The fans have weighed in.
U.S. Ski Team great Picabo Street, Olympic skiing great Andrea Mead Lawrence and Paralympian Sarah Will are members of the Class of 2009 to be inducted into the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, the U.S. Olympic Committee announced June 30.
The U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame is the only national sports shrine using fan voting as part of its selection process.
This year's U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame class comprises five Olympians, one Paralympian and one team, as well as three additional individuals: a coach, veteran and a special contributor.
"Andrea, Picabo and Sarah are three of the greatest ski racers of all time," said USSA President and CEO Bill Marolt. "Their accomplishments as athletes have inspired generations of aspiring Olympians. It is a great honor for them, and our sport, to be recognized in the Olympic Hall of Fame."
Mead Lawrence skied at three Olympic Winter Games, including the 1952 Oslo Games, where she won gold medals in slalom and giant slalom. She became the youngest athlete to be chosen for the U.S. Women's Olympic alpine team when, at 14, she made the 1948 squad.
Mead Lawrence succumbed to cancer on March 30 at age 76.
A three-time Olympian, Triumph native Street first joined the U.S. Ski Team in 1989 and earned a silver medal at the 1994 Olympic Winter Games in the downhill. The Sun Valley native left her mark in Olympic history in 1998, taking gold in the Nagano super G event by a mere hundredth of a second.
Street said about the honor, "I am very stoked about it. It's such validation that the time I spent, the sacrifices I made and the success I had really meant something and they're lasting.
"In your heart you know no one can ever take it away from you. Then you move on and you get busy with your life and you have kids and something like this is a really nice reminder that I accomplished something great and that it still affects people in a positive way. It's really a huge, huge honor—one of those kind of honors that's hard to put words to."
Street, 38, medaled in three World Championships, earning combined silver in 1993, and super G bronze and downhill gold in 1996. Winning six of nine World Cup competitions in 1995, Street became the first American to win a World Cup season title in a speed event.
After a leg injury and two years of rehabilitation, Street returned to compete in 2002 in Salt Lake City before retiring from competition. With nine career wins, she was inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2005.
Will won a total of 12 Paralympic gold medals and one silver medal throughout her four Paralympic experiences, making her the most decorated female mono skier in U.S. Ski Team history.
This year's star-studded inductee list includes Michael Johnson (athletics), Teresa Edwards (basketball), Willye White (athletics), Mary T. Meagher (swimming), the 1992 Men's Basketball Team, longtime men's gymnastics coach Abie Grossfeld, and special contributor Peter Ueberroth.
Nominees for the Class of 2009 were selected by a seven-person nominating committee consisting of Olympians, members of the U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame, and others. More than 112,000 votes were cast during the voting period.
The U.S. Olympic Hall of Fame Class of 2009 will be formally introduced and honored Aug. 12 at a banquet-style induction ceremony at McCormick Place in Chicago. The induction ceremony will be televised on NBC, local channel 7, Saturday, Sept. 5, at noon Mountain Daylight Time.
Picabo Street, wearing Sun Valley Suns hockey regalia in a fun Express file photo, has always been a Sun Valley native first of all—and a famous alpine skier and now Olympic Hall of Famer after that. Photo by Willy Cook
