Born an outsider and having to fight for everything she ever got in life, including her own name, Picabo Street grew up to become one of the most successful American skiers of all time . Part 1 of this two part series explores the beginning of this very American story and sets the stage for Picabo's Olympic career.
Born an outsider and having to fight for everything she ever got in life, including her own name, Picabo Street grew up to become one of the most successful American skiers of all time . Part 1 of this two part series explores the beginning of this very American story and sets the stage for Picabo's Olympic career.
“People ask me: what is it about skiing? And I say it’s the speed. And when they ask
what are you thinking when you go that fast?”. I say I’m thinking about how I can go faster. “
Hey there and welcome to Ski Heroes! My name is Eivind, and today is Sunday August 14th as I’m recording episode 3 from the ski lodge in Houston, TX, the skiing capital of the world.
The past couple of weeks have been very busy for me as work has taken up more time than usual. I’ve also started training a bit for the upcoming ski season. Although it’s still summer, at least in the northern hemisphere, it hit me the other day that we’re only about three months away until the ski areas start to open. And if you’re a telemark skier pushing 40 years old you need to start early to get your legs in at least tolerable shape for the upcoming season. Living in Houston, skiing is something I pursue on a trip by trip basis, and I’ve already started to make a few plans for the upcoming winter. It takes me a minimum of three hours to get to the closest ski area by the time I fly and drive or catch a ride. With that, I also refuse to travel somewhere and spend my trip being stopped by sore legs. So for the past several years I usually start doing some skiing related leg-exercises by the time August comes around. and since the last episode was out we have entered August and ski season training is officially kicked off.
I want to say thank you to everyone who listened to the previous episode about Jan Boklov. Although “everyone” may be a stretch to say, I am extremely thankful to those listen to the episodes, and even more thankful to the ones who provide me with feedback. Podcasting remains a work in progress with a steep learning curve for me. Since the first episode, I’ve learned from my friend Jobis that one can do something called normalize the sound, and this really improved the sound quality of episode 2 vs episode 1. My friend Shannon also told me how I can look up how many listeners I have, and I made a half joking half serious post on Instagram last week that the podcast has reached 50 downloads. Yep, Ski Heroes remains a podcast for the few and the nerdy, and honestly that’s how I want it. Skiing is a bit of a narrow field to begin with I think, and digging into these stories at a somewhat nerdy level probably has a very narrow total addressable market at the end of the day. That said, it’s been extremely fun to produce these first few episodes of Ski Heroes, and for this episode I decided it was time to step a bit out of my comfort zone and first of all leave Scandinavia, but then also talk about an athlete in a sport that I don’t know as well the case was for the first two episodes. On top of that, as I started working on the episode, I realized that the material I had was very extensive so we’re also launching the first multi-episode series of Ski Heroes here. Yep, I know we’re living on the edge.
This episode takes us to my new home country, the United States. It was a story I was loosely familiar with growing up, as I remember the skier quite well and she even visited my home town Voss in Norway at some point, a tad more on that one later.
But as I started digging into this I realized that there was really a lot more to this than just her skiing. And as the story developed, the skiing part almost became second priority. My goal is to keep each episode within the 25 to 40 minute time frame, and with that I also quite early came to the realization that this needed to be a two part series.
So here it is, part one of the story about the American alpine ski racer Picabo Street.
The story about Picabo Street is about as American as it gets. And no one is more American than Picabo Street. This tough, brash, blue jeans wearing, overly confident, strong as a bull, in your face woman. And It’s not politically correct to say tom-boy anymore, but Picabo is far away from politically correct let’s also point out that she was a tomboy growing up. Picabo Street has been an outsider her whole life. She grew up poor in a rich kid’s sport. A girl amongst boys. A free spirit among hard-ass athletes, an American in a sport ruled by Europeans. And more than anything else, she was a hell of a skier in the 1990s.
