts he took to make India become a Winter Olympic nation.

 

Lost Track: Circuits of the Yore XV - Zeltweg Circuit, Austrian Grand Prix

Image Courtesy: www.allf1.info

Yesterday’s breaking news in F1 – “Austria given a slot at the next year’s Grand Prix calendar”. That’s great news considering the fact that Red Bull now owns the circuit and has made his intentions clear to bring the race back to his homeland. However, there are few hurdles which need to be cleared before it gets to host the race. A1-Ring, as it was known previously has a new name ‘Red Bull Ring’, a name that was christened in 2011 when Dietrich Mateschitz purchased this ailing track.

Which circuit will make way to accommodate this race in Austria? This is something which will be decided later if and only there is a final clearance from the local authorities in Styria, Austria. Also located in proximity to Red Bull Ring is Zeltweg air field that hosted a race in the 1960’s. In this edition of Lost Track: Circuits of the Yore, I will look back at the solitary race that took place in 1964 which happened to be the first ‘Austrian Grand Prix’ in F1.

One can reach the Red Bull Ring by travelling a small distance of under 20 km from this airfield. The two tracks are separated by the airport. Fliegerhorst Hinterstoisser previously known as Zeltweg air base is a military airfield of Austria and country’s main airfield too. This was not the first time someone had built a race track around a military airfield; Silverstone was the first and the most notable one.

The inspiration to build a race track around an airfield was straight out of Silverstone’s success of hosting F1 and other Motorsport races.  After having hosted two non-championship events in 1961 and 1963, a F1 race finally came their way.

The 3.2 km circuit incorporating the run-away and the concrete road and consisting of just four curves in its layout had a reputation of being narrow, extremely bumpy which saw many of the cars suffering from suspension failures in the practice.

Graham Hill who has leading the world championship at that time of the year (1964) took the pole position.  Not so far behind was Jim Clark in his Lotus and John Surtees in his Ferrari. Incidentally, these two were chasing Hill for the championship with four races to go.

With barely five laps into the race Graham Hill, the pole-sitter had a wheel spin and retired from the race. Soon in the next four laps, John Surtees retired owing to a suspension failure. Jim Clark, who struggled with his gear selection problems made a late comeback into the race and Jack Brabham who had qualified in 6^th position pitted early due to a fuel feed problem and faded away into the back of the track.

This meant – Dan Gurney was leading the race with Lorenzo Bandini in the 2^nd Ferrari was second with Clark in third position. On lap 40, Jim Clark retired from the race owing to ‘half shaft’ problem and very soon his Lotus Climax team mate Mike Spence retired in the very next lap to a similar problem Jim Clark had experienced with his car. Bruce McLaren entered the list of retirements with an engine failure on lap 43 and four laps later the race leader Dan Gurney retired after his car slowed down owing to front suspension problems.

This gave the lead to Bandini, an Italian driver driving for a compatriot team Ferrari and he looked set to win it for the first time in what was his 18^th Grand Prix start.

On lap 59, the 1961 World Champion Phil Hill lost control of his Cooper Climax went out of the race not before crashing the car onto the straw bales. The car caught fire but he came out the accident scene unscathed. It was ironic; the race leader Bandini three years later went out of a race at Monaco in similar fashion; however it turned out to be his last race.

On the very same lap, the entire Austrian crowd who had come to witness the debut of Austrian GP saw their local boy Jochen Rindt, who had become the first Austrian to drive in a F1 race retire courtesy of a steering problem.

With no further drama and barring few retirements towards the end of the race, Lorenzo Bandini completed 105 laps of the race to win his first ever Grand Prix. Incidentally, this happened to be also his only Grand Prix victory of his career. And so was for the Zeltweg airbase, which received complaints for being narrow, bumpy and having poor viewing conditions for the audience. FIA removed the circuit from its calendar and would wait until a modified or a custom track was built.

Jochen Rindt went to become a popular driver in the following years and this being one of the reasons there was a need to construct a purpose-built track. Österreichring later came to be known as A1-Ring was the answer and it hosted Austrian GP in two spells (1970-1987 and 1997-2003).

Jochen Rindt did inspire a lot as he also went on to become his country’s first World Champion in 1970. Since then there have been few drivers from Austria in F1, none more popular than the triple world champion Nikki Lauda.

Since the past four years, Austrian anthem has been heard on the pit lane and quite regularly too. It is not played for a driver winning the race, but for the team Red Bull Racing. It is only apt that such a popular team in the recent past and at the moment gets to have a home track.

The only question remains unanswered is – Will the emotional needs of a team boss be over ruled by the pragmatic facts to hold a race in Austria?