As long as 4,500 years ago, people were already moving on skis through the wintry expanses of Scandinavia. However, it was not until the 1890s that Mathias Zdarsky, who lived in Lilienfeld in Lower Austria, was looking for a technique to make even steep slopes skiable. He published his experiences in 1898 in the bestseller “Lilienfelder Skilauftechnik”.

Even before the First World War, the military discovered the strategic value of skiing. In order to be equipped for the high mountain battles of the First World War, tens of thousands of Austro-Hungarian soldiers and Italian Alpini had to learn to ski within a short space of time. During the interwar period, skiing slowly developed into a popular sport.

Rudolf Gomperz, a German nationalist from a Jewish industrialist family, offered the first low-cost ski weeks for poorer sections of the population on the Arlberg from 1926. However, skiing did not become a mass phenomenon in Austria until the 1950s. The construction of lifts and pistes was largely financed by money from the Marshall Plan.

When Toni Sailer became the first athlete in skiing history to win a gold medal in all three disciplines at the Winter Olympics in Cortina d'Ampezzo, he became Austria's great post-war idol and skiing became a vehicle for the formation of Austrian identity. The 1970s were the peak of skiing enthusiasm in Austria, with the icons Annemarie Moser Pröll and Franz Klammer.

Today, skiing is a key economic factor. Almost 70 million overnight stays secure around 110,000 jobs directly linked to winter sports.