Zurbriggen and Julen and the descent on the Matterhorn

“You’re never good on your own,” says Pirmin Zurbriggen. “If someone thinks he can do anything – that is impossible.”

“You’re nobody alone,” says Franz Julen a few minutes later. “You have no chance on your own.”

So they helped each other before, and they help each other today.

Zurbriggen, 58 years old, and Julen, 63, two companions from Upper Valais who come together again after many years on a project: a World Cup downhill run on the Matterhorn. Both made world careers, both in their own way, with their talents – but they started it together, more than four decades ago.

Pirmin Zurbriggen was the great ski talent from Saas-Almagell, where there was a chair lift and a t-bar lift. He didn’t know much about the world, says Zurbriggen. The first time he really found out “that there are other places in the world” was in 1972, during the Olympic Games in Sapporo. The nine-year-old boy and his father got up early in the morning and watched the competitions, gold for Bernhard Russi, gold for Marie-Theres Nadig. The Zurbriggen family of five rarely took holidays; When the student Pirmin was in high school, they went to Ascona once.

Franz Julen grew up in Zermatt with five younger siblings, including a brother named Max. Julen was enthusiastic about sports at an early age, he read every issue of the newspaper “Sport”. The father, 1955 winner of the Wengen slalom and two-time Olympic participant, ran the Swiss general agency of the ski company Blizzard. He had something cosmopolitan, “and he worked hard and a lot, but as children we always went on vacation”, also to Ascona, always to the same hotel, or to Riccione, by the sea. Franz Julen was skiing, but Max was the great talent, his father made this clear to him at an early age. Franz understood. “As a racing driver, I was hopeful,” he says today. He also saw Max’s talent, especially: how fast his brother was when a slope was steep and icy.

When Franz Julen had his driver’s license fresh in the summer of 1977, he drove Max, 16 years old, to the training camp in Graubünden as a supervisor, in the back seat Pirmin Zurbriggen, 14. And so it went on. From 1979, Franz Julen accompanied his brother as a serviceman through the World Cup for five years. From the Upper Valais they drove across Europe to ski races, in the back seat Pirmin. The Julen brothers from Zermatt, Zurbriggen from Saal-Almagell, meeting point Stalden, in the parking lot of the Killerhof restaurant. When they returned home, Zurbriggen’s father picked up the son in Stalden, «on the way we called home from somewhere about when we were in Stalden – and my father wasn’t late once, he was just there, it didn’t matter. if he had to wait an hour ».

Pirmin Zurbriggen was part of the Julens. They had no secrets from each other, rather they conferred, there were conversations that lasted for hours, in the car, in the hotels, at the races. “I never had the feeling that someone was sitting back here that we just had to take with us because he came from Upper Valais,” says Franz Julen. “And when Pirmin asked something, I never thought: Now I have to be careful what I say – otherwise he’ll be faster than Max tomorrow.”

Brother’s friend

Pirmin Zurbriggen and Max Julen were best friends, similar types, same values, more introverted. “Max and I were like five fingers on one hand,” says Pirmin Zurbriggen, “Franz was more of a bon vivant, let’s be honest.”

The Lebemensch was not only the brother’s serviceman, he was also something like the mental trainer. “I always thought: Max benefits terribly from Franz,” says Pirmin Zurbriggen, “and I sat in the back of the car and listened.” For a year, Franz swore shy Max to the 1984 Olympic slalom because he had seen how the slope in Sarajevo was: steep and icy. In the morning shortly before the race, Franz said to Max: “Tonight I am the brother of an Olympic medalist.” And Max said to Franz: “Tonight you are the brother of the Olympic champion.”

And that evening Max Julen was Olympic champion.

In the same year Pirmin Zurbriggen won the overall World Cup at the age of 21. He was the best in the world, although he would never have dreamed of it, had thought of it – «that was never an issue». Basically he had already made his world career now, he who had not known for a long time what the world had in store. Zermatt had already seemed “a bit scary” to him when he came here for training as a Saas boy. “When I came here for the first time for ski training, I saw the gondola lifts, the big gondolas – that was a dimension that I was not yet familiar with, a different kind of tourism.”

Years later he was in training camp in South America and someone asked him where he was from. Zurbriggen thought to himself that nobody knew “his” Saas Valley anyway – so he simply said: “Switzerland”. When the other still didn’t understand, Zurbriggen asked: “Do you know Zermatt? The Matterhorn. ” Then the other: “Ah yes, I know the Matterhorn – just beside Paris.” From then on, Zurbriggen knew: Everyone knows where the Matterhorn is.

