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It has been a busy summer at Head. A number of new high profile names are now on the roster skiing for Head.  With the new athletes there is a lot more behind the scenes work that you have to do: Getting the right service guys, making sure they have the right kit. Did this take up as much time as getting the racers on board? “At the end it takes nearly the same effort as if you are hiring in some one from outside then you must be pretty sure that it will work and that it will be the best solution at that time. My feeling at the moment is that we have a great service team and that all the racers are fully supported with the right guys.

You have lost Marco through retirement; you have gained Aksel, Ted, Werner and Jansrud. When did all the contract negotiations start with them all? Was it a long process?  The process was longest with Ted but we just tried to find a really good solution because at the end it all depended on what would happen with Raich and we could not afford both of them so this slowed the whole procedure down. As long as we did not know what Raich would do, until that decision was made, we could not say yes or no to Ted. It was good that he took that time. With Aksel we have been in contact for maybe two years. I called him when he was injured and asked how he was doing. We had quite a good contact but at the end it started really at the World Cup Finals then after testing up in Norway it went pretty fast. Testing was going really good and then it was only the contract details but it was quite a short period of time that we had to invest there. Jansrud was a really fast decision because he was on vacation at the end of March so he was not able to go skiing when we were up in Norway. On the first camp he said he would try and when he said he would test to Atomic, they said to him right away that he needs to make a decision in two days. He had one day testing in GS and he had to make the decision and then they took all the material, everything. In the end it was the fastest decision and I think that Atomic helped us a lot as they put so much pressure on him.

I was talking to Werner Heel at the end of the season; we talked a little at the Olympics, but after that at Kvitfjell. He was not so happy with the situation at Rossignol where his money was cut down by 50% last year and this meant that we looking for another brand. On the ski scene he is not one of the big stars but he is a great athlete. For us, he is one of those guys that could be closing the gap when Cuche is retiring next spring. It was the perfect timing to get him on board.

Would you say that eleven medals is now the benchmark for you or is that pretty high and as far as you can go? It is definitely a high number of medals but it is also the benchmark. This is clear. We see it in 2005 when Grugger and Buechel won the Val Gardena races; there were two big days for Head. From all the results I have got emails, I have SMS’s on my phone; now you can see that people are used to that; they expect that the results are there, that is clear. The team in the race department, we know how much work it takes and at the end how much luck there is as well that you make those medals. If you take Bode, it was his focus, but he is one of the only guys that can do that in that time period when he decided that it is my focus. One year ago, Whistler was definitely no goal, nothing for him. In September he said, ‘yeah I go for it.’ If he had not made that decision, in that direction, he would not have had his medals. You know the business – the year before is always the benchmark: we are definitely on a high level but we can do better especially in the technical disciplines: we had some great GS and some nice Slalom. If you have only one or two racers on the start list it is obvious that you cannot compete at the highest level but for us I can say we know you cannot win every race but we work hard for winning as much as possible.

It must be a logistical nightmare with some racers going off to Chile and Argentina and others going to New Zealand? Is all the information that is gathered from all the racers, is that fed back to Head Office? Or do you go to both places? This year we will try to do it that I will go to New Zealand. I will meet the whole US Team, Men and Women; German ladies and the Norwegian team will also be there. I will try to overlook how it works and then comeback with the feedback. The good thing is that if we analyse all the information with high speed and those details then if we have some good information, I can then give our guys in the company the feedback and also be in contact with all the other teams in Argentina. The Norwegian team will leave for the Chile at the end of August so we can make some changes and make some new stuff for then. We already have some new stuff on the plate and binding side which we need to get some real feedback. Therefore it is good that I go down to New Zealand and Christian Greber will go to Argentina.

Are you a fan of the current format for the Super Combined or the Traditional version run at Kitzbuehel? The Kitzbuehel option is definitely a good version. If you win that race, it is Kitzbuehel. Of course it is better to win the Slalom or the Downhill but if you win the Combined event it is great. I am definitely not a fan of the Super Combined event because, if you take Wengen for example, it is on the Friday and I am not sure that this will help to promote the sport, to promote skiing. It is a little bit better now as before some guys just did the downhill and they did not ski the second run, the slalom, like we had two or three years ago in Kvitfjell when only 17 of the top 30 were at the start for the slalom. The gap between a Downhill skier and a slalom skier or a Combined Specialist is a big gap. I am not sure if this is interesting for the racers in the second run to watch this. Therefore I know think that even the team event is better than the Combined event for me.

Do you see it more as a team or as a family? It is kind of a family but it is a little bit different on the ladies side as they are more focused on their own privacy: It is me, no one else. Everyone is looking for herself, including Lindsey and Maria, but this is definitely normal. On the men’s side I have already had the experience that some of those guys were really happy that Aksel and Ted had signed for Head because for them it is just another step for other guys bringing feedback into the whole system which could push us in the right direction. This is the funny thing on the men’s side: the really great athletes they have no problem with another big name; they just want to have the best solution on the set up and all the information that comes in from another guy can be helpful. On the ladies side, I cannot see that because there is the fear that “I am not the number 1” but on the men’s side it is that way. At the end winning as many races as possible is always the goal. To have the whole team or family happy is the thing that we are working for.

With so many stars in the team, is it easy keeping them all happy? Do they all have equal standing? On a practical position, the skis do not go from team to team normally. The racers have their package, they have their skis, and it is a huge number that they have in stock every team. One of the things that we focus on is that we try to support them as equal as possible. This means that if we bring a new type of ski and this works for Cuche for example because he was asking for this type then we try to bring the same type of ski and test it with other guys and if they say it works for them then we make sure we can give it to them. New skis for example need a lot of work done on them before they are ready for racing. So this cannot be as direct as in Formula 1: if a new carbon fibre wing is good, then this is clear. With a new ski, it can be good but it could be slow as the base is not working so it is a little bit different.

So far we know that some guys are different in their thinking, in their testing out stuff. For example with Bode, if he takes a new pair of skis, we had it several times that he was trying a pair of skis in one training session and then he was racing on them and was winning in Wengen for example. This was a nightmare for the serviceman as he had to work all night to make it work. To make it really equal is that we find a way to support them the stuff that they are asking for. This is one of our good things that we are doing. If someone wins a GS like Cuche did and then if Miller is complaining about the skis, he would not hear from my side, ‘Bode what are you complaining about?’ because Cuche is winning. I know from some of our guys that we have on the team, they heard those voices in the past. We know it is definitely different. It is like for the normal consumer, why should everyone use the same model? The same ski does not need to work for different racers. This is one of my goals to support the racers as well as possible with those things which they are asking for. This is definitely a challenge we have internally. There is always a situation like in the last couple of weeks where we made the decision to build 700 pairs of skis and then something went wrong with the press and you cannot guarantee to build that many pairs of skis in that time frame. Then we had to find a new way and maybe skip some skis. At the end in this situation it would be my decision which skis would be made. At the end no one should have the feeling that he did not get what he was asking for.