His words come out in a kind of neat, thoughtful cursive — surprising, perhaps, as we live in an age of exclamation points, where athletes who push barriers such as speed seem so adrenaline-adled that they have difficulty explaining what they do and why they do it.

It is altogether fitting, then, that a look at Reno’s place in the world of speed skiing should begin with the careful words of the group’s pioneer member.

On Sept. 29, 1963, in Portillo, Chile, Dorworth, a Reno native, set the world speed skiing record — a run of 106 mph that he can still recall with utter clarity.

“It was the last day of the (spring) season and the conditions were absolutely perfect,” says

Dorworth, a writer who lives in Ketchum, Idaho. “We went up the track probably about 100 meters higher than we had ever before (to gain extra speed). The track was rock hard … it was ice. We knew that this was the right day, and that we could do it. When I came out of the (speed) trap (at the bottom of the run) I knew we had a record, right away.

“We had been making quite a few rides at 100, 101, 102 mph, and I was familiar with the difference between 95 and 100 mph. I knew that ride was way, way faster. It was remarkable.”

World-class skiing icons have long-time connections to Reno.

Beginning with Dorworth’s historic run, speed skiing essentially would belong to athletes from the Reno-Tahoe area. A Dorworth protégé, Steve McKinney, set the world record again in 1974, 1977, 1978, and 1982, topping out at 124.762 mph. Franz Weber, who has lived in Reno since 1984, set four world records and captured five consecutive world championships, from 1980-84. In 1992, Truckee resident Jeff Hamilton captured the bronze medal at the 1992 Winter Olympic Games in Albertville, France, and became the first man to ever top 150 mph with his world record of 150.40 mph in 1995 in Vars, France.

The 47-year-old Weber — generally considered the sport’s most dominant performer — says that Dorworth and McKinney, in particular, are two of speed skiing’s seminal figures.

“Dick was the first American to really make a name in speed skiing,” Weber says. “His world record was a remarkable achievement. He was a strong influence on Steve McKinney, who was my hero, in many ways my mentor, when I got into the sport. He had a very healthy attitude about the sport, and encouraged so many others to join him.”

Dorworth benefited from a youth spent at Lake Tahoe. In 1949, at age 11, he built slalom runs and ski jump hills in his own back yard.

“I grew up in a time when all of these adults were coming out of World War II and as I look back on it now, some of them were pretty messed up, quite nuts, from the war,” he says. “Skiing was clean and quite sane and it was mine. Skiing saved me. It’s still the cleanest, most beautiful, and fun thing that I know.”

Dorworth, who skied for the University of Nevada, Reno, in the late 1950s and was a prime contender for the U.S. Olympic Ski Team in 1960, turned to speed skiing in the early 1960s for similarly personal reasons. The fact that it

was a solitary endeavor appealed to him — there was no team involved, and, in fact, the athletes were charged with actually grooming the run themselves before plummeting down the one-mile-long hill.

“I was never a great daredevil, though I have that reputation,” he says. “As ski racers go, I’m fairly calculating and conservative. Speed skiing then and now was a little off the charts, though, and that appealed to me.

“When you make a perfect run, it’s very beautiful, very smooth and transcendent,” says Dorworth, who writes for Idaho Mountain Express newspaper in the winters and spends time in the Teton mountains in the summer as a climbing guide. In 2001, he earned the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Skiing History Association for his years of writing about the sport. “But … you don’t have perfect runs very often. Usually it’s an amazing struggle. When I raced, we laced up leather boots and used metal skis that did not absorb the vibration the way modern skis do. Every run was a struggle to maintain your balance against the constant vibration of your skis.”

McKinney, from Reno, was the Steve McQueen of speed skiing. With his blond, flowing, lion’s mane of hair, and sharp, fine-boned features, McKinney cut a dashing figure on skis. His younger sister, Tamara, was a three-time U.S. Olympian and 1983 World Cup champion. He was dubbed the “High Priest of Speed Skiing,” and for good reason, as he introduced rubberized suits and aerodynamic helmets to the sport.

