Friday, November 16, 2007

Ski shrine names new members

Bergoust, Lewis top the list


Olympic champion Eric Bergoust and FIS World Championship downhill medalist Doug Lewis highlight the 2007 selections to the U.S. National Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame announced Oct. 19.

The Hall also selected Nordic combined Olympian Tom Jacobs and its first snowboarding members, Jake and Donna Burton Carpenter. Ski industry pioneers Everett Kircher, who founded Boyne USA Resorts, and Mitch Cubberly of Cubco bindings, are the other picks.

"This is a great collection of accomplished athletes and sport pioneers," said U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association President Bill Marolt. "Eric dominated freestyle aerials in the late '90s and Doug's medal in 1985 ushered in today's U.S. strength in the downhill."

Missoula's Bergoust, a four-time Olympian, is the most successful aerialist in U.S. history. He won the 1998 Olympic gold medal, the 2001 and 2002 World Cup aerials titles, 17 World Cup events, and three U.S. aerials championships.

Lewis, a two-time Olympian, was bronze medalist in downhill at the 1985 World Championships—the first won by an American man at the World Championships. He also won two U.S. downhill championships before retiring in 1988.

Jake and Donna Burton Carpenter are owners of Burton Snowboards, founded in 1977 and the world's leading snowboard maker with nearly 50 percent of the global market.

Jacobs was a member of the 1952 Olympic Team in Oslo and competed in cross country and nordic combined. He founded Reliable Racing Supply, the ski industry's first mail order racing equipment distributor.

The late Kircher, who founded Boyne USA Resorts in 1947, was a visionary during one of the industry's important growth periods. He converted a small piece of Michigan farmland into a thriving resort.

Cubberly, also deceased, invented the first multi-angle release ski binding, called the Cubco, in the early 1950s.

The official induction will take place at the SnowSports Industries America trade show, Jan. 31 in Las Vegas. A welcome home in their honor will be held at the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in Ishpeming, Mich., the birthplace of USSA, in Sept. 2008.




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