Georges Baetz known as Canard « the duck » is THE French telemarker, the founder of French telemarking. Since ….. he skis (en fente) and he organises at the end of every season the Black Shoes, a telemark gathering where telemarkers from here and everywhere get together. We met Canard in Tignes during the final of the Worldcup Freeride where he was one of the judges.

Tignes Développement : First of all : Canard, who are you ?

Canard : I come from Courchevel where I grew up. Therefore I was part of the Club the Sports, did competitions etc… Then bumpskiing arrived in France and I started doing that.
That’s what brought me to Tignes to train with Henri Authier, the pioneer of the discipline in France. It was a great time, lots of fun…, the beginning of the monoski,fluorescent all in ones… we were a great team going for it!
Then skiing evolved and the first freeride competitions were organised. I did the competitions but the judges finally told me I was too old and they ended up asking me to judge….!!

TD : And the Black Shoes, how did that start?

C : We skied a lot with with a group of friends all telemarkers, and we travelled together a lot.
In 2001 we arrived at the SIG (a big spleclaist trade show in Grenoble) and one of our friends said: “ look, there are the black shoes” At that time, telemark shoes were made of black leather and lots of people recognized us in the resorts where we skied. So since then, telemark = black shoes. Woith spending lots of time together, sking etc. we set up our own association to organise a Derby which was called the Black Shoes..
Up until 5 years ago the Black Shoes was a real competition which was based on all the possible different disciplines within the telemarking: a bit of off piste, slalom, skating and everything in the same descent. Then it became more difficult to organise a competition with all its complexities and we started to orientate the Black Shoes towards a friendly get-together. The first time was an occasion as well to tribute a friend that just passed away.

TD : And your passion for telemarking: how did you get that?

C : At that time I spent a lot of time with 3 friends from La Clusaz, and the girlfriend of one of these 3 was Norwegian…she made us try and we were soon hooked!
In the beginning we bought all our equipment in Scandanavia, by post! We organised our lessons by telephone, I spent hours on the phone with Swedish instructors! Naturally the good word spread, and in 1989, we were enough to organise the first France Championships. Today telemarking has become very popular.

TD : And the Black Shoes atmosphere, where does that come from ? It’s a bit of a ‘different’ event…. There are even people who start telemarking just to be able to partake in the Black Shoes.

C : Basically that goes back to a long time ago, when we were all children! At that time everybody helped to organise competitions and the races were called the ‘sausage races’ it was the village festival, everybody helped and the prizes where sausages as well!
So with our friends we wanted to create this kind of atmosphere again… this type of get together.
In the beginning our goal was to get together with all our friends from the valley because we all live the same kind of life and yet we don’t see a lot of each other throughout the winter…
So a good Black Shoes, at the end of the season (with sausages) is the opportunity to get back together and spent some quality time together!
Whilst we’re at it, we decided to get back out our « Sunday costumes », the old style telemark outfits “en drap de Bonneval”, the traditional Savoyard outfits. … all on telemarks
Year after year more telemarkers from all over the Alps and even from further join in. The last 3 or 4 years I’ve realized that more and more children are joining the Black Shoes, which is a great sign for the future…!