BASI would like to express it's great sorrow at the news that Kevin Mochrie passed away in December 2022.
Many BASI members may not be familiar with the name but equally many other BASI members will. There was a time when Kevin was a goliath in the training body although he would have never seen himself in this way.
In the period of 2001 – 2010 Kevin was one of the most prominent BASI trainers competently taking the reins and steering the BASI 1 technical exam which later became the ISTD technical. Many fellow trainers were guided by his quiet but influential and common sensical stewardship of the BASI system and scores of students benefitted from his acute technical eye and no-nonsense skiing feedback.
Kevin always carried a quiet credibility and this was simply because he was someone who could ‘walk the walk’ as well as ‘talk the talk’. He never asked people to do things he couldn’t do; the trouble was not many could do what he could do! In short, he was a trainer that could ski most things with an accuracy and elegance that few could hope to match. He asked his trainees to ski to his principles although rarely would someone have a level of skill or ease that could compare with his.
Sometimes on the higher-level BASI technical exams you come across skiers with ‘pedigree’, often national team skiers and other such high-level competitors. They are, of course, amazing skiers but sometimes they are a little too trained in their specialist field and show weaknesses in certain strands. Not often, but every once in a while, you get a skier with a ‘touch’ – not necessarily formally trained but just able to turn their hand to all environments and look equally comfortable and balanced.
Kevin was one of these rare breeds. The ease of how he skiied everywhere perhaps belied the amount of time he had put into his skiing but the way he skiied everything effortlessly made you either sigh in instant realisation you would not be able to do it as well or just watch transfixed and think he was blessed with some ethereal capacity to ski without encountering any of the problems that us mortals regularly do.
He would often bemoan that people on exams would travel through the system training for exams but would not ‘go skiing’ – he would always proffer the benefits of people getting mileage, mileage and more mileage before turning up to be ski instructors as he had done as a trainee instructor in Austria. In this respect he was very true to the BASI doctrine of people having a depth of skill to their skiing rather than just stepping from exam to exam with a few superficially rehearsed moves. In an output heavy BASI era his beautifully demonstrative skiing and his appreciation of the efficiency and effectiveness of a well-executed move on a pair of skis served as a useful counterbalance.
This is what made Kevin so valuable as a trainer and as a person. He would never adopt something in a superficial way – everything had to be sense checked, tried and tested and if it passed the ‘Mochrie control’, then he would use it. There was many an occasion when Kevin would quiz and question a continental ski guru in Italy or Austria in his search to understand more: And he would question and question with a look of fierce concentration until he could get what he wanted – and then calm would return. This is perhaps why many people used Kev’s opinion as a barometer of reliability – you could be certain it had already passed many stringent controls and so he saved you the time.
Many colleagues and trainers have echoed kind words about him. Common sentiments include:
He was the benchmark.
Many of us were in awe of him.
He was the trainer you wanted to be.
Kevin would have cringed if he had heard such things. He was never the willing recipient of lavish praise. It’s a little sad to see so little come up if you google him but that is typical of the man. He was someone who impressed many but never sought plaudits for what he did – he didn’t think in that way at all.
Much of his adult skiing career was accompanied by illness. After kidney failure, he was the recipient of a kidney from his mother in 1988 and this inevitably didn’t make things easy on a daily basis. He would never draw attention to this and scores of candidates would never have even realised this whilst on his courses. Never one to complain, it didn’t hold him back and he was a deserved member of the 2007 BASI Interski delegation to Korea. He was also the first port of call to run the Quality Assurance revalidations for BASI trainers.
Seeing as he would never entertain the idea of doing it himself, it’s really important that we take a moment to applaud Kevin’s significance to BASI. It’s easy to let things pass but it wouldn’t be fair to allow him to go quietly without the appreciation he truly deserves. Totally unassuming, Kevin Mochrie exuded credibility in almost all the things that he did which is why so many valued and sought his opinions. Most commonly however, when you asked him your burning question about skiing or such-like, the reply you would be met with was ‘what would I know? I’m just a chippie from Edinburgh.’
Kevin leaves behind his wife Elaine and his two daughters Anna and Lucy and we wish them all the strength they need to cope with their loss. We hope that knowing what Kevin meant to so many in the BASI skiing fraternity will offer them some comfort.
Written by Dave Morris, BASI Trainer