Jimmie Heuga (PolSci’73)

Former CU-Boulder skier and Olympic bronze medalist Jimmie Heuga (PolSci’73) passed away Feb. 8, 46 years to the day he won one of the first two medals in United States men’s Olympic ski team history. He was 66.

Diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 1970, he courageously fought the disease for almost four decades.

During the1964 Winter Olympics at Innsbruck, Austria, he won the bronze medal in slalom. The U.S. team coach was Bob Beattie, also head coach of the CU ski team, and Heuga was one of four CU skiers on the U.S. squad, along with Billy Kidd (Econ’69) who won the silver in the slalom, Buddy Werner (A&S’64) and Bill Marolt (Bus’67). This group is largely credited with elevating U.S. skiing in the international community.

Kidd notes that Heuga passed away in Boulder shortly after 1 p.m., which was ironic because the slalom on Feb. 8, 1964, commenced at 1 p.m. At the start, Heuga was in the 24th position.

“I’ll always remember that day, the excitement when we found out we finished 2-3 behind [Josef] Stiegler [of Austria],” Kidd recalls. “Only our parents and Bob Beattie thought we had a chance to win a medal.”

Born Sept. 22, 1943, in Tahoe City, Calif., Heuga took to skis right away. He appeared in a Warren Miller ski film when he was nine. In 1958, at 15, he was named to the U.S. Ski Team. He remains the youngest man ever on its roster.

At age 17 he performed well at the 1959 U.S. Olympic Trials but was not selected for lack of experience. Undeterred, he traveled with the team to Europe for pre-Olympic training and gained valuable experience racing against Europe’s best.

A three-time CU letterman, Heuga was the 1963 NCAA champion in slalom. He also was on two championship U.S. Ski Teams (1962, 1966).

Heuga skied in the 1968 Winter Olympics at Grenoble, France, before retiring to coach. He was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1976, the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1987, the CU Athletic Hall of Fame in 2000 and the World Sports Humanitarian Hall of Fame in 2008.

In 1983 he founded the Jimmie Heuga Center for Multiple Sclerosis in Edwards, Colo., offering physical conditioning and consulting services for people with disabilities and personal challenges. Today it is called Can Do Multiple Sclerosis and has had a profound effect on many people’s lives.

Later in Heuga’s life, CU ski coach Richard Rokos became his personal coach and Heuga did laps around CU’s track on a specially crafted three-wheeler that cyclist and friend Tyler Hamilton (Econ ex’95) helped acquire.

Despite his MS affliction, Heuga said he “skied aggressively” until he was 63 and attended two or three CU football games every season.

Marolt, who met Heuga when they were 13, remembers him as a tough guy who impacted everyone around him.

“He was this little guy who was full of energy and buzzing around all the time,” he says, “whether it was the slalom, dancing the twist at the Tul [Tulagi, a famous Boulder student hangout] or simply life in general.”

Dave Plati (Jour’82) is the associate athletic director and head of sports information.

Jumping off cliffs is the easy part for Chris Anthony (Kines’90).

The hard part for the extreme skier, who has been featured in the past 20 Warren Miller films, is getting to the cliffs. To film the spectacular segments in Miller’s movies, Anthony has taken some long, strange trips around the world — white-knuckle flights in rattletrap Russian Army helicopters over Iran and three-day slogs behind horses through belly-deep snow in the remote reaches of northwestern China.

On location, it’s not unusual for him to wait days for the right weather and snow conditions or to do a dozen takes to get a few seconds of usable footage. During one shoot, it took 18 days to capture eight minutes of film.

“A lot of those shots don’t come easy,” he says. “It’s a lot more work than anyone would imagine.”

But it’s work he loves and has parlayed into successful endeavors in film and television production and running a series of adventure ski camps in Colorado, Alaska, Chile and Italy.

He’s also focused his efforts on raising money for various charities and nonprofits, many aimed at providing wilderness experiences for underprivileged children. Over the past five years, he’s raised more than $1 million.

