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WATERSKI MagazineIn the winter of 1957 Jim Salmas was an extreme snow skier, decades before ESPN2 discovered the concept and turned it into a hip sport. Salmas and his cronies would hike to the peaks of mountains in western Massachusetts and fly down the sides, often without the aid of groomed trails. One of the ski gang's favorite games involved Salmas' new wife, Thelma.
The skiers would trudge up to some remote location and Thelma, a relative novice at the time, would take off first. The others would look at each other and announce “Tallyho, the fox.” And the hunt, at extreme speeds, was on.
Now, 40 years later, Jim Salmas is 71 years old and his bride is 61. He still calls her Fox. And with a virtually endless regimen of water skiing punctuated by long snow-skiing vacations, the two are united in a hunt to remain physically vital and in peak condition.
“It's really love of water skiing that keeps us going,” says Thelma. “We'll probably keep skiing, even if we quit competitions, for as long as we can. We'll be water skiing and snow skiing until they cart us off.”
That might sound good to some of the Salmases' competitors in the Seniors division. During their 34-year competitive careers, the couple has racked up a mind-boggling number of regional, state, national and world titles. Thelma, who in 1996 received the Award of Distinction from the American Water Ski Educational Foundation, has five world championships to her name and been virtually unbeatable at the U.S. Nationals with an incredible 53 titles in her career. Along the way she's set more than 20 national records. Jim has seven Nationals titles and seven national records to his credit.
Their successes over the long haul have made them what George Blanda was to pro football, what Cal Ripken Jr. is to Major League Baseball and what Tiger Woods has the potential to be to golf: durable legends in their own time.
“They're wonderful people,” says Steve Krigbaum, a member of the Ski Club of the Palm Beaches and a neighbor of the Salmases in the skier-friendly Banyon Lakes development in West Palm Beach, Florida. “In the water-ski community in southern Florida, everyone knows Jim and Thelma. They're known as the local legends.”
The most ironic thing about these local legends is that they discovered competitive water skiing by accident.
About a year after their marriage, the Salmases, dedicated snow skiers at the time, quit their jobs and embarked on an 8,000-mile trip in their station wagon that eventually culminated in the Seattle area. Jim, a metallurgical engineer, and Thelma, a chemical engineer, both landed jobs at Boeing. After two years there, the couple moved to Ogden, Utah, in the summer of 1960 in search of better snow-skiing conditions. When they arrived they asked the locals where the best skiing could be found. Someone pointed to Ogden Canyon. The Salmases drove up the canyon and happened upon a pristine body of water called Pineview Reservoir. What they also found was a small but diehard water-ski community in the area.
“Within three weeks we bought a 14-foot boat with a 40-hp outboard,” Jim recalls. “About all it was good for was tricking. But what we found was a real hotbed for competitive skiing in the Ogden area.”
After a few years of polishing their three-event skills, the Salmases traveled to Denver and entered their first regional competition. That was 1963, and they haven't missed a Regionals since. Last year, in fact, Thelma passed up her 40th college reunion of alums from Acadia University because she had a conflict with a regional tournament. The decision to ski instead of attend the function was a tough one, particularly since the school in Wolfville, Nova Scotia, had inducted her into its Sports Hall of Fame the previous year.
Shortly after that first tournament in 1963, the Salmases were fast on their way to becoming water-ski junkies. Their evenings and weekends were scheduled around the sport and the close social ties with others in the area's water-ski fraternity. But in 1967, the Salmases, always willing to pull up the tent posts and go, decided that Utah's window for good water-ski conditions was too narrow. They moved again, this time to Novato, California.
It was in Novato, a short distance north of San Francisco, that the Salmases became ingrained in the West Coast water-ski culture. They met Bea Wineman, who ran the Masters Water Ski School, one of the few elite water ski schools in northern California at the time. Some of Wineman's students would become close friends of the Salmases, including Mike Suyderhoud, Kris and Bob LaPoint, Cyndi (Matranga) Benzel, Deena (Brush) Mapple and Lisa St. John.
“That was really a unique time out West for water skiing,” says Thelma. “In California water is so scarce. If you were a tournament skier in the West, you had to travel a long way to events and be extremely dedicated. We became a very tightly knit group.”
Five years later, however, wanderlust set in again. The Salmases, still snow-ski lovers, made what turned out to be a pivotal life decision in 1972. They quit their jobs, decided to take a couple years off and went to Europe to hit the slopes. The plan was to play and travel and ski for a while. The reality was that, thanks to shrewd investments by Jim in the commodities markets, they would never have to return to the work force.
“We were just going to travel for a few years, but we never went back,” says Thelma. “Financially, things went well and we didn't have to go back. We decided at that point to devote our lives to water skiing.”
So, in 1973, the Salmases moved to the West Palm Beach area of Florida, where the distance between skiable lakes was not measured in hundreds of miles but in hundreds of feet. Now they live a life many skiers in their 20s and 30s would kill to emulate. The Salmases can walk out their back door, cross their plush backyard and be in their '89 Nautique in minutes. Or they can hitch the boat to their trailer and drive about a half-mile to three-event paradise: Okeeheelee Park.
Their training regimen still is the envy of many skiers who have to hold down full-time jobs. During the summer they'll ski two or three sets a day for three straight days and then take a day of rest. And the Salmases have mastered what is perhaps the most important skill of a husband-wife water skiing team: Don't coach each other too much.
“We usually analyze our own skiing,” says Jim. “We can pretty much pick up on what we're doing wrong.”
“Well,” adds Thelma with a playful smile, “I told him 20 years ago what was wrong with his slalom and he hasn't fixed it yet.”
Of course, the Salmases have made certain concessions to growing older. They've limited their traveling schedule for tournaments. Nearby Okeeheelee Park, Thelma notes, has a tournament virtually every month. And they've cut back on the amount of jumping they do.
“Back aches are what sometimes govern how much jumping you can do,” says Jim, who has sustained 10 dislocated shoulders, seven cracked ribs and a knee injury during his career. “You have to be smart about pacing yourself.”
Even the Salmases have to wonder sometimes why they still train so hard for three-event skiing after all these years. A big part of the motivation that has driven them for so long is the need for physical activity. Sir Isaac Newton, in his laws of motion, may have said it best: “A Salmas in motion will stay in motion.” OK, so that's a bit of a paraphrase, but you get the idea.
“I think there are people who have a certain need for a certain level of physical activity,” says Thelma. “I wouldn't call it an addiction. But it's something that's in your nature. Jim and I both have that. We're driven to do physical activity, not to win at any cost. We're content to just enjoy the sp
ort and let the first-place finishes fall where they may.”
