United States Ski Team
[1] These individuals represent the best athletes in the country for their respective sports and compete as a team at the national, world and Olympic level.
[2][3] Norwegian "snowshoe" downhill races are noted in Sierra[4] and Rocky Mountain[5][6] mining camps.
Annual ski jumping tournaments began in Great Lakes mining and timber regions.
A regional ski association was formed in 1891 by the Eau Claire (Dovre), Ishpeming (Norden), Stillwater (Norwegian), Red Wing (Aurora), and Minneapolis clubs, but dissolved after an economic downturn and a couple low snow winters.
In 1905, the association was formally organized during a meeting attended by officers from the Ishpeming, Minneapolis, Red Wing, Stillwater and Eau Claire ski clubs.
Anders Haugen, a Norwegian immigrant to the United States, was listed as fourth in ski jumping because of a calculation error.
In 1974, as Norwegians prepared to celebrate the 50th anniversary of those first Winter Games, a recalculation in Oslo found Haugen was the real bronze medalist and not Thorleif Haug (1894–1934).
Skiing was still limited to Nordic events; top US skier was another jumper, Casper Oimoen, who finished fifth.
Germans took gold and silver in both the men's and women's alpine combined events; Franz Pfnür and Christl Cranz were the new champions; Dick Durrance, who grew up in Florida but spent several years in Germany learning to ski before Adolf Hitler took power, was the runaway best U.S. skier, finishing 10th.
The Olympics (with Germany and Japan barred from competing) returned after a 12-year hiatus, with American Gretchen Fraser (then of Vancouver, WA, later of Sun Valley, ID) winning the first two U.S. Olympic ski medals – and they came on the same day, Feb. 5; the combined downhill had been run the previous day and when she won the slalom, it gave her second place in the combined calculation.
The U.S. women's team captain, Dodie Post, broke her ankle in a practice session and was unable to compete.
"I was going ragged, bumping into myself, trying to train, ski alpine, cross country and the rest, so I decided to focus on jumping," he explained.
Poor snow in the Adirondacks almost forced cancellation of the Nordic events, but, alerted by 1948 Olympic cross country racer Chummy Broomhall that there was more than a foot of snow in his hometown of Rumford, Maine, officials agreed to stage opening ceremonies and the jumping events in Lake Placid, then everyone drove to Rumford for the cross country competitions.
At one point, Broomhall helped set the race tracks – no machine-setting equipment in those days, so skiers would ski-in the tracks – and then went home to change into his racing outfit; traffic at the site meant Broomhall missed his scheduled start time, but officials let him run at the end of the pack.
The young Squaw Valley resort near Lake Tahoe in California ushered in a new Olympic era under the direction of Alexander Cushing.
In cross country, Squaw Valley introduced the initial machine-set tracks; everything had been walked or skied in before Squaw Valley but – with Al Merrill and Chummy Broomhall setting the tone as chief of competition and chief of course, respectively – snow machines were used to help groom Nordic courses for the first time.
At the annual USSA convention on June 21 in Spokane, Bob Beattie was named the first full-time U.S. alpine skiing head coach.
The USSA continued to control the rules and governance of the sport, as well as organizing travel programs for recreational skiers, while the U.S.
Ski Team in Park City, UT, establishing its headquarters at its present location on 1500 Kearns Blvd.
[15] Additionally, educational areas for athletes, coaches and clubs such as a computer lab, multimedia rooms for performance analysis and equipment workshops are available.
Within those regions are divisions including Northern, Eastern, Southern, Central, Rocky Mountain, Intermountain, Far West and Alaska.
Competition programs are held within each region or division leading up to national and international events.