Making reel tracks

Chris Anthony (Kines’90) has been in 20 Warren Miller films, which have brought him to some of the world’s most isolated areas in search of untracked powder. Check out a preview of Anthony in Dynasty.

Anthony’s career path started in the late 1980s at CU where he came to ski for the Buffs. The Colorado native had been on skis since age 1 and competed throughout his youth. But at CU, when the team’s regular training mountain at Eldora was unavailable for a season, it forced daily commutes to Loveland. Anthony decided he was missing too much of the campus experience and left the team. Professor Stan Brakhage’s film class was one of the things that filled the void.

“It opened my eyes to a whole other area of interest,” he says. “I fell in love with the filmmaking process.”

It wouldn’t be long before he combined his interests in skiing and film. At an all-mountain pro-am competition in 1990, Anthony found himself competing for the top spot against Mike Farny (Rec’86), a former CU ski coach who had worked for Warren Miller. After the competition, Farny recommended Anthony to Miller’s production team, and Anthony headed for Europe during CU finals week to shoot his first film, Extreme Winter. Farny also gave him some sound advice.

“There were thousands of great skiers willing to do crazy things,” he says. “He told me it wasn’t all about athletic prowess but how hard you worked on all aspects of the process.”

The process included being part of the crew, which meant schlepping equipment, learning the production values that make Miller’s films the gold standard for ski movies and considering a film from both sides of the camera.

“You’ve got to leave your ego behind,” he says. “It’s about the bigger picture of what you’re trying to accomplish, to bring back to the editing room and to the audience in the long run.”

Anthony’s understanding of the bigger picture is a tremendous asset, says Max Bervy (Rec’85), the managing director of Warren Miller Entertainment and executive producer and director of the annual film.

“We aren’t interested in filming knuckleheads with Kodak courage,” he says. “Chris has a gift for making things look exciting. He nails the mark every time and has an aggressive style.

“Chris understands what makes a good shot and gets his arms around what the cameraman is looking for before he drops in. This creates a very efficient use of film,” Bervy says. “He’s our go-to guy for a lot of things.”

Promoting an ancient sport

Last year’s film, Dynasty, was as challenging as any in Anthony’s 20-year run with Warren Miller. It took a three-day trek with horses to reach the remote filming location in northwest China, where there are petroglyphs suggesting Mongolian tribes were skiing 3,000 years ago. Once there, Anthony and the crew found locals whose equipment — handmade wood skis with horsehair on the bottom — hadn’t changed much since the days of the petroglyphs. But that doesn’t mean they’re primitive, he says.

“The shape and cut of their skis is what’s popular now,” he says. “There’s a lot to learn from these guys.”

The scenes got a good reception from die-hard Warren Miller fans at screenings in the fall. The films are a harbinger of ski season, with raucous crowds of regulars who turn the showings into an event every year. Anthony started attending as a kid when Miller himself was still making the rounds as emcee.

“It was such an amazing experience to be going to these films, seeing Warren Miller and seeing some of the athletes,” he says.

As Miller slowed down and limited personal appearances, Anthony picked up the baton. Despite his initial shyness in front of crowds, he volunteered to host screenings so he could bring audiences the same experience he had as a kid. Now in his 13th year as emcee, he makes up to 70 appearances annually from Europe to Australia, touting the films to about 100,000 people each year. The most enthusiastic crowds are closest to home at the Boulder Theater and Denver’s Paramount, he says.

“He’s a PR animal,” says Josh Haskins (Film ex’99), who has overseen the production process for Warren Miller Entertainment for the past decade. “Chris is an amazing promoter for the films.”

Haskins says Anthony is a triple threat: a remarkable skier on film, a tireless promoter of the Warren Miller brand and a fount of creative ideas.

“His personality and persistence bring us unique opportunities,” Haskins says.

When he’s not on location for Warren Miller Entertainment films or teaching skiing, Chris Anthony (Kines’90) serves as ambassador for Colorado’s popular Fifth-Grade Passport program, aimed at getting kids into skiing.

