For the week of Jan 30 - Feb 5, 2002

Reception to honor local Olympians

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The Sun Valley/Ketchum Chamber of Commerce and the Sun Valley Resort is inviting the community to celebrate local Olympians at a Feb. 5 Olympic Community Celebration.

There are three local residents who will be representing the United States in the Winter Games in three different disciplines: Sondra Van Ert, snowboarding; Tessa Benoit, cross country skiing; and Muffy Davis, mono-skiing. The community is invited to join these athletes in wishing them good luck prior to the Winter Games. The other members of the U.S. Snowboard team will be training in Sun Valley this week and have also been invited to attend.

The festivities will be held on Tuesday, Feb. 5, from 5-7 p.m. at the River Run Lodge in Ketchum, compliments of the Sun Valley/Ketchum Chamber and the Sun Valley Resort.

Sondra Van Ert will be training in Sun Valley with the U.S. Snowboard team prior to the Olympics. Van Ert already has one world championship and 10 national titles in snowboarding. Now, she’s looking forward to competing in the 2002 Winter Olympics. Van Ert was a member of the first U.S. Snowboard team and the first ISF (International Ski Federation) Team. She was also there when snowboarding made its debut as an official Olympic sport in 1998. Van Ert says that there’s no mountain that compares with Baldy’s steep 3,400 foot vertical drop.

Tessa Benoit, currently living in Hailey, was selected among 16 cross-country skiers to the 2002 U.S. Cross Country Ski Team. She was a member of the Sun Valley Junior Nordic Team in 1995. Although this will be Tessa’s first Olympics, she was a 2001 world championship team member and has earned 11 points on the 2001 World Cup, finishing 20^th in the sprint at the Olympic site of Soldier Hollow, Utah.

In 1989 Muffy Davis caught the edge of one ski on a cat track while racing, which caused her to slam into one tree, then another. She broke the T-6 vertebra in her back and shattered the helmet she’d borrowed from Picabo Street. When she regained consciousness, she was paralyzed.

At first, Muffy tried to forget skiing. She won the junior class president election with a videotaped campaign speech she made from her hospital bed. A year later, she was elected student body president, homecoming queen and valedictorian.

She talked her way past disabled ski instructors who said she didn’t have the abdominal trunk strength to turn a monoski, which resembles a bucket seat mounted on one ski. And—a myriad of crashes later—she talked herself through her first terrifying downhill race.

At the 1998 Olympics in Nagano, Muffy medalled in the Paralympics and last year Muffy won the coveted Crystal Globe, taking the overall World Cup disabled title in women’s mono-skiing. Muffy would like to see the Paralympics folded into the regular Olympics. "Paralympians are world-class athletes," she says, "And they deserve to be treated as such."

 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.