POWDER_Sarah_small.la - Canadian Writers Group

THE UPLIFTING, UNPARALLELED LIFE OF SARAH BURKE
By Leslie Anthony
Josh Bibby and Luke Van Valin celebrate
Sarah with a ceremonial howl at the public
memorial in Whistler Village Square. April 10, 2012.
ike Douglas rarely wears a suit. So it’s no surprise that when he pulled one
from the closet for his annual gig hosting Whistler’s Pro Photographer Showdown last April, he’d forgotten when it last saw the light of day. During intermission, twiddling in the jacket’s pocket, came a reminder. He fished up a small,
smooth rock with the words “Mike & Susie” (his wife) written on it. The stone was a place
setting from the last time he’d worn it—two years earlier at the wedding of his friends Rory
Bushfield and Sarah Burke.
It might have been a sad reminder of the loss, three months prior, of the woman he’d often
referred to as his “little sister”—the gifted, driven freestyler from Midland, Ontario, who’d
arrived as a wide-eyed adolescent 15 summers before at the Whistler mogul camp and gone
on to become one of the greatest female athletes the world has known. Instead, the rock now
seemed a welcome talisman to a legacy that soared to deservedly greater heights at each remembrance. Back onstage, Douglas informed the raucous crowd of his discovery, holding the
pebble aloft with a smile. Despite his upbeat tone, an uncharacteristic hush descended.
“No moment of silence,” he chided 2,000 onlookers. “You know what Sarah would want.”
Then, as happened the week prior at a tearful memorial at Blackcomb’s halfpipe, scene of
so many of Burke’s triumphs—and during the much-anticipated life celebration that followed
when thousands crammed the Whistler Village Square in a sea of love that radiated down
every avenue—Douglas counted down to the now infamous Moment of Noise.
“Three, two, one!”
The deafening roar that filled the cavernous convention center might have raised the
roof of a lesser structure, but here it simply lifted tribal spirits already augmented by other
forms of the same. Skiers, boarders, photographers, filmers, snow people, dirt people, water
people, competitors, weekenders, business folk, and politicians all made it clear: the many
benefactions of the Mother Goddess of Freeskiing would never be forgotten.
Were she observing from the great beyond, Sarah Jean Burke—beloved wife, daughter
sister, and aunt, vaunted pioneer, fighter and medalist—would simply have wondered what
all the fuss was about.
PHOTO: BLAKE JORGENSON
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The Goddess of Freeskiing,
Burke lit up the world.
PHOTO: NATE ABBOTT
Rory Bushfield
HUSBAND
“I can talk about Sarah all
day… I knew her since I
was 17 from skiing moguls.
She was always so sweet
to everyone and to me. I
knew who she was, but I
remember the first time I
realized she remembered
my name. I did a big air
comp with her one time,
and I was pretty stoked
because I did a 9. And
then Sarah goes and does
a perfect 1080. And then
she skis out and she’s super
smoking hot and I was like,
‘Oh my god… Is this girl for
real?’ Such a badass.”
J.P. Auclair
FRIEND AND PRO SKIER
“I first met Sarah on the
glacier during summer
camps in 1999. The first
things I noticed were
her drive, perseverance,
smile, and happy-go-lucky
attitude. The more I got to
know her over the years,
the more my first impression was reinforced.”
Josh Bibby
FRIEND AND PRO SKIER
“I couldn’t find the
motivation for working
on my 720, and my coach
[Silver Star, B.C., Freestyle
Club] told me that there
was a girl from Ontario
throwing 1080s. I didn’t
even know her name and
already Sarah Burke was
influencing me.
96
n a winter filled with tragedies in the ski community,
the untimely passing of Sarah Burke was surely the
least probable and most inexplicable. Of all the possible accidents in the global park and pipe scene, a
life-snatching fluke was all the more freakish knowing its
victim. Though the protracted drama of Burke’s accident
lasted an eternity for family,
friends, and fans that kept
vigil, the damage that ended
her radiant life happened in
the blink of an eye.
