Skiing Notes from Ira Riklis

Ira Riklis recently sat down with us to discuss skiing, his friends, and life. This is the first installment of many from this interview:

“Skiing is one of the great passions of my life.  It may seem strange, as I’m a fat, middle aged, non-athletic, New York Jew, but there it is.  What is even more surprising is how good I am at it.  Hard to believe of a fat guy, but I’m actually quite elegant on skis.  Other skiers on the slope stop to watch my technique as I come down the mountain.  I take great pride in my technique.  I learned it from my ski partner of more than 20 years, Mike Bartasuis.  We originally met when Mike was working as a ski instructor at Vail/Lionshead and he was assigned to me on a private lesson.  Over the years we have become much more than ski buddies; we are also business partners and very close friends.”

Ira Riklis continued:

“Mike is one of only five people in the world to hold the dual record of skiing over 100 miles per hour and jumping over 200 feet.  His personal bests are 110.5 miles and 220 feet.  I’m happy to say that he has retired now from both sports.  Mike once showed me the equipment he used for the speed skiing.  The skis must have been 15 feet long, 8 inches wide, almost 2 inches thick at their center point, no edges, no center cut, and very heavily weighted.  Contrast that with his ski suit which was skin tight and made of Teflon.

“It occurred to me that the skis are designed only to go straight, no turns or stops, and the suit, which is designed to act as a slipstream for air currents, would have no traction in the snow if he fell.  I asked Mike what would happen if he fell.  Mike told me that they would be finding pieces of him two to three counties away.  I then asked how he was going to insure his safety.  Mike responded that he did not intend to fall.  How could I argue with such as simple, but effective, plan.  As I said above, thank God, but Mike is retired from both sports and is in fine health.  Now instead he hang glides by jumping off mountain cliffs, much safer.”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 16th, 2009 at 11:38 pm and is filed under Ira D. Riklis. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.