Terry Hertel Speaks — The Olympic History of Hertel Ski Wax
The following is Terry Hertel speaking directly — in his own words, in his own voice. This is WAXFAX the way it was meant to be heard.
People ask me about the Olympics a lot. And I understand why — it is a remarkable story. But I want to tell it the way it actually happened, not the way a marketing department would tell it.
So here it is.
Racing 739™ came first. I developed it in 1963 — a professional race wax built around one goal: maximum glide performance on competitive race courses. It was used at the Olympic and World Cup level, and it worked. It worked better than anything else in the race room.
How much better? Skiers using Racing 739 were winning by margins of up to 4 full seconds. In ski racing, where the difference between a gold medal and no medal is often measured in hundredths of a second, 4 full seconds is not a performance advantage. It is a different category of performance entirely.
The governing bodies of ski racing noticed. And their response was to ban it.
Racing 739 was banned from Olympic competition, World Cup racing, and other sanctioned events. Not because of its chemistry. Not because it violated any rule about what wax could contain. Because it was too fast. Because the performance gap it created was too large for the competition to be considered fair.
I want you to think about that for a moment. The most remarkable endorsement a wax company can receive is not a five-star review. It is a ban from the Olympics for being too dominant. That is what Racing 739 earned.
Now, WhiteGold™.
WhiteGold was a different product — an all-temperature formula built on the same foundational chemistry as the rest of the Hertel lineup. In the late 1980s, Burton Snowboards' elite team riders started using it. Craig Kelly. Mike Jacoby. Nora Brandon. Jeff Brushie. Jonny Mosley. The best competitive snowboarders in the world at that time.
They used it because it worked. Because the all-temperature formula delivered consistent, reliable glide across the variable conditions of competitive snowboard events in a way that temperature-specific waxes could not match.
At the 1988 Calgary Winter Olympics, WhiteGold contributed to gold medal performances. Six years later, at the 1994 Lillehammer Winter Olympics, it happened again.
Two Olympics. Gold medals both times. An independent American wax company, operating outside the established European ski industry supply chain, delivering results at the highest level of international winter sports competition.
And then came the response.
After the Lillehammer successes, I was told — directly, personally, without ambiguity — by leadership tied to the ski establishment to leave the industry. The message was clear: our success was not welcome. We had embarrassed the establishment on its own turf, and they wanted us gone.
I did not leave.
I stayed. I kept making wax. I kept developing products. And for years, those products were largely invisible in mainstream ski media and retail channels — not because they stopped performing, but because the established industry had the power to control what skiers heard about, and they used that power.
What I could not have predicted in 1994 was that 30 years later, social media would eliminate those gatekeepers entirely. That YouTube and Amazon and direct-to-consumer commerce would give me a way to speak directly to skiers without going through the channels the establishment controlled.
And when skiers heard the story — the chemistry, the Olympic history, the ban, the suppression — they responded.
20,000 units of Super HotSauce™ sold on Amazon in 2025. Five stars in every independent study. #1 in the category.
The establishment tried to push us out. The market pulled us back in.
That is the Olympic history of Hertel Ski Wax. Not the version a marketing department would write. The version that actually happened.
— Terry Hertel, Founder, Hertel Ski Wax — Made in USA since 1972
The Olympic wax. Available to everyone. Shop WhiteGold™ — 1988 & 1994 Olympic Gold Medal Wax →
The banned race wax: Shop Racing 739™ — Too Fast for the Olympics →
📚 The full story: Download the FREE WAXFAX Book →
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