Jan Jasiewicz
In March 1995, studying results lists from Worldloppet races, I found on all of them an unmistakably Polish name - Jan Jasiewicz, Always well ahead of me.
Results from Konig Ludwig Lauf showed name of the town, where he lived in Switzerland. It looked like one of these Alpine villages where everybody knows everybody, so I wrote a letter to him and in place of address wrote just the name of the town.
After couple of weeks I received a response. Yes, he was Polish and he will come for Hoppet this year (1995).We met in Mt Beauty, at pasta loading, day before the race. Next day, he finished the race ahead of me again.
Next meeting took place in Lahti in 1998. This time, we had more time and Jan told me a bit about himself and his family.
His father was a leading scientist in area of metallurgy in pre-war Poland. As a director of a metallurgical laboratory, he invented new alloys of exceptional durability and perfectly suited for tanks armour. Few days before the Second World War broke out, he sent copies of his work to England and destroyed all documentation which could have be of any value to Germans. Occupiers put price on his head and he had to stay in hiding for 5 and half years of the war.
Jan remembered how he was delivering food for his father, who was hiding in an unused well in Zakopane, they could not even see each other on these occasions.
After the war, in Poland under communist regime, his father was treated with great suspicion due to his pre-war contacts with scientific community in the West. He was never granted a passport. All these factors contributed to his early death.
Jan spent his youth in Zakopane where he was involved in various sports, particularly downhill skiing.
He completed studies at The University of Mining and Metallurgy (AGH) and also Academy of Sport. During mandatory military service, he was recruited to the Air Force and trained as a pilot of fighter planes (Soviet MIG-15). At the same time he developed his skiing career, which peaked in 1956 with a win of slalom in Kranjska Gora. It was an equivalent of current day World Cup event. He also participated in Olympic Games in Cortina in 1956.
Few years later, he illegally left Poland and settled in Switzerland where he worked as a ski trainer, director of ski lifts operation and finally in his learned profession, as an industrial processes control engineer.
He became a technical manager of Phillip Morris in Switzerland and also worked as expert and consultant in Argentina, Australia, Canada, Germany, Netherlands, Latvia, USA, Poland and South Africa.
At the same time he found a new passion - mountaineering. He climbed mountains on all continents including an attempt to climb Mt Everest. He survived few dangerous accidents in the mountains and a meeting with a hungry grizzly bear.
In later years, he switched to cross country skiing. In year 1992, he won his first Worldloppet medal (number 724).
By the year 2001, he collected 9 Worldloppet medals and for this achievement was listed in Guinness Book of Records in 2003. Due to health problems, he had to end his Worldloppet career in 2008 with a tally of 16 gold medals.
During summer years, he travelled systematically around the world visiting over 140 countries. No wonder he collaborated with travel guides publisher – Lonely Planet giving advice on various aspects of tourism in many places.
I met Jan many times and admired his sense of humour, his interest in sport and politics. And then there are stories about adventures in many, many places in the world.
In 2003, I had a pleasure to spend few days in his home. We prepared together for La Transurasienne. He hosted me with variety of delicious Swiss meals, and we had some opportunity to talk.
