Marianna "Muffy" Davis and Mark Thoreson, two of Sun Valley's best examples of excellent skiers overcoming severe physical disabilities, were honored with awards of distinction by the Far West Ski Association June 11 at Long Beach, Ca.
Davis, 32, the 2002 Paralympic ski champion, received the Jimmie Heuga Award during the 75th anniversary banquet of the Far West Ski Association. Traveling in Greece and Turkey, Davis was not present to receive her award, but Thoreson accepted it for her at the banquet.
Muffy is the 20th recipient of the Far West's Jimmie Heuga Award given since 1987 to an individual who has made a significant contribution to disabled skiing and/or has overcome a physical disability and has been an inspiration to others.
Thoreson, 53, a Sun Valley Company employee since 1978 and currently Winter Sales Executive at the Idaho resort, is the 38th recipient of the Bill Mackey Award given since 1972 to a ski area employee who has provided outstanding service and support to the skiing public.
The fact that two Sun Valley skiers were honored is exceedingly rare for the Far West Ski Association, which covers a membership area that does not include Idaho and the other Intermountain ski resort areas. Thoreson said, "It was a pretty cool night for Sun Valley.
However, it was entirely appropriate that Davis and Thoreson were honored—not only because of their ongoing fight to overcome disabilities. Davis and Thoreson have also traveled together during the fall seasons for the last two years promoting non-stop air flights to Sun Valley during REI's "Sun Valley Nights," at stores on the West Coast.
Thoreson said, "Honestly I didn't expect to be honored, in fact, it was the last thing on my mind at the banquet. Earlier I had stood up and accepted Muffy's award, and then I sat down with some people from Aspen and they called out my name.
"I've been a road warrior for a long time for Sun Valley and I have friends all over the country. The most important thing is we have such a great product at Sun Valley and it makes it so much easier to go on the road and speak for an organization that is so name-recognizable.
"I guess if you hang in there long enough, they'll recognize you."
Mark Thoreson
A Wyoming native, Thoreson grew up in Sioux Falls, S.D. and graduated from Augustana College in that city in 1974. He earned his Masters degree in business from Boise State University in 1975 and started working as a program administrator in the printer division of Hewlett-Packard located in Boise.
Thoreson moved to Sun Valley in Nov. 1978 and worked as a ski instructor on Baldy from 1978-95. He was in charge of the children's instruction program. He also worked in sales and marketing for the resort, and from 1978-85 directed the Sun Valley Ice Show—the predecessor to Rainer Kolb in that key position.
Physically, Thoreson seemed the epitome of a Sun Valley skier—tall, blonde and handsome, and his sunny personality and quick smile served as bonus points on the complete package. But Thoreson's life changed 10 years ago after he had minor knee surgery in Sun Valley.
He suffered a staphylococcus "staph" infection as a result of the surgery. That and complications associated with antibiotics damaged the vestibular nervous system of both ears. "It knocked out my natural sense of balance," Thoreson said, who completely lost his equilibrium and became spatially disoriented.
Today, Thoreson relies on his trusty cane and is grateful for the movement he has, although his stamina has suffered. "The body re-wires itself and you learn the tricks of the trade through vision and touch," he said. "You feel like you're not on the ground, not attached to the earth."
He added with a laugh, "I do have friends who pay good money to feel the way I feel all the time."
Thoreson didn't work for four years after the nightmarish incident that changed his life. At the request of his good friend, the late Bill Clifford, Thoreson returned to work for Sun Valley. "Bill said they could really use some help for the fall and winter of 1999," said Thoreson.
He worked year-round for the first three years back on the job of selling Sun Valley, but fatigue and the demands of travel took its toll.
Now, Thoreson takes July and August off. He spends time on a 24-acre piece of property he owns in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It is surrounded by Forest Service land and adjacent to land owned by his mother, Berthella Thoreson. Maui and windsurfing have always been a big part of his life, and Thoreson still enjoys visiting the Hawaiian island.
He works alongside Tate Knowles, the Winter Sales Manager. "I feel I'm much stronger now. As time goes on, you start to deal with things," said Thoreson.
Amazingly, Thoreson has started to ski again with the help of Marc Mast of the Sun Valley Ski School's program for disabled skiers, a program now 13 years old. He quickly progressed from Quarter Dollar to Half Dollar on Dollar Mountain, and is now accustomed to skiing with outriggers on Baldy. "He's an exceptional skier even with no vestibular equilibrium," Mast has said.
Muffy Davis
Muffy Davis is one of the most famous and most honored disabled skiers this country has produced. But it is sheer determination and infectious enthusiasm that sets her apart.
