The Jack Rabbit at 80

Living in the old human conviction that there are no whales like the old whales, the aging athlete usually likes to dream of the good old days when the guys in the game were really tough. He will curl a lip at the new generation, and complain that things and progress are not what they used to be. Then, in the words of that famed righthanded Arkansas philosopher, Jerome Herman Dean, he will ask himself, "What the hell is?"--and go back to his dreams.

Such resignation is not for a whip-thin, irascible old (80) Canadian named Herman Smith Johannsen. Convinced that his country's youngsters are going to pot sitting in front of their television sets, "Jack Rabbit" Johannsen elected himself a one-man committee to do something about it, and offered his spare time to selling Canadian youth on the muscle-building virtues of cross-country skiing. Last week, deep in the snow-smothered Laurentians at St. Sauveur, Quebec, about 80 boys from 18 Canadian prep schools turned out for the second annual Jack Rabbit Ski Championship. It was an energetic tribute to "Pop" Johannsen's successful salesmanship.

Johannsen grew up on skis in Norway. When he came to Montreal in 1900, he spent as much time talking friends into cross-country runs as he did at his job selling log-loading machines. And almost singlehanded he blazed ski trails through the Laurentians when Montreal skiers were schussing down the slopes of Mount Royal and doing their jumping on what is now Cote-des-Neiges Road, in the heart of the city.

When his work took him south to the U.S., Pop Johannsen helped lay out trails around Lake Placid; soon his services were in demand wherever a North American ski resort was being laid out. Busy as he was, Johannsen never lost his zest for competition. At 60 he finished second in a 32-mile race from Ste. Agathe to Shawbridge, Que. The next year he led a dozen skiers on a 150-mile trip north of Mont Trem-blant, through the Five Finger Lakes area and down the Devil's River Valley. "The old guy set a hellish pace," remembers a Montreal businessman who went along. "He nearly killed us." Until recently, Pop used to jazz up meetings of the Red Bird Ski Club (which he helped to found) by standing on his head on the dinner table. "He'd do it still," says a Red Bird official, "if we didn't forbid him."

Lately, Pop has cut down on his crosscountry jaunts, but he refuses to quit. "I can't afford to stop," says he. "I've got to be an example for my boys."

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