On Tuesday, January
10, 2012, during a private
training session in the
Eagle Superpipe at Park City
Mountain Resort, Burke
launched a routine flatspin
540—one of hundreds she’d
executed in her life. “We’d
decided she should work on
it and she was,” said Canadian Ski Halfpipe Team coach Trennon Paynter, who had spoken with Burke as recently as that
morning. The session was in preparation for the 2012 Winter
X Games, and, in the bigger picture, the upcoming 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia—that for the first time would
include ski halfpipe, for which he and the indefatigable Burke
had lobbied relentlessly. “She’d been training and competing
that alley-oop flat 5 on and off for years, but it wasn’t locked
in 10-for-10 perfect, and she wanted to get it down. Sometimes she’d do it and other times take it out, because she
didn’t have the landing percentage.”
This time, as occasionally happens, Burke caught an
edge upon landing and residual momentum whiplashed her
onto the snow. It was a hard knock but nothing compared
to many of the crashes she’d famously walked away from
in a 13-year career of bumps, bruises, and breaks. The
consensus from observers was that the accident didn’t look
like much; perhaps a tweaked collarbone. But Burke didn’t
get up, and after being attended by emergency personnel,
she was airlifted to the University of Utah Hospital. The
incident circled the globe in seconds through the Twitterverse, details few and speculation rampant, adding to the
confusion of the next nine days.
It emerged that the fall had ruptured one of four major
arteries supplying blood to
the brain. A resulting severe
intracranial hemorrhage sent
Burke into cardiac arrest, and
though CPR was performed
on the scene, she’d remained
without pulse or spontaneous breathing. Placed on life
support under standard protocols for brain trauma, hope
flickered briefly when the
arterial bleeding was successfully repaired by surgery. But
rounds of neurological tests
and imaging over the next week confirmed the worst: lack of
blood oxygen after cardiac arrest had resulted in severe, irreversible brain damage. The agonizing decision was made to
remove her from life support. At 9:22 a.m., January 19, Sarah
passed away peacefully surrounded by Bushfield, her parents
Gord and Jan, and her sister Anna. In accordance with the
wishes of the most generous person many had ever met, her
organs and tissues were donated to save the lives of others.
Shock fell over the ski world. The forever smiling woman
who’d ignited a passion for the sport in thousands and
inspired countless others to reach for their dreams, who’d
never backed down from a challenge, who’d battled so terribly long and hard for her sport, for equality, and to keep
herself in the game—conducting all with an equal measure
of grace and iron will— never had a chance in the final
fight. And yet, even in those first harsh moments, the tiniest
comfort could be taken in the fact she’d been victorious at the
greatest game of all: life.
At a private memorial for friends and
family at the Blackcomb Mountain
halfpipe on April 10, Bushfield honors
his wife, stoking the spirit of Sarah.
PHOTO: BLAKE JORGENSON
Clockwise from left to right: Gord Burke
embraces his daughter; bunny ears; Sarah
in pink mitts with her sister Anna and Gord;
Sarah with her mom, Jan.
Burke winning life and another Winter
X Games SuperPipe gold medal.
PHOTO: CHRISTIAN PONDELLA
PHOTOS: COURTESY OF BURKE FAMILY ARCHIVE
Anna Phelan
SARAH’S SISTER
inter in Midland, a small town at the south
end of Georgian Bay, is typical of most of
Central Canada’s lake country: cold, snowy,
and longer than most groundhogs wished. Like
other Canadian kids, Sarah embraced the outdoor activities
of the brumal season and even declared a desire to go to the
Olympics—as a figure skater. She first felt the muscular grip
of ski boots at age 5, but it would be awhile before the gears
began to turn on her future career.
“When Sarah was young, we didn’t ski a lot,” Gord told
an interviewer working
on the CBC documentary
Fearless in the wake of
her death. “Just for a
school break…as well as
night-skiing at the hill we
lived just a few minutes
from. She was about 11
when her mom and I split
up, and I was looking for
something that would
keep her occupied and
happy, so we did a bit more skiing at that point.”
Horseshoe Valley Ski Resort isn’t big—just 350 vertical
feet—but it’s long been a hub in the Southern Ontario freestyle ski scene. Burke grew up following her father through
the same ferocious bumps I trekked north from Toronto on
weekends to tackle in the original hot dog days. Taking up the
challenge, she began competing in moguls and, with trademark determination, made the Ontario freestyle team by 17.
“I was fortunate that I could take the time off and drive Sarah
and her friends,” Gord recalled. “We’d all stay in hotels and
they’d go compete, and it was just great to be with them all.”
