Ski, Travel and Celebrity Features.

The Official Website of Arnie Wilson – Ski, Travel and Celebrity Features.

Arnie Wilson spent 15 years in television – 10 of them on screen as a news and current affairs reporter – before becoming the Financial Times ski correspondent in 1986.

A passionate hobby had taken over his life. During his 15 years with the FT he wrote more than 250 articles on skiing. In 1994 he and the late Lucy Dicker skied every day for a year in the Financial Times Round The World Ski Expedition – a feat which took them to 240 resorts in 13 countries around the world, and into the Guinness Book of Records. The story was told in Ski The World, with an introduction from Clint Eastwood, whom they met on their travels.

Another first: his reports appeared every Saturday in the FT throughout the year – 52 consecutive ski features.

In 2001, after 15 years with the FT (he still writes for the paper from time to time), he took over as editor of Ski+board, the Ski Club of Great Britain’s magazine, steering it through the Club’s centenary year in 2003. He quit as editor in 2013.

During 2003 he also wrote a book, Snow Crazy (Metro) chronicling a century of enthralling and whimsical events from the Ski Club’s history, and presented ‘100’ – a centenary video, incorporating a substantial amount of footage from the Ski Club’s archives. Wilson has won a number of accolades for his ski writing, including awards from The German National Tourist Office, and Ski USA, an organisation devoted to marketing the benefits of American skiing.. He was named British Ski Writer of the Year in 1999. and in 2012 was the first winner of the Telegraph Ski Magazine’s ‘Polar Bear Award’ for his “outstanding contribution to snowsports” during the previous 25 years.

Wilson has now skied in almost 730 resorts in 30 countries and has no plans to hang up his skis until he has made it 1,000. His latest mission – to ski in all 37 of America’s “skiing states” – was completed in 2011 when he ticked off his final state: Arizona. Wilson, who has four skiing daughters, Samantha, Lara, Amber and Melissa, is the author of Top Ski Resorts of the World (published by New Holland, October 2002 and available in German, Italian and Hungarian editions) with an introduction by Franz Klammer, as well as the Thomas Cook International Top 50 Ski Resorts (1989) and Ski The World (1998). In 2007, he was contributing editor of another major coffee-table skiing book, Ski Atlas of the World, also published by New Holland, and translated into Dutch and even Russian. The maps were designed by Wilson’s friend and colleague, Andrew Reeves, former art director of Ski+board magazine.

Wilson’s latest book – Big Name Hunting (December 2010) – was his first non-skiing book. It chronicles his other career as a show-biz writer, and includes interviews with Spike Milligan, Sir David Lean, Sir Peter Ustinov, Sir Terry Wogan, Bo Derek, William Shatner, Dudley Moore, Eric Morecambe, Buzz Aldrin, Sir Stirling Moss, Brian Johnston, Jack Hawkins, Sir Ranulph Fiennes and many others. As well as writing occasional ski features for the FT, Wilson contributes to various in-flight magazines and was a regular contributor to the former Good Skiing and Snowboarding Guide. He is also a major contributor to the Ultimate-ski.com website. In 1998, he presented a 10-minute TV report on Aspen’s notorious 24 Hours ski race, featuring Martin and Graham Bell, for the BBC’s Ski Sunday programme. He and his Swedish wife, Vivianne – who were married on the mountain at Wilson’s favourite ski resort in Jackson Hole, Wyoming in 2000 – live in West Sussex, England.

One of the most rewarding and even surreal aspects of writing about skiing is the chance of meeting, befriending and even skiing with some of the greatest Olympic skiers in the world. “Some things money can’t buy” says Wilson. “It has been a truly extraordinary privilege to have shared the slopes with the likes of Konrad Bartelski, Steve Podborski, Graham and Martin Bell, Stein Eriksen, Nancy Greene, Franz Klammer, Hermann Maier, Tommy Moe, Bill Johnson, Ken Read and Picabo Street.”