Beekeeper’s
daughter was the first Olympian
Ann Jeanette Winn
Albrethsen of Gannett
The Wood
River Valley’s first Olympic skier was a member of the 1948 American
team that competed with athletes from 28 other countries at St. Moritz,
Switzerland.
It wasn’t
the famous Gretchen Fraser from Washington State, who won America’s
first Olympic medals at St. Moritz and became closely identified with the
Sun Valley resort.
Her name
was Ann Jeanette Winn, the daughter of "The Bee King of the Wood
River Valley," Maurice Winn. Like Fraser, Winn was a slalom skier and
one of 77 women at St. Moritz.
She was the
only Idahoan on the Olympic ski team that included racers like Andrea
Mead, Becky Cramer, Paula Kahn, Dodie Post, Alice Choire, Brunhilde
Gresmoen and Rose-Marie Stewart.
The Winn
family, which included Maurice and his wife Lavina, and Ann’s brother
Sammy, moved to Gannett from Bellevue in 1928 to live in a cheese factory
building which Maurice modified for processing his annual honey crop. He
once had 500 hives between Hailey and Picabo.
Ann learned
skiing on Baldy from instructor Sebby Arriaga and scooted around the
slopes with locals like Jimmy Griffith and Kenny Zimmerman and Les Outzs.
After the Olympic tryouts were held on Baldy in March 1947, she made the
team.
She
achieved no great notoriety in skiing, but Ann Winn Albrethsen has left a
lasting legacy.
Hailey’s
Blaine County Museum contains an exhibit featuring a mannequin wearing Ann
Winn’s 1948 Olympic uniform, complete with skis, boots, bindings, poles
and Ann’s eyeglasses under the goggles.