Gretchen Fraser
| Personal information | ||||||||||||||||
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| Birth name | Gretchen Kunigk | |||||||||||||||
| Born |
February 11, 1919 Tacoma, Washington |
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| Died | February 17, 1994 (aged 75) Sun Valley, Idaho |
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| Height | 5 ft 4 in (1.63 m) | |||||||||||||||
| Weight | 117 lb (53 kg) | |||||||||||||||
| Sport | ||||||||||||||||
| Sport | Alpine skiing | |||||||||||||||
| Retired | 1948 (age 29) | |||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Gretchen Kunigk Fraser (February 11, 1919 – February 17, 1994) was an alpine ski racer. She was the first American to win an Olympic gold medal in skiing. She was also the skiing stand-in for ice skater Sonja Henie in the movies Thin Ice (1937) and Sun Valley Serenade (1941).
Gretchen Kunigk was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1919. She was the daughter of German and Norwegian immigrants, Willibald and Clara Kunigk. Her Norwegian-born mother was a skier and Gretchen first skied at age 13, at Paradise Valley on the south slopes of Mount Rainier in December 1932. Under the tutelage of Otto Lang she became a proficient ski racer and later competed on the ski team at the University of Puget Sound.
In 1938, she traveled to Sun Valley to compete in the second Harriman Cup, a new international event featuring the best racers in the world. She met 1936 Olympian and Northwest ski champion Donald Fraser (1913-1994) of the University of Washington on the train trip to central Idaho. They were married in November, 1939 . Sun Valley became their home.
Both Frasers were members of the 1940 Olympic team, games that were cancelled due to World War II. She spent the war years skiing in Otto Lang's military training films and helping to rehabilitate wounded and disabled veterans through skiing, setting the stage for a lifelong commitment to working with disabled skiers.
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