Dick Durrance

Who was Dick Durrance?

Richard "Dick" Henry Durrance, Jr. was a 17-time national championship skier and one of the first American skiers to compete successfully with European skiers.

Dick Durrance was born in Tarpon Springs, Florida and moved with his family to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany in 1928, where he learned to ski. In Germany, Durrance skied competitively, winning the German Junior Alpine Championship in 1932 at age 17. With the rise of Hitler the family returned to the United States. 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 Alpine combined events in 1937 and was named to the U.S. Olympic Team for the 1936 Winter Olympics. After finishing eleventh in the downhill and eighth in the slalom he placed tenth in the Olympic combined event. He was a three time winner of the Harriman Cup in Sun Valley and helped cut the original trails on Bald Mountain in the summer of 1939. He 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.