Original vintage 1960s Rolex advert for the company's Explorer watch, featuring Alpine Olympic medalist skier Stein Eriksen.
Dimensions: 8 inches wide by 11 inches high.
The Rolex Explorer
With its three-hand simplicity and discreetly wearable size, the Rolex Explorer is, more than any of the Crown's sport watches, the one that skirts the line dividing the tool watch from the dress watch. And yet it's also a Rolex most plainly made for legibility in adverse conditions and exposure to the elements.
The Explorer has come to embody what many see as the ideal "one nice watch" to own. Its simplicity and classic design allow it to go anywhere, not only far-off mountaintops. And the reference 1016 in particular, which spanned an incredible 29 years of production, from 1960 to 1989, stands as a true vintage hall-of-famer. With its subtle 36mm size, no-date simplicity, and crisp black dial – whether gilt or matte – it's the sport Rolex that doesn't turn heads – the anti-hype Rolex, if you will. The "if you know, you know" Rolex.
The Oyster Perpetual Explorer and Oyster Perpetual Explorer II evolved from Rolex’s deep involvement with exploration. The Swiss brand tested its Explorers by equipping polar, mountaineering and caving expeditions over many years. Some of the world’s most intrepid explorers, mountaineers and scientists took these watches to places that tested their reliability in the toughest conditions.
Beginning in the 1930s, Rolex equipped numerous expeditions with its Oyster Perpetual watches. Rolex watches have taken part in some of humanity’s greatest adventures – to include the 1953 expedition to Everest, led by Sir John Hunt, on which Sir Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay Sherpa become the first to summit the world’s highest mountain. Feedback was used to develop what became known as the Professional category – watches that serve as tools, namely, the Explorer and Explorer II.
Rolex launched its Explorer in 1953 with a simple design and highly legible black dial with characteristic 3, 6 and 9 numerals and large index hour markers. Nearly two decades subsequent, the company introduced the Explorer II in 1971 and, in the same spirit as the Explorer. With its 24-hour display comprising an additional, orange hour hand and an engraved bezel, the Explorer II allows the wearer to clearly distinguish daytime from night-time hours – a practical option in places where distinguishing day from night is difficult, such as at the poles at certain times of the year, and in caves – or to read the time in a second time zone.
Alpine Olympic Medalist Skier Stein Eriksen
Stein Eriksen (11 December 1927 – 27 December 2015) was an Olympic gold medalist from Norway whose charisma, graceful elegance and innovative style on the slopes influenced generations of skiers across the world and who capitalized on his appeal by helping launch ski resorts across the United States.
Mr. Eriksen, who came from an accomplished athletic family, put on his first pair of skis when he was 3 and practiced in secret deep in the mountains during the German occupation of Norway in World War II. He came to be recognized as something of a Nordic mountain god, always competing bareheaded to allow the sun to gleam off his luxuriant blond hair as he sped downhill.
In the early 1950s, he developed a new method of making turns, called the reverse-shoulder technique, which enabled him to slice through the gates of slalom and giant slalom races with breathtaking speed.
At the 1952 Winter Olympics in his native Oslo, Mr. Eriksen was leading the giant slalom when his skis went out from him near the finish line. At one point, only his left hand was in contact with the snow, but he called on his early training as a gymnast to regain control, get back on his feet and complete the race.
Eriksen won the gold medal in the giant slalom, as well as the silver medal in the slalom. Eriksen was the first male alpine ski racer from outside the Alps to win an Olympic gold medal; he also won three gold medals at the 1954 World Championships in Åre, Sweden.
When he won the gold medal, he became the first Olympic champion in alpine skiing who didn’t grow up in the Alps. He also won a silver medal in the slalom event. Two years later, at a separate world championship competition, Mr. Eriksen became the first skier to win three gold medals.
People who saw him at the top of his form marveled at his ability. He kept his skis so close together that they seemed to carve a single track through the snow. He was so stylish and graceful that he was called Fred Astaire on skis.
“For most of us, even the great ones, skiing seemed to be a muscular, difficult thing,” skiing writer Nicholas Howe wrote in 1990, recalling that he first saw Mr. Eriksen in action in 1953. “What Stein did was something else. It was all lithe curves and delicate balances; it was the floating grace of a ballet dancer. Where gravity was concerned, Stein seemed to have choices not open to the rest of us.”
In skiing exhibitions, he often performed flips and other aerial stunts, essentially becoming a pioneer of freestyle skiing, which later became a major sport in its own right. Widely acknowledged at the time as the world’s greatest skier, Mr. Eriksen retired from competition in 1954.
Following his racing career, he was a ski school director and ambassador at various resorts in the United States. During this era in his life, he was credited with devising "aerials," a freestyle skiing event, and helping revolutionize the world of alpine skiing in the United States, where he served as a ski instructor at many different ski schools. At Sugarbush Resort in Vermont, each Sunday afternoon, combining his gymnastics background and his skiing, Stein would demonstrate a flip on skis.
As an instructor, Mr. Eriksen was known for his disciplined approach and his engaging personality. He more or less invented the position of “director of skiing” and, beginning in the 1950s, was hired to organize ski programs, design courses and revitalize resorts in Michigan, Vermont, Colorado, Idaho and California.
It is said that Eriksen was skiing's "first superstar", since he was handsome, stylish and charismatic. Despite his fame, he maintained a very down-to-Earth personality, and is quoted as saying, "Be tough, be confident. But you will never be a whole and happy person if you aren't humble".
Shortly after his success in the 1952 Olympics, Eriksen moved to the United States where he lived until his death. In 1997, Eriksen was honored by the King of Norway, and he was knighted with the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for his contribution to Norway, the highest honor the Norwegian government can give to people living outside Norway.
Eriksen celebrated his 80th birthday December 2007 in Deer Valley. He died on 27 December 2015, sixteen days after his 88th birthday, in his Park City, Utah home. At the time of his death he was the director of skiing at the Deer Valley Resort in Utah, and also served as host of the Stein Eriksen Lodge, a ski lodge in Deer Valley (not owned by Eriksen, but named in his honor).
He called both Utah and Montana home.