While most men carry about them a feeble incandescence, McKinney radiated sheer magnetism. He skied around the length of Lake Tahoe before there was a Tahoe Rim Trail. He hang-glided off Mount Everest.

“Steve was probably the most important speed skier who ever lived,” Dorworth says. “He marked it more than anyone. He was special.

Dorworth’s voice grew quiet. In 1990, while sleeping in his car on the side of Interstate 5 in Northern California, a drunk driver slammed into the back of McKinney’s car and killed him. He was 36 years old.

“He was a beautiful man,” Dorworth says. “He had that ability to dig deeper than other people, not only in terms of athletics, but in his relationships in trying to see what was true and what was not. He was a real seeker.”

Weber was the perfect amalgam of physical ability and fearlessness.

“I remember the first time I saw Franz,” Dorworth says. “We were in Argentina. And I remember thinking, ‘That’s a powerful-looking dude.’ I’ll tell you, he was off the charts. Just a phenomenally gifted athlete who was totally aggressive and competitive.”

Weber, whose Reno-based Franz Weber Sports Management & Consulting company specializes in consulting and capital ventures, describes the secret to his success as he sits in his comfortable home in west Reno. He was physically gifted, yes … though in an unorthodox way. He hops onto a table in his living room to demonstrate.

“Physically, for someone who is 6-foot-one-and-a-half, my legs are shorter and my upper body is longer,” he says. He hunched into an impossibly tight tuck, his femur seemingly swallowed whole by his armpits, showing that he is as aerodynamic as a rocket. He flashed a smile from atop the table. Clearly in his element, tucked tight as buckshot. “I also worked extremely hard. There was … a racehorse’s commitment to being the best.”

Surprisingly, in a career that saw Weber top out at more than 140 mph, he says he was never afraid.

“If you ski down a hill in a straight line and there are no obstacles in your way, you’re going to be fine,” says Weber, who also is director of skiing at Squaw Creek. “Downhill, to me, is much more dangerous. There are no direction changes in speed skiing. Everything is in a straight line. The centrifugal force is so strong, you just skid along, like a rock skipping across the top of the water.”

For more than 40 years, their place has been secure in the pantheon of the sport. Dorworth was the pioneer. McKinney was the soul. Weber was the undisputed champion. Hamilton is “a great, level-headed, talented guy,” Weber says. Hamilton, who recently returned to the Sierra from Colorado and now is a real estate broker in Squaw Valley, was the Olympic medalist and the first man to eclipse 150 mph on skis.

Says Dorworth: “I’ve heard people compare us to test pilots, to astronauts, and that analogy bothers me a little bit because there is such organization and structure, an order of command, in what the test pilots and astronauts did. Those guys, to do the amazing things that they did, could not do things on their own. When our asses were on the line, there was no one else making the decisions for us. Nobody could mess with you. It was always your decision to go.”

What is speed skiing?

Speed skiing is considered to be the world’s fastest non-motorized sport, with world records exceeding 150 mph. Speed skiing is practiced on specially designed steep courses that run 1 kilometer long. There are only about 30 such courses in the world, the majority of them located at extremely high altitude to minimize wind resistance. The first 300 or 400 meters of the course are used to gain speed, with the top speed of the racer recorded between that point and the final run-out. Speed skiers wear dense foam on their lower legs and aerodynamic helmets to increase streamlining. Their ski suits are made from airtight latex or have a polyurethane coating to cut wind resistance, with knee and elbow pads to give some protection in the event of a crash. Their special skis must be between 2.2 and 2.4 meters long (about 94.5 inches) and extra wide, with the ski boots attached with special bindings that can be tightened to a typical setting of DIN 21 (a typical recreational setting is from 6 to 10). The ski poles are bent to shape around the body, and must be a minimum of 1 meter long.

Speed skiing was a demonstration sport at the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France.

Source: International Ski Federation