Carving out a snowy niche

Working on the films led Anthony back to competitive skiing. At the first World Extreme Skiing Championships in 1992, before there were qualifying events, competitors were invited based in part on their work in films. Anthony competed on the tour for nearly a decade, winning the Alaskan Extreme Skiing Championships in 1996.

The connections he’s made through the films and the extreme ski competitions also have taken him down another path. He leads Chris Anthony Adventures, which offers ski camps for expert and intermediate skiers. Anthony divides his time among camps at the Park Hyatt in Beaver Creek, Colo., helicopter skiing in Alaska’s Chugach Range and the “Wine and Dine Tour with a Skiing Problem” in northeastern Italy. He also coaches at the “Camp of the Superstars” each August in Portillo, Chile, founded by CU alumni Chris Davenport (Hist’93) and the late Shane McConkey (A&S ex’91).

The success means more demands on his time, but Anthony has been able to strike a nice balance. In the off-season he focuses on his charity and nonprofit work. He’s been the ambassador for Colorado’s popular Fifth-Grade Passport program, aimed at getting kids into skiing. He also works with The Children’s Hospital Denver sports program and SOS Outreach, which gets underprivileged children out of the city and into the mountains.

“Hopefully, some of these kids will look at the world a little differently,” he says.

The common thread for Anthony over the past two decades has been the Warren Miller films. While he feels he can continue to be an asset to the productions, both behind and in front of the cameras, past success does not guarantee future employment. The notoriously secretive production team plays its cards close to the vest, even with a veteran team member like Anthony when it comes to planning for the next film.

“I’ll wait by the phone — just like the rookies do,” he says.

Ken McConnellogue (Jour’90) skis as many days as possible when not working as the CU system’s associate vice president for university relations. But he says he avoids cliffs.

Billy Kidd (Econ’69) enjoys fresh powder on the slopes of Steamboat Ski Area in Colorado.

Skiing down the mountain at Steamboat Ski Area with former Olympic racer Billy Kidd (Econ’69) is no fast feat. There’s the woman in her mid-70s who schusses over to take a photo and to invite him to cruise with her ski club. Then, two elementary school girls wearing admiration in their eyes tag along for tips on how to become future Olympians. A middle-aged dad rides up on a snowboard with his son, hoping to snap a photo. Kidd’s signature Stetson cowboy hat spins heads right and left.

And this is only the first run of the day.

Bearing an iconic Western name, it’s no wonder the Vermont native was scooped up in 1970 by Steamboat Springs, an old ranching town looking for star power to develop a major ski area. Six years earlier Kidd, along with Jimmie Heuga (Pol
Sci’73) became the first American skiers to medal in the Olympics. Wasting no time, he settled into his tenure as director of skiing, a position he still holds.

Nearly four decades later, Kidd’s legend has grown as he has skied his way around the world hosting clinics, writing books on ski racing, designing signature skis and calling races for CBS Sports. Planting his poles wide to pose with a grin, it’s obvious Kidd still adores interaction with his fans. Part of his job includes making a daily 1 p.m. run from the top of the gondola with anyone who cares to join him.

“I figure any year now I’ve got to get a real job,” he says.

Kidd says it’s all a dream come true – and his genuine passion for skiing has driven him to spread his love and inspiration with everyone from Special Olympians to Ute Indian schoolkids.

It’s not about the skis

He learned early that his story wasn’t only about skiing. He recalls a Boston ski show in the early 1970s when someone asked him to speak at an inner city school.

“I thought it wasn’t fair to go down and talk to these kids about skiing because skiing is a rich man’s sport unless you grew up in a little town in Vermont like I did, where you can ski in your backyard,” he says. “These kids, they can’t really dream about skiing.”

Reluctantly, Kidd went to the assembly. He told stories about the Olympics, skiing and growing up in Vermont — where he made a ski rack for his bicycle and wrapped rope around the wheels to be able to bike to the slopes after school. He told them about learning to ski without lifts, remembering the slope in Burlington he’d climb up to ski down before his family uprooted to Stowe, Vt., in order to nurture their aspiring ski racer.

