Icon In Our Midst

More than 30 years removed from competition, American skiing legend Billy Kidd continues to carve his legacy into the slopes and

Dick Durrance II

“Fore!” whoops Billy Kidd, one of America’s grandest skiing legends, warning the aspen trees along Catamount Ranch & Club’s 16th hole that another ball is headed their way. “Rats. This slice has been with me since I was a kid caddying at the Burlington Country Club in Vermont. I guess you could call it a boomerang shot—it almost comes back to me.”

Billy and I are playing this stunning Tom Weiskopf design with Jim “Moose” Barrows, who was an Olympic teammate of Billy’s, and Gary Crawford, a two-time Olympian in Nordic combined in the 1980s. Like me, Gary is the son of an Olympian. My father, Dick Durrance, competed in the 1936 winter games, and Gary’s father, Marvin, represented the United States in the 1956 games. It’s a glorious clear fall day, and the three of them are giving me, a fellow ski racer, a taste of the fine golf in their hometown of Steamboat Springs.

There is not a breath of wind we can claim as the reason so many of our drives are slashing through the beautiful golden leaves that line the fairways.

Billy turns to me with an easy smile and a twinkle in his eyes: “Dick, I don’t know about you, but I like to play golf the same way I ski powder snow…in the trees.”

This is the same gregarious, unaffected Billy I have known since we were teammates on the Eastern team at the 1960 Junior National Championships. 

Four years later he would win the silver medal in the slalom at the 1964 Winter Olympics, becoming (with Jimmy Huega, who won the bronze that day) one of the first two American men to capture Olympic medals in Alpine events. That very same year, 1964, I was lucky enough to photograph a 45-page cover story for National Geographic, launching me on a life-long career as a photographer.

Our paths diverged in the winter of 1963, at the Harriman Cup downhill in Sun Valley, Idaho—and I have Billy in part to thank. It was the last training run, a nonstop from top to bottom. We came into this really steep pitch called Exhibition at about 35 mph, accelerated to 45, 55, 65. And right there, where the course rocketed us to 75 mph and into a series of bumps, there was a bank of fog. I careened off the course and came to a stop in a crowd of others who had also pulled up. We stood in silent awe watching Billy Kidd swing into the last turn and drop, arms spread like an eagle, out of the sunlight and into the fog. In that moment, I realized the Olympics were not in my future. I may have been a talented skier, but Billy was a gifted skier, and the gap between his gift and my talent was too great.

Billy’s Olympic triumph, followed by a gold medal in the 1970 World Championships, launched him on a 38-year career as director of skiing at the Steamboat Springs Resort and as the sport’s ambassador to the world. Both of us have added a couple of pounds and lost a lot of hair during the past four decades. But, speaking for myself anyway, we don’t seem to feel the impact of the years, at least until we pass a mirror or try and tie our shoes.

As we head back to the carts, Billy reveals that his father, William, a single-digit-handicap golfer at Vermont’s Burlington Country Club (and a direct descendant of the legendary pirate, Capt. William Kidd), took him to the club when he was only five. “But it was in the winter, and he took me to a steep pitch on the first hole and showed me how to ski and I just loved it. So I guess you have to say that I have to thank Donald Ross, who designed the course in 1913, for helping get me to the Olympics.”

The four of us agree that we find many parallels between the two sports. As Gary, who after his second Olympics took up golf and served for eight years as head golf professional at the Steamboat Sheraton Golf Club, says, “Just as no two golf courses are alike, so no two ski trails, ski jumps or cross-country tracks are alike.”

Moose stops the cart at his ball, which, unlike the rest of our drives, has come to rest in the fairway. “Skiing and golf are both gentlemen’s sports, with respect for the rules, respect for what happens, respect for their heritage. Both are good models for life, with values that should be impressed on kids.”

Gary overhears our conversation and comes over and whispers to me: “Moose doesn’t just talk about the importance of instilling those values in kids. For the last 27 years he has hosted a golf tournament, known far and wide as the Moose is Loose, to raise money for the Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club scholarship program.” Gary, who recently returned to the ski world as head Nordic combined development coach for the club, continues, “Do you realize that The Steamboat Springs Winter Sports Club has, over the last 90 years, produced more winter Olympians than any other program in country, perhaps in the world—65 to date? And, thanks in large measure to Moose and his golf tournament, no kid in the Yampa Valley who wants to participate in the Winter Sports Club programs will be denied the opportunity for financial reasons.”