By the time Sarah stomped an unheralded 720 for a
comeback victory in the inaugural 2003 WX Games women’s
SuperPipe, I’d been writing about her for years. As with
many in the early freeski milieu, she was good in the bumps
but had a penchant for air. “I first met her when she was 14,”
says Douglas, her original coach at John Smart’s Momentum
Ski Camps (formerly SMS) on Whistler/Blackcomb’s Horstman Glacier. “The biggest thing I remember is her smile.
She had presence. But I could also see she was talented—
good in moguls but better in the air. She wanted to fly.”
Her first major win came at the 2001 U.S. Open of
Freeskiing in Vail, at the tender age of 18. Her good looks
and masterful skills
landed her in magazines,
movies, and ads, adorning billboards from Los
Angeles to Tokyo. With
major sponsors and
comps around the world,
she lived the jetsetter
life of an international
fashion model. The difference being, she had
to keep up the athletic
performance. In addition to film and photo shoots on every
continent, she had to appear in as many contests as possible, attend industry expression-sessions like Superpark,
invest time in training and learning new tricks. After a
short turn in the New School limelight, Burke’s wide-eyed
innocence shifted slightly.
“When I first started, every opportunity seemed exciting,
and I was all ‘send me anywhere and everywhere,’” she once
told me. “But I’d hear all these other pros saying ‘Nahhh,
like, I don’t want to go there,’ and I couldn’t believe they
were being so negative. But after a solid year traveling, I
realized it was important to have more than two nights a
month at home.”
“We used to go skiing with
the Burke side of the family
in Upper Michigan. She
would just take off into
the trees with her little
poles, totally fearless,
even though she was only
7 and I was 14. Of course
I was watching her and
didn’t notice this big bump,
causing me to crash on
my face. And she skis up,
pointing at me laughing…
The last time my boys and
I got to see her, she was in
Colorado for a contest. She
showed up at my house
late in the evening, gave
me a kiss, and immediately
went and wrestled with the
boys and played Legos. My
boys just loved their Auntie
Sarah. Cole [Burke’s 7-yearold nephew] wants to make
a memory poster of his
aunt, and we’re gonna do
it together as a family. She
worked so hard to make
everyone else’s life a joy.”
Jessica
Vander Kooij
HIGH SCHOOL FRIEND
When you meet those
people that are welltraveled, they teach you
so much. In high school,
she went to Japan, and I
remember she came back
and introduced me to
sushi for the first time.
Even when she was on the
road, she’d send me these
e-mails, telling me not to
laugh at her because she
was going to buy a sewing
machine so she could be a
fashion designer. ... That
girl made quite the effort
all the time, even with her
hectic schedule. I learned
so much from Sarah all
the time.”
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COURTESY OF CANADIAN SKI HALFPIPE TEAM
Present at every comp, Trennon Paynter
and Burke shared a close bond.
COURTESY OF GORD BURKE
Burke atop one of four
Winter X podiums.
When Burke moved to Mammoth, she finally
had the venue to evolve her strength.
TIM SCHUETZ
COURTESY OF GORD BURKE
PHOTO: CHRISTIAN PONDELLA
Burke was a Winter X star as a
skier and reporter for ESPN.
Burke’s nephews, Damon (4) and Cole (7),
were her biggest fans.
That realization prompted a move to
sleepy Mammoth Lakes, California, which
had a longer season, better weather, and
more reliable park than Ontario. It was a
good place to chill and train, away from the
hectic Whistler scene. In Mammoth, she
upped her game while enjoying the battle
for female supremacy with Kristi Leskinen,
who became a close friend.
After an up-and-down 2002 campaign
in which the focus of competition shifted
from big air and slopestyle to halfpipe,
she’d battled back in 2003, winning virtually every comp and topping the Global X
Games SuperPipe podium, her ever-smiling
face three-stories high on the Jumbotron.
It seemed a fitting acme at the time (though
really only the beginning) for the woman
almost wholly responsible for ESPN’s
capitulation to include women’s pipe. But
the then 20 year old had little taste for
media attention. At the bottom of the pipe,
she was far more interested in having me
photograph her with her mother and sister
than wading into the phalanx of network
cameras and microphones.
Blake Jorgenson
PHOTOGRAPHER
“I looked at spending time
with Sarah as a privilege
more than work. I was
always inspired by how she
was able to be so dedicated
to skiing but always put
fun and friendship first.
