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PrintGoing for the Gusto
Jackson Hole boasts a talented legacy of Winter Olympics atheletes.
Tommy Moe landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated for his performances at the 1994 Winter Games in Lillehammer, Norway, where he won both a gold and a silver medal.
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Nancy Bell-Johnstone came home with some serious loot in 1992, after participating in the XVI Olympic Winter Games in Albertville, France. It was all packed up in a duffel bag. This isn’t about some great heist, however, and there weren’t any Olympic medals involved.
Bell-Johnstone laughs to this day about the contents of the bag. Inside, she says, was memorabilia given to her from the organizers—hats, shirts, watches, sweatshirts, pants, gloves, and more, all of it embellished with the Olympics insignia.
“They give you duffel bags [full] of really cheesy clothing,” she says. “At least it was cheesy in ’92. It was stuff you’d never wear again. I was a little unprepared for that. How am I going to get all this home? It’s a lot of stuff.”
But at least one of her souvenirs from those Winter Games lives on in Jackson: the Team USA suit Bell-Johnstone wore when competing in the biathlon. She donated the suit to the Jackson Hole High School Nordic team, and she’s heard that it has been worn and passed down among team members.
That eighteen-year-old Olympics suit surviving somewhere in Jackson Hole is just one of many Team U.S.A. uniforms worn through the years by Winter Olympians with ties to this small Wyoming town—both natives and move-ins. Jackson Hole is a Winter Games hub of sorts, home to several notable past Olympians.
“It has to do with the nature of the area,” says Martin Hagen, a three-time Olympian in the biathlon who was born and raised in Jackson. “It draws people that are sports oriented and people that are inclined to excel.”
Resi Stiegler, who skiied in the 2006 Winter Games in Torino (Turin), Italy, was at least the fifteenth athlete with Jackson ties to compete in the Winter Olympics. Betty Woolsey and Sis Wigglesworth, the first ones, competed in alpine skiing in the 1936 Games in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, and the 1940 Games in Helsinki, Finland. Hagen and alpine skier Tommy Moe have made the most appearances, with three Olympics each. All but two never medaled; Pepi Stiegler, Resi’s father, and Moe are the exceptions. Stiegler captured the silver medal in giant slalom at Squaw Valley in 1960; then, four years later at Innsbruck, he brought home gold and bronze medals in slalom and giant slalom. Moe, meanwhile, captured the coveted gold in the men’s downhill at the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, along with a silver medal in the Super G.
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Most Jackson Olympians would tell you the Games were more about the experience than the results, however.
“Everyone always asks you if you won a medal,” Bell-Johnstone says. “Of course, I wish I had won a medal. You don’t go to the Olympics and not believe in your heart you can do it. But 98 percent of the athletes walk away without a medal.
“I think the journey to get there and the people you meet along the way, that’s the coolest thing about it,” she says. “It would be way cooler if I won a medal, but it’s still pretty awesome. You can’t help but walk away feeling slightly disappointed at the time. But when you look back in retrospect, it’s something special [regardless].”