Her story is a classic American from rags to riches story. An unlikely story of someone who should be confined to a life in small town America. But who defied her odds and fought with everything she had to hit it big and live up to her true potential as an athlete. This is the classic of story of the American dream come true, incorporating everything that is great about the country, but also showing some of it’s dark sides. And while we’re on the topic of classic American, let me just address this right away. I mean, what is it with Americans and championships? And especially Americans and the Olympics? Growing up in Norway, I can attest to that Norwegians are gung-ho about the Olympics, especially the Winter Olympics. But that is also because that’s where we excel, and some of the biggest Norwegian stars, both today and historically, have been winter sport athletes. When a Norwegian wins the Olympics, it’s usually not a surprise, because Norwegians also excel at the winter sports every year and all season long. When a big cross country star from Norway also happens to win an Olympic race, it’s almost more of a relief than anything else, because that’s what everyone had expected.
In America there’s essentially three sports that people care about: Baseball, basketball, and American Football. Most Americans couldn’t care less about winter sports. Yet, the country for some reason is glued to the TV screens every four years when the Olympics are on. And Americans largely know about winter sports because of the Olympics. Athletes who compete in sports that are not that popular in America essentially have a shot every four years to make a name for themselves. I don’t know if that’s the main reason, or if there’s some other reason, but history is full of Americans who pop up from nowhere and win an Olympic medal. I don’t think the nation of Norway has quite yet recovered from when Tommy Moe out of nowhere and beat our own Kjetil Andre Aamodt for the gold in the Downhill competition at the Winter Games in Lillehammer in 1994, just to be largely gone the following season and after that never to return to the world cup stage. Or Bill Johnson, the car thief from California turned ski racer who shocked the ski world and brought home the downhill gold from the 1984 Sarajevo games.
Picabo’s story is not quite like that. She did have plenty of success outside of the Olympics as well. But it sure seems to help to be American when the World Championships, or even better the Olympics, come around.
But let’s do this in the chronological order and start from the beginning. Because I feel the childhood and upbringing is quite essential to understanding the story of Picabo Street.
Triumph, ID was an old mining camp where prospectors rushed to in the late 1880s in the search of silver. The town remained a mining town for the next seven decades. But in 1959, the price for silver, zink, and lead had fallen to half of the WWII prices, and the mine was shut down.
Through the 1960s, as the miners moved out of town, Triumph became a place for, let’s call it alternative cultures. The people who moved there were nice mix of hard working yet free spirited folks. Almost like a poor-boy version of the hippie culture of the 60s. Those who went there were searching for something that the traditional life with a house in suburbia and a job in corporate America could not get them. In the late 60s, Dee and Stubby Street moved to Triumph, and shortly after their first of two children was born - a boy, who would later be named Baba, but who on his birth certificate was just called Baby Boy Street. The boy was barely born before his parents decided to take him along on a three week hike through the Idaho mountains along with friends. And on this trip, high up in the mountains, his sister was conceived. Born on April 3rd 1971 Baby Girl Street, she really had no real name for the first two years of her life. You could maybe say that she had to fight for everything that ever came to her ever since she was born, including her own name. She eventually got the name Picabo, named after a town about 20 miles away from Triumph, and a town which is named after the beautiful river than runs through it; Picabo is the Native American name for Shining Water. And also because she as a kid loved to play Peekaboo. And at this point, Triumph was a town with population of 32. 32!
There were a total of eight kids in Triumph, seven boys, and then there was Picabo. So she grew up competing with the boys in everything she did. Picabo was hell-bent on not being beaten by the boys, and anything they would do, she would try to do better. If they played American football, so did she. If they got in a fight, so did she. Her mom said she had two jobs in life. With her brother it was keeping him fed. And with Picabo it was keeping her alive.
The situation at home was difficult, with a lot of fighting and and some instances of domestic violence amongst her parents. Picabo later stated she had a love/hate relationship with her dad, and perhaps it was fitting that he was there for her both through some of her biggest moments and darkest hours, and that she also at some point got arrested for violence against her dad. In either case, the mountain became an escape for Picabo. A place where she could be by herself, and where no one could catch her.