Sarah consistently had
energy for other people,
regardless of the situation, which always uplifted
me. There was never any
pressure to produce or
perform around Sarah;
only to be a good person and laugh lots. She
reminded me of the right
reasons to be a skier and a
photographer.”
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Perhaps Burke’s most direct impact was on
the kids at Momentum Ski Camps.
Bushy and Burkey never took themselves
seriously together, especially on “Rory
Adventures,” which included Bushfield
proposing to Burke by flying over a “Marry Me
Sarah!” note he’d written in the snow.
COURTESY OF MOMENTUM SKI CAMPS
PHOTO: TRENNON PAYNTER
TIM SCHUETZ
Burke’s sister, Anna, would
often return to Midland and
“do her hair and makeup for
proms and dances.”
COURTESY OF KRISTI LESKINEN
The women who made
female park and pipe skiing
legitimate, Kristi Leskinen,
Burke, and Grete Eliassen.
BLAKE JORGENSON
“The image I think of most is her on
our wedding day,” says Bushfield.
“When I first saw her, she looked so
beautiful. It was hard not to cry.”
Sarah would eventually grace every podium in women’s pipe skiing. Her crowning
achievements were an F.I.S. World Championship in 2005 and four Winter X Games
SuperPipe gold medals (2007, 2008, 2009,
2011). She was honored, fêted, and elevated
in every way—a plethora of film segments
and magazine profiles; the first skier to win
an ESPY (of which she remained proudest)—and even a few “hot lists” in magazines like FHM and People.
Despite the apparent élan of her accomplishments, it wasn’t always easy: She’d
battled back from crashes and injuries with
verve, particularly a broken vertebrae suffered in a sickening crash at the 2009 WX
Games Slopestyle. After a year of physical
therapy, Paynter had worried whether she
could regain her mental composure. He
needn’t have: The first woman to land a
720, 900, and 1080 in competition had no
intention of holding back and, as usual, also
had something lurking in her back pocket.
Sarah’s final run at the 2010 WX Games
Slopestyle virtually defined the concepts of
pro and, dare I say, balls.
“Are you going to try the 900 again?”
Paynter had asked tentatively.
“No, I’m gonna do a 1260,” Sarah said,
smiling, referring to a trick no woman had
ever attempted in competition. She was
known as a practical joker (see Scarah.com
for a sample), but this was no prank. She
threw the 1260—on the same hit on which
she’d broken her back the previous year—
and though she slid out on the landing,
there was triumph in even attempting it.
Amber Amin
MOMENTUM SKI
CAMPS CAMPER
“I went during Girls Week,
and the day Sarah was
coaching me, she started
off the session by telling
us that we should never let
the boys cut us off or make
us feel inferior or that
we don’t belong. She is a
symbol of female empowerment, and will forever
serve as an inspiration
to women in the skiing
world. She had so much
patience for my cautiousness and shared in my
triumphs when nailing
new tricks. The patience,
persistence, encouragement, and enthusiasm
displayed by an athlete
as advanced as she was,
while coaching a humble
beginner, is a testament to
her passion for sharing the
sport with others.”
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Rory Bushfield
HUSBAND
“I really don’t like talking
about those first few days
or weeks in the hospital.
It’s the darkest time of
my life. I was mad that
skiing took Sarah from us
and me, for sure. But that
would be the last thing
Sarah would ever want.
She loved skiing.
John Smart
MOMENTUM SKI
CAMPS DIRECTOR
he fuss in Whistler, of course, was not about
the prodigious achievements of an exceptional
athlete, but the generosity of spirit of an exceptional person. The kind who uplifted everything
she touched and everyone she met with energy, positivity,
and patience, a radiance that continued even in death. It
was less like one of the brightest lights ever to grace skiing had been extinguished
than a solar flare had just
exploded. It burned in the
emotional outpourings of
tens of thousands of fans,
the rallying of the tightknit global skiing community, and in the support
offered to Burke’s family
and husband when it was
revealed that none of the
professional skier’s several
medical insurance coverages had been operative
at the time of her out-ofcountry accident.
With the family possibly on the hook for hundreds of thousands of dollars, her
despairing agent, Michael Spencer, created a GiveForward.
com page for Sarah with no idea what might happen. The
response was instant and overwhelming: The famous and
infamous, friends and strangers, the rich and the destitute,
anonymous ski bums and whole families, who admired her
as a role model, gave anywhere from thousands of dollars
to the change in their pockets. In the six weeks the site was
open, it raised well over $300,000—enough for Burke’s
medical bills and the Whistler life-celebration. Altogether,
it made the case for what some pundits will argue: Sarah
Burke was the most influential female skier ever.