When the contract extension with the ski company Kästle was imminent in 1984, the overall World Cup winner Zurbriggen turned to Julen and asked how much he could ask. And Franz Julen said: «You can go to the maximum. You will win a lot more in the next few years. “

Franz Julen has negotiation in his blood, says Zurbriggen, he was also smarter than Max and he, more articulate. “We soon saw that Franz had a knack for other things.” Julen began to write for «Sport» and took over the management from his brother Max, later also from Vreni Schneider and – together with Marc Biver – von Zurbriggen. Julen negotiated Zurbriggen’s legendary deal with the chocolate bar producer “Mars” (“Mit Mars bisch zwäg”), and Julen wrote a book about Zurbriggen that sold 47,000 times.

When he realized that the jobs as a journalist and marketer were incompatible, he stopped writing and started his world career. He didn’t follow a career plan, says Julen. He went out into the world through the doors that opened, through skiing – “and as soon as something interested me, I gave everything”. First he was the CEO of the ski brand Völkl, from 2000 he led the sporting goods manufacturer Intersport as CEO; By the time he left in 2016, Intersport had expanded from 16 to 65 countries, with sales of more than CHF 11 billion.

Globetrotter, “Heimchüeli”

Franz Julen first lived near Neuchâtel, later he moved to the canton of Zug. For a long time, his father did not accept that Franz did not return to Zermatt, as a hotelier, for example. “But I was curious and wanted to travel and get to know other cultures,” says Julen. “It drew me out into the world.”

Zurbriggen’s father also said: “I don’t like it when you go away. But I can see that you have greater potential in Zermatt. ” Pirmin Zurbriggen resigned in 1990, at the age of only 27 and, yes, with a lot more success than Olympic champion, four-time world champion and four-time overall World Cup winner. He had married Moni Julen, a cousin of Franz and also from Zermatt, they had become parents and wanted to work as hoteliers in Zermatt. Zurbriggen, too, had gone out into the world through skiing, but it was only skiing that had brought him there. After resigning, he was drawn back to his homeland. “I’m a Heimchüeli,” he says.

It was the big difference: Julen’s talent, the gift for negotiating, mediating and selling, was enough for a world career of several decades, Zurbriggen’s talent, this genius on skis, for a world career of ten years. It is the lot of top athletes, whose bodies do not endure this exertion indefinitely: that it needs a cut once, “and you have to get through this cut,” says Zurbriggen. Today he sees himself as Zermatt, as “Matti”, as he puts it, at home in this place that used to be scary to him.

Today he is more communicative than he used to be, he seems more open, Julen says: “Pirmin has gained in profile after his career and is a successful entrepreneur.” Zurbriggen says: “In short: skiing was the ultimate for me – the rest would have loved to not have existed for me.” Today he knows “the rest”, life as a hotelier, as father and grandfather, as “Matti” – and Franz Julen helped him to cope with the rest of the past.

This is one of the reasons why Zurbriggen says today: “You’re never good on your own.” And Julen a few minutes later: “You’re nobody alone.”

Right? Yes

And so they set off again together, but not out into the world, rather: without even leaving. It’s one last project for which Julen wants to give everything again: the World Cup downhill run in Zermatt, which will be held for the first time in 2023, with a start at almost 4,000 meters above sea level, which some top riders of today think is all too crazy. The race will lead from Switzerland to Italy, to Cervinia. Julen has been a driving force from the very beginning, also in his role as Chairman of the Board of Directors of Zermatt Bergbahnen AG.

Zurbriggen is officially there as an ambassador, but rather he should advise Julen. When Julen had an idea the other day, the first thing he did was call Zurbriggen. It wasn’t always like that, they don’t hide it. Zurbriggen felt a certain disappointment that he was not involved in this Zermatt World Cup project from the start; that for example Bernhard Russi and Didier Défago, the slope builders of the world association FIS, were integrated beforehand. “It was just their job,” says Julen. «I explained it to Pirmin – we sat together, talked, shook hands, and since then we’ve been walking in one direction. It is also a sign of friendship. Right?” “Yes,” says Zurbriggen.

Julen says he let Zurbriggen in too late, he’s just saying it twice – but the experiences from the past, from these trips, Franz at the wheel, Pirmin in the back seat, gave them the glue to find their way back home.

And since then they have been going in one direction, as always – at the foot of this mountain, right next to Paris.