At a young age Picabo got into skiing. She first started skiing on a steep hill behind the house where she grew up. Her dad, who worked as a stone mason, would drive the ski bus in nearby ski resort Sun Valley to make some extra money. And Picabo would soon start to ski in Sun Valley together with her brother. From early on, she showed no fear and would straight-line down the mountain. When her brother said “you know you can turn”, she would ask back “why?”. Her talent for the sport was soon discovered. As she started racing, she would beat both the girls and the boys in her own age group, so she would then start chasing down the older kids instead. Alpine Ski racing is not a cheap sport, it’s not now, and it never has been. And from when Picabo was about 10 years old her parents poured just about all the little money they had into the ski career of their daughter. Picabo’s family gave up just about everything, new cars, stereos, new kitchen appliances, etc to put what little they had into her promise of becoming a world class skier. I mean, this is pretty much like going to Vegas and putting your life savings on the table, hoping it will pay off! I have to say, I find this particularly American too. Instead of saving money for college for their children, they instead decided to bet it all on the skiing talent of Picabo. Not great odds, but perhaps a decent pay-day should it all work out.
In 1985 Picabo was 13 years old and she had qualified for the Junior Olympics taking place in Alaska. The trip would cost $1800, a huge sum today, and certainly for Picabo’s family in 1985! Her parents had $400, and through donations from family and friends they got an additional $500 bucks, leaving her at half the money needed. Picabo decided to take matters in her own hands and went to Ketchum, ID, the town where Sun Valley ski resort is located and went door to door downtown and asked business owners for money to fund her journey. Soon Picabo had the funds she needed, and off to the Junior Olympics she went, winning two out of three races as well as the overall title. Although the internet, social media, and smart phone apps were not around in the 1980s, crowd funding is not a new thing. And Crowd funding like this is something I find very American as well. Although Scandinavia has amazing public support systems, the willingness of private citizen Americans to help out a stranger like this is quite unique. Parents of a junior ski racer would easily have to pony up 15 – 20,000 dollars per year in the 1980s for their kid to compete and pursue skiing when factoring in all the equipment, the travels, the ski passes, paying the coaches, etc. It was called a rich kid’s sport for a reason.
From the early days, when Picabo was 10 – 13 years old this really paid off. She won most races she participated in, and even started to get some free equipment from various equipment manufacturers which at least to some extent helped finance her racing.
Alpine ski racing consists of four events: Slalom, giant slalom (or GS), Super Giant Slalom, or Super G, and Downhill. Slalom and GS are considered technical events, Super G and downhill are called speed events. Until Picabo was 21 she skied all four events. But given her story so far, I’m sure you can all guess which events she dropped, and which ones she ended up pursuing. Yep, Super G and downhill was it for her. Slalom and GS simply was not fast enough. There’s actually kind of a fifth event too, called the Super Combined which consists of the combined race time from a downhill race, the fastest event, and slalom, the slowest event. But more on that later.
Picabo had done her first downhill race at the age of 12 down the Payday run in Park City in Utah. Quite cool actually, because I have skied that run myself! Racing in a blue handmade race suit that her mom’s friend had made because it was cheaper than buying one at the store and with her parents standing scared spectators in the crowd Picabo raced down the slope and was immediately hooked. And of course she won the downhill race.
