BRATTLEBORO — A young Slovenian has become only the sixth competitor in the nearly century-old history of this town’s Harris Hill Ski Jump to retire its Winged Ski Trophy by winning the event three times.
Blaz Pavlic, 21, topped a field of more than 40 of the world’s best up-and-coming athletes this Presidents Day weekend at New England’s sole Olympic-size ski jump, which opens just once a year.
A crowd of several thousand spectators watched Pavlic, winner in 2017 and 2019, and fellow two-time champion Chris Lamb, a Marlboro College graduate and winner in 2010 and 2013, duel for a trophy-retiring third victory right up to the last moment of Sunday’s competition.
Longtime locals know Lamb for setting the hill’s long-distance record of 102 meters in 2010 — and Pavlic for breaking it with a 104-meter jump in 2017.
“Sorry, dude,” the Slovenian told the American at the time.
“I’m glad that you got it,” the local athlete replied.
But that didn’t stop Lamb from trying to stop Pavlic this year. The New England native, now a graduate student at the University of Idaho, flew home for the weekend with a mere four jumps of recent training.
“To be able to hang with the best guys here is my goal,” the 30-year-old said.
Yet in the first of two rounds of competition, Lamb not only matched Pavlic’s 97-member leap but also outscored him in style points. Suddenly and surprisingly, the otherwise retired athlete turned English major was in the lead.
As the capacity crowd stirred about the possibility of a native son making history, Brattleboro resident Hugh Barber — the last local to retire the trophy after victories in 1972, 1973 and 1974 — recalled how he was in second place with one jump left when he found the will to win 46 years ago.
The past champion knew Pavlic wasn’t out.
As the crowd clapped, cheered and, in a ski jumping tradition, clanged cowbells, the Slovenian shot off the launch ramp at 60 miles per hour, soared more than 300 feet in the air and landed a 94-meter jump.
Then came Lamb. As in the first round, the American scored more style points than the Slovenian. But Lamb’s second jump was shorter by 5.5 meters — about the length of a Volkswagen Beetle — giving Pavlic the victory.
“I just tried to feel relaxed,” the Pavlic later said of his winning leap, “and to do what I do in training jumps.”
This year was the first in nearly seven decades that more than one jumper with two wins was competing. Only five other athletes in Harris Hill’s nearly century-old history have topped the field three times — Torger Tokle of Norway in 1942, his brother Arthur Tokle in 1951, Art Devlin of Lake Placid, New York, in 1954, Barber in 1974 and Vladimir Glyvka of Ukraine in 2000.
Sunday’s contest featured a total of 34 men and seven women from nine states and Austria and Slovenia.
“We have a great field and one of the largest I can remember,” chief of competition Todd Einig said.
Five Vermonters represented the state, including Spencer Knickerbocker of Brattleboro, Elise Loescher of Burlington and Cameron Forbush, Mason Winter and Caleb Zuckerman of Norwich.
The event included a fall by Mason Gorski, 13, of Wisconsin’s Flying Eagles Ski Club. Gorski, who was conscious and sitting up on a stretcher, was transported by ambulance to Brattleboro Memorial Hospital for treatment of unspecified injuries.
The late Fred Harris started what’s now an annual memorial tournament 98 years ago when, after founding the Dartmouth Outing Club as a college student in 1909, he returned to his hometown to create the ski jump — now one of just six of its size in the country — in 1922.
Harris’ daughter, Sandy, presented this weekend’s winners with awards and, in Pavlic’s case, a bottle of champagne to spray. The only downside to the Slovenian’s win is the fact his trophy — crafted of Vermont marble on a base of butternut wood — is too big to stash in a suitcase.
But once it’s shipped overseas, Pavlic promised, “I’ll find a place for it.”