“She’s been a superstar her whole life,” Gord said at
the Whistler celebration, “but I’ve never been more proud
of anything than for the
kindness she showed other
people.” He went on to describe the time he brought a
teenaged Sarah to Whistler,
and she used spending
money he gave her to buy
a souvenir T-shirt for him.
He wore it, now faded and
torn, at the memorial.
In Bushfield’s speech,
his first public words since
losing the woman he met
as a teen mogul skier, kindness was also the theme.
One anecdote recounted a
day when the pair had been
in a hurry to catch a flight after Burke’s Jeep wouldn’t start.
Bushfield quickly repacked everything into another vehicle,
then couldn’t find Sarah. “I’m looking around and there she
is in the ditch,” he said, “with a kid from the street who has
Down’s syndrome and is always concerned with keeping
water moving through the ditch. She says to me, ‘Hold on a
second—we’re clearing the ditch here!’”
“She was with us for 15
years and never missed a
year. Even when she was
injured, she came up and
coached; she loved the
camp scene and loved the
energy of kids. It was never
a chore or unnatural for her
the way it is for some. The
last few years, it was tough
for her flying to New York
and stuff, but she always
made it back to coach for at
least a week. With the Canadian Ski Halfpipe Team
training on our features,
she was there more of the
summer and would just
take time out to coach.”
Kristi Leskinen
FRIEND AND PRO SKIER
SOURCE: FEARLESS
“Sarah was a leader. Not
many people have the
strength to persevere
through the fight that she
went through for years to
get the sport where it is.
It’s really difficult to stay
motivated when so many
people are telling you, ‘no,’
and ‘you can’t’ and ‘no
girls, sorry.’”
Always one to go big on and off the
slopes, Burke sends one deep en route
to her ultimate goal, appearing and
winning the 2014 Winter Olympics.
PHOTO: NATE ABBOTT
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Rory Bushfield
HUSBAND
“Your memory will live on in what you stood
for: Live, laugh, love, but mainly...dance,” said
Elsa Hamel-Robert of her close friend during
the public Whistler Village Square memorial.
PHOTO: BLAKE JORGENSON
Burke loved cheese, fashion, and dancing.
And pow, especially while filming for MSP
Films’ 2007 release, Seven Sunny Days.
PHOTO: IAN COBLE/MSP
Among a blizzard of defining moments I’d witnessed,
the surreal scene at the 2001 Core Games in Naeba, Japan,
will always seem most prophetic. Steered into the cavernous Prince Hotel by games officials and savvy PR flacks,
past young admirers bowing ceremoniously and hissing
“It’s her!” the young woman was seated at a table while
reporters closed in. Rolling with the absurdity
like a pro, Sarah lit up
the room with her most
innocent 18-year-old
smile and laugh, deflating
the tension and putting
everyone at ease.
A cynic might say the
cameras loved Sarah for
both cachet and cliché:
preternaturally cute,
blond, North American,
a warrior hero as an
anomaly in the boy-band
progressive freestyle
movement. But the reality
was that she earned every iota of attention paid her. That
morning in Japan, in fact, she stunned the crowd with
ridiculous airs on a massive, notched quarterpipe. The
follow-up media event in the Prince Hotel was a staged
conversation with Japanese freestyler Tomoko Kojima, the
sole other female participant. The topic was women and
jumping, and the fact that at this point both were forced to
compete with men. Sarah held forth on her personal mission to change that.
“I love competing with the guys,” she’d responded to one
translation. “It’s fun being the lone girl that gets all the
attention but frustrating when you can’t get into a competition simply because you’re female—when all they’ll let you
do is forerun. I’m looking forward to competing with all the
girls coming up through the ranks.”
She’d stated her intention to enter as many comps as
possible the following season, not only to push herself
forward but to pull in other women as well. “I really want
to get some girls’ categories happening out there,” she
summarized. As the world would soon see, this wasn’t just
wishful thinking. The inclusion of ski halfpipe in the 2014
Winter Olympic Games was Sarah’s longtime dream, so she
was rightly ecstatic when the International Olympic Committee announced its acceptance in April 2011.
