Dick Durrance
| — Alpine skier ♂ — | |
| Disciplines |
Downhill, Giant Slalom, Slalom, Combined |
|---|---|
| Club |
Sun Valley Dartmouth College |
| Born |
October 23, 1914 Tarpon Springs, Florida, U.S. |
| Died | June 13, 2004 (aged 89) Carbondale, Colorado, U.S. |
| Olympics | |
| Teams | 2 – (1936, 1940 (cancelled)) |
| Medals | 0 |
Richard "Dick" Henry Durrance (October 23, 1914 – June 13, 2004) was a 17-time national championship alpine ski racer and one of the first Americans to compete successfully against Europeans.
Durrance was born in Tarpon Springs, Florida, and moved with his family at age 13 in 1928 to Munich, Germany, where he learned to ski at nearby Garmisch-Partenkirchen. Durrance raced competitively in Germany and won the German Junior Alpine Championship in 1932 at age 17. The following year, he learned the newly developed parallel turn from Anton Seelos.
With the rise of Hitler, the family returned to the United States and he attended Dartmouth College in 1934 and won at Sestriere, Italy, the first American to dominate at a major European ski race. Durrance also won the U.S. men's downhill, slalom, and combined events in 1937 and was named to the U.S. Olympic Team for the 1936 Winter Olympics, the first to include alpine skiing. The only medal event was the combined and Durrance finished tenth; eleventh in the downhill portion and eighth in the slalom. He was a three-time winner of the Harriman Cup in Sun Valley, Idaho, then held in the Boulder Mountains north of the resort, and helped cut the original trails on its Bald Mountain in the summer of 1939. Durrance was named to the 1940 Olympic team, but those games were cancelled due to World War II. In 1940, he worked as publicity photographer for Sun Valley and married ski racer Margaret "Miggs" Jennings.
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