In the six years since being paralyzed at age 16 in a downhill training accident on Baldy in 1989 and her graduation from Stanford University in California in 1995, Davis refocused the time and energy she usually spent on racing toward academics and community service.
Salutatorian of her 1991 graduating class at Hailey's Wood River High School, Muffy graduated from Stanford with a 3.5 GPA and a major in human biology. She received the Stanford Alumni Association's 1995 J.E. Wallace Sterling Award for volunteer service. She was active with Disabled Students of Stanford.
Over the last decade she has continued her volunteerism, become a sought-after motivational speaker, gotten married and last but not least, achieved her childhood goal of competing in skiing on an Olympic stage, in her case, the Paralympics.
Adaptive skiing for paraplegics was her new challenge and Muffy, while still in college, started relearning how to get downhill on a seated mono ski. She continued her progress with Marc Mast of the Sun Valley Ski School disabled skiing program.
Competing internationally from 1998-2002, Davis won over 25 World Cup medals and earned a reputation for being one of the world's most consistent female disabled ski racers. In 2001 and 2002 she won seven World Cup titles and was the overall champion twice. She earned four Paralympics medals including three silvers in 2002.
In April 2002, Idaho Gov. Dirk Kempthorne proclaimed a statewide "Muffy Davis Day," in recognition of her accomplishments—and Sun Valley Company renamed its Seattle Ridge ski run Southern Comfort with the new title "Muffy's Medals," in honor of her three silvers at the 2002 Paralympics in Utah.
Having decided to retire from competitive ski racing, Muffy didn't rest on her laurels.
One month later, in May 2002, Muffy and three other paraplegics made history when they successfully ascended California's Mt. Shasta, using hand-cranked machines called SnowPods. Last September Muffy and a fellow adventurer made the first-ever wheelchair ascent of Colorado's Pike's Peak, yet another 14,000-foot summit.
In mid-May of this year, Muffy and her husband Jeff Burley started a 10-month journey to Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia through a humanitarian program called Access the World. They started in Greece and Turkey, and are planning to spend July and August in Africa.
Muffy and Jeff, who live in Salt Lake City, are trying to assess opportunities and needs for people with disabilities in other countries.
Already it has been an eye-opener. Muffy has written about Turkey, "One of the greatest challenges here is lack of access. At home I've been able to live on my own, climb and bike mountains on my own, drive all over independently, yet in Istanbul, I had an incredibly difficult time just getting into a rest room on my own."
In the months ahead they are planning to do relief work, working with people who have suffered disabilities due to December's Tsunami in Southeast Asia. They will meet with organizers of the 2008 Olympics/Paralympics at Beijing, China.
And, after a return to the U.S. next February, they intend to visit the 2006 Paralympics at Torino, Italy and work there with the International Paralympics Committee.
Davis, a development officer at the University of Utah Health Sciences Rehabilitation Center, is a founding member of Sun Valley Adaptive Sports and from 2002-03 was a national board member of the Make-A-Wish Foundation. She is a spokesperson for Independence Technology and a Tobacco Free Sports Program.
The banquet
More than 450 people attended the banquet at the Westin Long Beach to celebrate and recognize some of the most notable founders, pioneers and developers from the ski and snowboard industry.
There were nine special guests—Dr. Michael Adams, Glen Plake, Billy Kidd, Jimmie Heuga, Dave and Roma McCoy, Deb Armstrong, Chris Davenport and Joe Jay Jalbert.
Dr. Adams, 72, son of esteemed photographer Ansel Adams, is a retired internist and Major General in the Air National Guard. Plake is a two-time world champion hot dog skier from Heavenly Mt. Resort.
Kidd and Heuga were the first two U.S. male skiers to win Olympic skiing medals, both coming in the 1964 Winter Olympics.
Director of skiing at Steamboat (Colo.) for over 30 years, Vermont native Kidd won the Olympic slalom silver medal. Heuga, a product of Lake Tahoe Ski Club, won the Olympic slalom bronze. He was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1970. Fourteen years later Heuga founded the Heuga Center in Vail.
The McCoys are founders and owners of Mammoth Mountain. Armstrong, the Olympic giant slalom gold medalist at Sarajevo in 1984, currently teaches skiing at Taos. Davenport is a big mountain skier, extreme skiing king and TV reporter, now from Aspen.
Jalbert is a film producer who was a cameraman on the groundbreaking 1969 movie "Downhill Racer."
The FWSA is a non-profit volunteer organization that is the largest of its kind in the U.S., with 50,000 skiers and boarders in Arizona, California, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon and Washington State.
Muffy Davis carves a turn on Baldy's Lower Warm Springs ski run. Express photo by Willy Cook
