Jimmie Heuga Memoriam Video

Skiier, Activist. He and Billy Kidd were the first two American Olympic skiing medalists. Heuga took Bronze in the slalom at the 1964 Winter Games at Innsbruck, Austria, while Kidd won Silver in the same event. Raised in Squaw Valley, Ca where his father ran the ski lift. Like myself he learned to ski as a child. He won the 1963 NCAA title while a student at the University of Colorado, and was named to the 1964 Olympic squad. Although the Gold eluded both Heuga and Kidd at Innsbruck, their victories marked a breakthrough for the US and put both on the cover of "Sports Illustrated". Heuga slipped to seventh in the 1968 Grenoble Games; by then he was showing early signs of the neurological deterioration that would later be diagnosed as Multiple Sclerosis in 1970. Heuga had lived for decades with the chronic disease. In 1984 he founded the Jimmie Heuga Center for Multiple Sclerosis now called "Can Do Multiple Sclerosis" in Edwards, Colorado. Heuga's honors were several: he was elected to the United States National Ski Hall of Fame in 1976, to the Colorado Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000, and to the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame in 2008. Eventually confined to a wheelchair, he often used a sit ski. At his death he had resided since 1999 in a Boulder, CO assisted living facility. Heuga's death on February 8th came exactly 46 years after he won his medal at Innsbruck. I'm taking that strange coincidence as a reminder that old Olympic stories deserve as much attention as the new ones.

Birth: Sep. 23, 1943
Tahoe City, Ca

Death: Feb. 8, 2010
Boulder, Colorado

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