Dave Jacobs RIP

David L. Jacobs, the former alpine racer and coach who built one of skiing's most recognizable apparel brands out of frustration with the gear available to his own sons, died this week. He was 88.

Jacobs's death marks the loss of a figure whose fingerprints are on nearly every level of ski racing, from the start gate to the factory floor. Before he was a businessman, he was a competitor: in 1957, he became the first Canadian to win a national downhill championship, a breakthrough that established him as one of the country's top skiers of his era.

Jacobs was born in Montreal, Canada, and began skiing at age 13. At 21, he won the Quebec Kandahar, and from 1957 through 1961 was a member of the Canadian National Ski Team. In 1957 he captured the title of Canadian Downhill Ski Champion, and was the top-ranked member of the Canadian FIS Team the following season.

He later moved from racing into coaching, taking on the role of the Canadian National Ski Team's first full-time head coach from 1964 to 1966. In that position, Jacobs worked closely with a rising generation of Canadian athletes, applying the technical instincts he'd developed as a racer to help shape their training.

From a Kitchen Table to the World Cup Circuit

Following his consulting as Canadian head coach with Bob Lange, David was made President of Lange-Jacobs, Inc., from 1966 to 1969 and manufactured Lange boots in Montreal. After that company merged with Lange USA in 1969, David moved to Boulder, sat on the board of directors, and was the company's vice president from 1969-1972. During this time, he designed the first Lange competition ski boot, which became the hallmark of World Cup ski boots and predecessor to the Lange race boots used today.

Jacobs's most lasting contribution, however, came after his coaching career ended. In the late 1970s, watching his sons race on the junior circuit, he became convinced that the equipment available to young skiers was falling short — not fast enough, not protective enough, not built with real racers in mind. Rather than wait for the industry to catch up, he decided to build something better himself.

He started small: a mail-order operation run out of his kitchen in Boulder, Colorado, offering a race sweater designed with a competitor's eye for performance. It didn't stay small for long.

The turning point came when Jacobs designed a pair of navy blue racing pants with yellow ribbed padding for protection. Fellow racers thought the pads looked like spider legs — and Jacobs, ever attuned to a good idea, ran with it. In 1978, he formally named the brand "Spyder," pulling the unconventional spelling from the Ferrari Spyder, one of his favorite cars.

Building an Empire on the Mountain

What began as a homemade fix for junior racers grew into a global performance-apparel company. Jacobs pushed Spyder to focus relentlessly on aerodynamics and materials science, chasing the same margins that mattered to him as a racer — fractions of a second, degrees of warmth, ounces of weight. That focus paid off: Spyder went on to become an official apparel supplier to both the U.S. and Canadian Ski Teams, outfitting athletes at the highest levels of the sport, including the Winter Olympics.

Colleagues and competitors alike have long placed Jacobs among a small group of ski-industry pioneers who built their businesses the same way they raced — by identifying a problem on the hill and refusing to accept it. His path, from a kitchen-table mail-order business to Olympic podiums, became something of a legend within the ski community.

A Legacy on Every Mountain

Jacobs is survived by his family, including the sons whose junior-racing days first inspired him to pick up a needle and thread. His broader legacy, though, extends to the countless skiers around the world who have raced — and stayed warmer, safer and faster — in gear built on the principles he first sketched out decades ago.

Funeral and memorial arrangements have not yet been announced. This SIN staffer worked with Dave Jacobs for a number of years. He was a good guy. RIP Dave