When she was 14 she joined the US ski team together with a group of girls her own age. The US ski team to a large extent raised the young athletes on the team as they were gone from their families 10 months of the year training and competing. Picabo did not fit in on the US ski team. She was sassy, she was driven, she was competitive, and she did not at all come from a rich background. People said that Picabo Street would never amount to anything because she does not follow the rules. Instead she said rules are meant to be broken. And I can only imagine too that her crass, sarcastic nature and in-your-face attitude did not go over very well with the coaches. But Picabo also loved it here. And throughout the mid and late 80s Picabo keps skiing and developing her skills in the lower division cups. Mostly taking place in the US and Canada, the cup was referred to as the NorAms, she would also take the occasional trip to Europe and compete against the second tier European racers. In 1988 she again competed in the Junior Olympics, this time taking place at Mt Bachelor in Orgeon in the US. Here she won both downhill and the Super G and also finished third in the slalom. Although a speed event skier from the beginning, Picabo showed remarkable versatility with this result. But after the 88 season, her dad got a job offer in Maui in Hawaii where one of his clients from Sun Valley, a California millionaire named Gary Cecil wanted him to also do a stone masonry project at his Hawaii property. After some back and forth, Picabo’s parents decided to take the offer and moved to Hawaii. This left 17 year old Picabo to herself in her condo in Sun Valley. For all her talent in ski racing, she was not very fond of conditioning and exercising. She liked the excitement of skiing, and also enjoyed other exciting forms of exercising like mountain biking and in-line skating. But she hated the gym. Every summer the US Ski team would mail all of their athletes an exercise program that they needed to follow before the fall training camp. Picabo had always dreaded this training, opposing it with all she had. And when she was now living on her own, she opted out of physical exercise all together. Her condo became an adult free zone for her and friends where watching TV and hanging out took priority over school work and training, and she showed up at the fall training camp out of shape. Picabo kept competing through the 1989 winter, and still did decent. But toward the end of the season, at a race in Steamboat in Colorado she mis-judged a jump on the Super G event. Half way through the air her weight shifted backward and her skis tipped upward catching air. She landed on the tail end of her skis, with all of her weight crashing down at the back of her binding and she could feel something snap in her knee. Her ACL was torn leaving her out of skiing for at least six months. Tearing the ACL is quite common among ski racers, it’s almost like a right of passage. And for Picabo it was almost fitting that it happened after a jump like that. Because when you look at her races, jumps are not her forte, and I don’t think she ever quite figured it out. She often gets quite back-heavy in the air, with her skis pointing upwards. She’ll jump further than she should, and it is not the most effective way to tackle jumps in a downhill race to say the least. Following the injury, Picabo went to Maui to be with her family and do rehab training. After the summer was over she did a test for the US ski team physician and was finally deemed fit to ski again. But her heart was still not in the game. She was out of shape, and had again not kept up with her exercising schedule. When the US ski team’s training camp kicked off in Park City that fall, she was beaten by all of her team mates in pretty much all of the exercises. Yet, her in your face attitude and crass behavior did not take well to feedback from her coaches. She was pissed at them for making her do the exercises, she was pissed at the exercises because she hadn’t done them, and she was pissed at her team mates for beating her at them. Picabo was in full rebellion mode. The entire season she questioned and challenged everything and everyone. Maybe with the exception of herself. She was 18 years old and didn’t want to be told what to do. Hmm. Sounds quite familiar having been 18 at one point myself.. 😊 She took her frustrations out on the team, was either late to team meetings, or skipped them all together. The entire 1989-1990 season was quite lackluster for Picabo. And her relationship with her coached and her team mates kept deteriorating. Several coaches wanted her off the team. Her main coach and sponsor on the team, Paul Major, was the only thing keeping her on it. But even he started to lose his patience with Picabo who was spiraling more and more out of control. As the 1990 season ended and Picabo reported back to training camp that spring the head coach John Atkins had had it with her lack of motivation and rebellious attitude. She was kicked off the team right after her 19th birthday. And this is where the story of Picabo Street could have ended. She was off the ski team, and went back to Sun Valley where she partied, hung out with friends and did nothing to fight her way back into shape or to a spot on the ski team. Then finally her dad called. He had heard the news as coach Paul Major had called him. Paul had made it sound like she still had a shot at getting back on the team, but major changes were needed. Picabo’s dad immediately summoned her to come to Hawaii, saying that either we do this my way, or you’re on your own from here on. Picabo felt the moment she had stepped off the plane in Hawaii she had landed in Ron Street’s boot camp. Her dad was a former US marine, and he ran a tight ship during the summer of 1990 when she was in HI. Her days consisted of waking up at 6am to run and do other strengthening exercises. She then worked hard during the day doing heavy physical labor for her dad. And work was only interrupted by more training, and also studying as Picabo had not yet finished high school and was in desperate need to complete her diploma to have any chance of regaining her spot on the US ski team. There were no partying, no dates, no fun at all really. The days consisted of training, labor, studying, and sleeping. Picabo hated this. And she hated her dad for putting her through it. “Hate me now, thank me later” her dad would tell her. And sure enough, as the summer went on, she could see her body starting to change, she got leaner, more muscular, and she felt like she was getting back in great shape. But Picabo was too stubborn to admit to him that he had been right, and that his rigorous regime had actually done her some good. So her relationship with her dad remained strained. But when her parents took her to the airport in September after the summer was up, her dad slipped her an envelope with a $50 bill and a note saying
“your best interest is my only concern”. hit Picabo at the core, and from that day on she was laser-focused on becoming the best. It was the start of her first comeback. And she reported to the US ski team training camp in Park City that fall ready to earn her spot on the team and show everybody how badly she wanted it. As the training camp went on, Picabo fell right back in with the group and felt a part of the team again. The coaches had looked for a change in attitude and they had gotten it. Picabo won the North American overall championship that winter. And the following winter, 1991-92 she did it again. She was ready for bigger things.