Billy Kidd (Econ’69), left, CU coach Bob Beattie, center, and Jimmie Heuga (PolSci’73), right, celebrate at the finish line of the 1964 Olympic slalom course in Innsbruck, Austria.

Fifteen years later a young man introduced himself to Kidd at another program in Boston Commons. As a child, he’d been awestruck by Kidd’s speech. He’d spent years saving his snow shoveling money to learn how to ski, and now, he proudly told Kidd, he was a ski instructor.

“It just showed me these impossible dreams,” Kidd says, “but it was similar to me when I was growing up in Vermont dreaming about the Olympics and American men hadn’t won medals before.”

Skiing into the Special Olympics

Over the years, he has realized other far-reaching dreams like helping start the winter version of the Special Olympics, nurturing ski programs for wounded military vets and establishing ski camps for Ute Indian youth.

“If there’s an icon in the ski industry you could ever imagine working with, he’s right up there,” says Steamboat Ski Area public relations director Mike Lane, who has traveled the world marveling at Kidd’s magic for the past 14 years. “He loves skiing, and I think people see that whether it’s their first time skiing or they’re 70 years old. He takes the time to talk to folks and make them feel like they’re the only person on the hill that day. It’s amazing the impact he’s had on the world of skiing. He’s done something a lot of athletes haven’t been able to do.”

When Kidd initially went to Washington, D.C., to talk to the Kennedy Foundation about creating a winter Special Olympics, he faced a lot of skeptics.

“The reaction of a lot of people was Special Olympics athletes could swim the length of the pool or they could run the 100-yard dash, but they couldn’t do something as complicated as skiing,” he says.

But Kidd’s persistence won out, and in 1977 the first Special Olympics World Winter Games came home with him to Steamboat Springs. Kidd has been nurturing Special Olympics athletes and events ever since.

“It was the beginning of the learning curve,” Kidd says, as clinics for skiers with disabilities started emerging all over the world. “What we realized with Special Olympians is they learned how to ski more quickly than the regular people who came through ski school. They’re not distracted by who is watching them on the lift or whether their gloves match their outfit.”

Pole planting on sacred grounds

During the same years, Kidd served on the President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports. This led to an experimental session in teaching wounded Vietnam vets to ski — the beginning of a long tradition of national ski camps for vets, including those from current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Former CU skiers and Olympians Billy Kidd (Econ’69) and Sandy Shellworth Hildner (A&S’67) catch up before participating in the parade during the 2008 fall Homecoming, which honored CU and Boulder County Olympians in its theme “Go for the Gold.” Hildner skied on the CU men’s team since there was no women’s team.

Before long Kidd joined forces with 1968 Olympic teammate Suzy Chaffee to introduce skiing to Native American children. Kidd, who is part Abenaki (a northeastern tribe), worked with the Ute Tribal Council in Utah to develop a program he calls the Ute Future Olympians.

“The idea is . . . to get these kids back to their ancestral grounds because, as you know, the Ute Indians lived in the valleys of Steamboat, Aspen, Vail and Telluride,” Kidd says. “These were their homelands. We invite them to come back and learn how to ski and snowboard.”

More than 200 Ute students have since skied Steamboat with Kidd. It’s become an incentive for good work in school, spurred by an essay contest asking students what they can do to give back to their community, their school, their family and their tribe.

Kidd himself could write a novel on giving back. His lifelong friends say he’s mentally tough, close to the chest and deeply thoughtful. Olympic and CU teammate Heuga remembers a typical scenario of waiting on the team bus while Kidd meandered down the street with a camera intently looking at the local sights. It’s the same curiosity that has led Kidd in pursuit of the history of his famous forefather, 17th century pirate Capt. William Kidd.

“He’s always had this wonderful curiosity about every place he’s ever gone to,” Heuga says. “He’s very much true to himself. In many ways he’s never changed, and that has been his strength.”

Jennie Lay (MJour’05) is a freelance journalist based in Steamboat Springs.