What does Kandahar have to do with Skiing?
- Henry
- Jun 26
- 5 min read
Updated: Jul 23
The Afghan city of Kandahar crops up in skiing all over the world - but why? What does this desert city have to do with skiing? The answer lies with one man ...
If you've skied in one of a long list of resorts around the world, there's a good chance you will have skied on a piste called Kandahar; stayed in grand hotels called Kandahar; watched racers on TV competing for the Kandahar Cup; seen members of the prestigious Kandahar Club about town; or simply strolled down Kandahar Street to one of the World's best après bars.
But Kandahar is a provincial city in Southern Afghanistan, perched on the divide between desert and mountains. In modern history, it is perhaps best known from the 2001-2022 NATO conflict, like so much of the rest of the country.
So what links the two? What links this dusty city with some of our favourite ski areas?
The answer is one man, Field Marshal Frederick Sleigh Roberts, Lord Roberts of Kandahar, a victorian era British army General who gained superstar status for his imperial victories, and was one of the earliest promoters of skiing as a sport in the early 1900s.
Here's the story of how Field Marshal Roberts found Victorian fame, and made Kandahar everything to do with Edwardian skiing.
Roberts the Imperial Hero
Frederick Roberts was destined for imperial service; born into an Irish family - originally from Waterford - in India, his father was a Colonel in what was then the East India Company army.
Roberts followed his father into army service and fought as part of the Indian Mutiny, where he won a Victoria Cross for gallantry during action at Khudaganj, now part of Uttar Pradesh, in January 1858.
When his son was (posthumously) awarded the VC at Colenso during the Boer War, they became the first father-son duo to earn the award, and so far one of only three such pairs to do so. Funnily enough, one of the other fathers, Cpt. W N Congreve, earned his VC for service at Khudaganj on the same day.
From India - with the East India Army merged into the British Army - Roberts went on to serve in Abyssinia and then back to India. In both locations he took part in various "punitive" expeditions, designed to free British hostages but also to punish the states that had taken them. These earned Roberts considerable fame at home in Britain, where the idea of saving "damsels in distress" and good, Christian missionaries from the perceived savageness of pre-modern civilisations struck a popular chord in the press.
Roberts' next adventure was into Afghanistan. The British had long wished for a friendly regime in the country to act as a buffer state against a Russia-friendly Persia, to protect British India from Russian imperialist expansion. Their first conflict - in the late 1840s - nearly ended in disaster, when a column of over 10,000 British troops were wiped out retreating across the infamous Khyber Pass.
This second expedition, as part of the catchily titled Second Anglo-Afghan War, kicked off in 1878. After subduing the Afghan kingdom in early 1878, the murder of a British diplomat sparked off another punitive expedition - Roberts led a march on Kabul, which he tool and held against a fierce counterattack.
After a stuttering campaign to strike south to Kandahar, Roberts resumed command of the field force and led his troops on a rough march 300km south to Kandahar, where be occupied the city and brought Afghanistan firmly onto the British side of the Great Game.
In 1892, he was created Baron of Waterford, Ireland and Kandahar, Afghanistan - just think, all those cups, pistes, hotels and clubs could have been Waterford!
Roberts' career continued into the 20th century, where he was the last commander-in-chief of the British Army (before the post was abolished). He remained involved with political and army life, dabbling in the Home Rule debate in Ireland - which dominated British & Irish politics right up until the very eve of World War One - and remained part of army life. Indeed, it was while visiting Indian troops on the Western Front that Roberts died aged 82 of Pneumonia, at St Omer.
His status as a national hero, the poster boy of victorian imperialism can not be understated; he lay in state at Westminster Hall, part of the Houses of Parliament - Winston Churchill being the only other non-royal to have this honour in the 20th century - and is buried at St Paul's Cathedral.
Roberts the Skier
So where does skiing come into this?
On his retirement in 1904, Roberts immediately took on a number of public roles.
Alongside tales of imperial heroism, the alpine adventures of explorers and mountaineers caught the imagination of the Victorian and Edwardian imagination. At the turn of the 20th century, there was a positive boom in interest in winter sports.
Arthur Conan Doyle, author most famous for Sherlock Holmes, moved to Davos in 1893 to help his wife overcome tuberculosis. Not content to sit around and care for his wife, he filled his winters with every kind of winter adventure. He completed the first known crossing between the neighbouring villages of Davos and Klosters in winter, something that astounded locals both by his skill and stupidity. More than that, however, Conan Doyle wrote widely about his adventures and offered the first "layman's" tales of skiing, against the backdrop of daring alpinist heros. His writing basically kicked off the British obsession with winter holidays.
The Public Schools Alpine Sports Club was founded in 1904, and Roberts agreed to serve as its first president. In 1911, he provided the trophy for a series of challenge races, some of the earliest races in the then embryonic "alpine" style - i.e. downhill skiing, rather than cross-country, military patrol, or ski jumping.
Arnold Lunn, the originator of these races and one of, if not the single biggest pioneer of skiing as a competitive sport, maintained close relations with Roberts. When he founded a racing club in Mürren, Switzerland, in 1924, he thought of the Roberts Cup and Roberts' contributions to early skiing and named it after the Field Marshal: the Kandahar Club.
From there, Roberts' legacy in alpine skiing has remained, and grown stronger over the years. The Arlberg-Kandahar races were the most important date on the racing calendar, the skiing equivalent of the Monaco Grand Prix or Lord's Test, until the formalisation of the world cup in the late 1950s.
The 1936 Olympic course in Garmisch-Partenkirchen is called Kandahar, and hosted the first Olympic skiing events - for which contestants competed for the Kandahar Cup alongside Olympic glory - and who's World Cup event now offers the Kandahar Cup on a rotating basis with other events, including Chamonix and the fearsome downhill course in Sestriere, Italy, that hosted the 2006 Olympics.
Now, you will find Kandahar references all over the world. One of my favourite pistes in Tremblant, Canada, is Kandahar; you head down Rue du Kandahar - Kandahar Street - to get the Le P'tit Caribou, our favourite bar on my season and North America's best après ski bar for 10 of the last 12 years; the Kandahar Hotel is one of the swankiest joints in Val d'Isere, France; and the Kandahar Club is still going strong, over 100 years after it's founding.
Lord Roberts of Kandahar's title earning exploits may have been far removed from skiing, but his legacy in the sport lives long in the memory.
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