When she told the 29-year-old Paynter she wanted to
be on his Alberta freestyle team in 2005, he was shocked
since Sarah wasn’t an Alberta native, and it was rare for
established pros to associate with programs or
coaches at the time, he
says. “At the [2005 F.I.S.
World Championships] in
Finland, I was shy about
asking her if she wanted
me to coach her, too, because she was already the
best in the world,” he said.
“But I asked and she said,
‘Hell yeah!’ So I did, she
won, and wrote me a nice
thank you letter.”
Burke became unstoppable and would have been
the favorite at the 2012
WX Games. But it was not to be. The impact of her death
in January, on the very community she helped foster, was
exacerbated by the fact that Winter X opened four days
later. Longtime friend Jeff Schmuck of Newschoolers.com
put the titanic deflation into perspective: “Jen Hudak [2010
WX SuperPipe gold medalist] asked me, ‘If X Games was
cancelled would you care?’ I said no.”
Of course that kind of backing out was something Burke
wouldn’t have tolerated for a second, and the ability of
athletes to carry on in the face of her death spoke to the
maturation of a community that 10 years ago could never
have handled such a crisis. “It was made easier [for them]
because they knew in their hearts that Sarah would want
them to charge harder and not second-guess themselves,”
says Schmuck.
Canadian teammate Roz Groenwood, a one-time Momentum camper coached by Sarah, won her first Winter
X gold at the event with the highest score in women’s
SuperPipe history. “I just tried to let all of that love lift me
up,” she said after the win. “I definitely felt like I had Sarah
with me.”
“I’m sad everyday with
the realization she’s not
physically sitting next to
me. The magnitude of it
is hard to fathom. I dread
going home. Wherever we
were going, Sarah had an
incredible plan. Knowing
that she had a plan for us
was such a relief for me.
Realizing I don’t have that
plan anymore…it’s tough.”
Ingrid Backstrom
FRIEND AND PRO SKIER
“We were always together
during the Matchstick
movie tours, shopping in
New York and other places
and having dance contests.
We’d show up in a new town
and go out dancing, and
Sarah always made the party, even after eight straight
days of movie premieres.
We’d drive from town to
town, and she’d play her
Little Mermaid DVDs and
the next thing you know,
we’d all be singing along to
Little Mermaid while Rory
would be sling-shotting
grapes at people in the car.”
Jeff Schmuck
FRIEND AND
MANAGING EDITOR OF
NEWSCHOOLERS.COM
“We were all heartbroken,
but I don’t think anyone
was prepared for how emotional [WX Games] would
be. We knew ESPN was
going to do a tribute, but
all we were told was that it
was going to be a candlelight vigil. When it started,
we thought it was just
going to be a few people
coming down the pipe, but
it was so many more.
107
Rory Bushfield
HUSBAND
I feel like she gives me signs all the time. I can
feel her. I’ll be out in the ocean surfing and I’ll be
like, ‘Sarah, c’mon. Is there a set coming?’ I have a
guardian angel. Sarah would not want us to be sad
or for me to be moping around. She’d carry on. I
never even considered this could happen because
she was always so tough and all the crashes she
took. It’s so unfathomable. We lost our star.
t’s surprisingly difficult to end this story,
to stop talking about Sarah. Ultimately, I
suppose, I could tell you that she liked cheese
(“It’s kind of my thing,” she told a reporter
last summer); she bought ice cream for discouraged campers; and Bushfield proposed by writing
“Marry me Sarah!” in the snow and flying her over
it in his plane. But in the end, those are details
when it’s the big picture that counts. No one will
ever forget Sarah Burke, and perhaps the most
resonant note on that was sounded by childhood
friend Andrew Goatcher, who used his time at the
microphone at the public memorial in Whistler to
thank her for all the things for which he’d never
had the opportunity: for teaching him that girls
were tough and what real determination was; for
being a prankster partner-in-crime when they
were schoolmates; for introducing him to Rory;
and for all the fun. He finished with something he’d
overheard that he felt not only perfectly summed
up his own lifelong friendship but the wild ride
we’d all been on with the woman who captured the
imagination of a worldwide fraternity, inspiring an
entire generation of skiers and non-skiers.
“Nothing will be the same without her,” he said,
looking out over the sea of faces illuminated by
thousands of flickering candles, “but everything is
better because of her.”
PORTRAIT: COLE BARASH
PHOTO: BLAKE JORGENSON
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