Being on the US ski team, she would train with all the skiers on the team, including the world cup skiers. And she would have access to the world class coaches and equipment that the top skiers used, even at a young age. Picabo’s competitive edge, aside from her fearless nature, was her ability to glide. In alpine skiing, the most optimal aerodynamic position to ski in is the tuck position where you lower your stance and keeping your back and shoulders parallel to the incline, and then stretch your arms out in front of you, and with the ski poles tucked perfectly under your arms. Skiers will train in a wind-tunnel to optimize their tuck position. And one time when Picabo was training in the wind tunnel she had spent 35 minutes with the engineer trying to figure out which tuck-position was the most aerodynamic. During it all, her legs got tired and she just kinda relaxed into this really low and wide tuck position. Picabo was very flexible and could get into a super low tuck where her torso drops lower than her thighs. And immediately the measuring device in the wind tunnel showed that her drag dropped three points. This was her edge. This was something she had that no one else had. In a very low tuck she could out-glide anyone else, especially in the flatter parts of the slope. And when you watch her races you can really see how she’s using this for everything it is worth as she glides across the flatter parts of a course in her characteristic super wide stand low tuck.
Going into the 1992-93 season Picabo finally made the world cup team, and in December 1992 she made her World Cup debut as the 1992-93 season kicked off in Colorado in the US. This was also the last season when she would ski all four alpine events. Her very first world cup event was the slalom competition in Steamboat on December 6th 1992 and she finished a modest 22nd. The following weekend the world cup circus had moved to Vail, CO, and she finished 41st on the downhill and 46th on the Super G.
The 92-93 season was a World Championship season too, as the alpine world championships were to take place in Morioka in Japan in February that season. Picabo kept competing in the world cup leading up to the championships. Her best performance being an 8th place from the downhill in Cortina that year, but mostly finishing somewhere between 20th and 30th position. BUT, then there was Americans and their championships… The Morioka world championships became a breakthrough for Picabo. In the super combined she surprisingly skied down to the lead after the downhill event. Although she couldn’t fend off Germany’s Miriam Vogt for the gold, she sensationally took the silver medal after the slalom event! Having only one top 10 to show for pre-championships, and mostly being a 20s and 30s kinda skier, she was now a medal winner in the world championships. And immediately after this, she went back to being a 20s and 30s kind of skier in the world cup after the Morioka Championships. So far she was keeping the American tradition alive of only excelling at Championships, although I suppose one could make the argument that that’s the only time when it really matters…
And I think this is a good place to end the first episode in this two episode series about Picabo Street. She had made her World Cup debut, and she had sensationally won her first world championship medal with the silver medal from Morioka. The following season is the 1993-94 season when the 94 Lillehammer Olympic Games took place, and the world championships silver medal from 1993 nicely sets the stage for the start of Picabo Street’s Olympic career.
So far Ski Heroes has been an every other week kinda podcast. Since most of the material for the next episode is already done I will aim to release part 2 about Picabo Street by Sunday August 21st.
There is a somewhat major event about to happen in my life, as someone turns 40 years old later this month and this is being celebrated next weekend.
So I apologize in advance if my voice is a bit raspy when the next episode is being recorded.
But being that the party is a 1982 theme party, there is also a chance that someone will dress up as a ski hero for the occasion.
For now, I hope you enjoyed part 1 about Picabo Street, and stay tuned for Part 2 to come out soon.