Ski legend shares life lessons with students

Doing one kind thing, one act to benefit others, can have far-reaching and life-changing consequences.

This was the message of Canadian skiing legend “Jungle” Jim Hunter as he addressed the student athletes of Whitefish High School Wednesday afternoon.

In his career Hunter grabbed an Olympic Bronze medal, multiple World Cup and World Pro Skiing top-10 finishes and a reputation as one of the original “Crazy Canucks” downhill racers in the 1970s and 80s. When he finished competing he turned to training, and has worked with more than 3,000 athletes and 1,200 families through Sportcology Institute.

But achieving all that is never easy, especially for Hunter.

Early in his life he suffered a concussion that left him without memory and with learning disabilities. For a while he couldn’t remember his name, who he was and the things he enjoyed, and it looked as if Hunter was destined to struggle with the effects of his injury for the rest of his life.

Then he and his dad visited Whitefish to ski. Hunter got in a scuffle with a lift operator who thought he shouldn’t have had a pass, but eventually Lee Kaufman, one of the original organizers of the Flathead Valley Ski Education Association, stepped in and sent the boy up the lift. Kaufman watched as Hunter spent the rest of the afternoon skiing recklessly but relentlessly, and at the end of the day mentioned to Hunter’s father that Hunter should start looking ahead to the 1972 winter Olympics.

“My son has been skiing three days,” the shocked father said, but inside Hunter a dream was born.

The causal appearance of Kaufman, along with the encouragement he gave Hunter, was the one kind thing that spurred the rest of Hunter’s life.

Six years later, Hunter had made the Olympics, representing the Canada at the 1972 winter Olympics.

Unconventional training methods were a key part of Hunter’s development. During the talk, Hunter played video clips from old documentaries and news stories about himself as a young skier. The videos depicted him doing a variety of bizarre exercises: tuck jumps on top of a monstrous tractor; practicing starts on a makeshift ramp covered in hay inside a barn; riding atop a truck to practice balance in high speeds.

The other key to his training was mental fortitude, and Hunter preaches a stoic-like attitude on how what other people say or do should affect him.

“Never let something outside of you inside of you, unless it makes you better,” he told students.

And that’s where the one kind thing motto comes in. For Hunter, “kind” is an acronym to live by. K is a fork in the road, where one has to make a decision to take the right path toward their goals. I is invest in others. N is “never let something outside of you inside of you, unless it makes you better,” and D is determine to do all you can to reach your goals.

One kind thing is a selfless way to help others, but also a lifestyle choice that can lead to achieving the most ambitious of goals.

In Hunter’s case, he faced overwhelming odds against appearing in the Olympics. But as he told students, those odds couldn’t compete with the drive he had inside.

“Inside me I knew that I had a dream and I could do anything I wanted to do,” he said.