As we make our way to the 17th tee, Billy shares a couple of his thoughts on the similarities between golf and skiing: “The psychological part of golf, at all levels, but particularly at the highest levels of competitive golf, is really similar to the psychological part of skiing at the highest levels. The separation between winning and second place is so small, you are tempted to call it luck. But isn’t it funny how Jean-Claude Killy was ‘lucky’ to win three gold medals by fractions of a second at the 1968 Olympics and Tiger Woods is so ‘lucky’ to win all of those golf tournaments by just a stroke or two? The difference isn’t luck. It’s mental. 

“In the 1964 Olympics, I missed the gold medal by 14-hundredths of a second. That is about as long as it takes to blink your eye. I spent the next six years trying to make up 14-hundredths of a second. I broke my leg prior to the 1966 World Championships. In the final training run for the downhill at the 1968 Olympics, I sprained both ankles. In 1970 after graduating from college and prior to going to business school, I thought I would try one more time to get that elusive gold medal. So at the World Championships at Val Gardena in the slalom I win a bronze medal. I was 6-hundredths of a second behind the winner. I had made up half of the difference—half of a blink of the eye. So when I won the gold medal in the combined—the points accumulated in the slalom, giant slalom and downhill—it was incredibly satisfying.

“When I won the Olympic silver medal as a 20-year-old in 1964, it could have been considered a lucky event. But when you work six years to make up 14-hundredths you can really appreciate the difference between second place and winning the gold medal.”

Billy points out that there are differences between golf and skiing, too. “In golf, when you make a mistake, you just get embarrassed, lose the club championship, or lose a million dollars. In downhill ski racing, you can lose your life.”

While we are waiting for the group in front of us to clear the green on the par-three 17th, Gary and Moose point out some of the sights we can see dotting the Yampa Valley. Both were born and raised in Steamboat Springs, and they and their families have taken an active role in growing the community. Gary’s father, Marvin Crawford, helped create Catamount Lake, the Catamount Club and another community just east of where we’re standing. Moose, who helped launch both the Sheraton and the Catamount courses, directs my eyes to an array of mounds in the middle of the valley northwest of Catamount. “Wait til you play Haymaker,” he says. “It is a classic links course. On some of the holes, Keith Foster fools you into thinking you are in Scotland.”

“And when you play Haymaker,” Gary adds, “say ‘hi’ to Hank Franks, the director of golf, for me. He is my golf mentor. I worked with him as his assistant golf professional for eight years at the Steamboat Sheraton Golf Club before he took the position at Haymaker and I moved into his slot.” I ask Gary if he has any advice for playing the Sheraton course. “Hit it straight. Robert Trent Jones did a brilliant job of creating the feel of a parkland course, with creeks crisscrossing the course and trees lining the fairways, even though it is carved into the hillside below the ski trails on Mount Werner.”

The late, legendary Buddy Werner, after whom the ski mountain was named, drew Billy to Steamboat. “Just as Tiger Woods had pictures of Jack Nicklaus on his wall, I had pictures of Buddy Werner on my wall. He was my hero. To be on the same National Ski Team with Buddy was heaven for me. So when I came to Steamboat Springs, Buddy’s hometown, for a ski race in 1965 and discovered how similar it was to the town where I grew up, Stowe, Vermont, I fell in love with it. Stowe was a farming town, Steamboat a ranching town. The people were very similar. I felt right at home.”

And so, when Billy retired from racing in 1970, Steamboat Springs Ski Area founders Jim Temple and John Fetcher asked him to become the resort’s director of skiing, a position he’s held ever since. But Billy’s greatest legacy may not be the beautiful tracks he carved in the powder on Mount Werner or the high-performance ski school he has established at the resort. It will probably be the ranch he has acquired in nearby Stagecoach Valley.

“Shortly after I moved here in 1970, Moose drove me out and showed me a homestead for sale in Stagecoach Valley,” he remembers after the round. “I knew at first sight that this is where I wanted to live and retire. I bought the original 160 acres right then and, over the years, have added another 320 acres to the ranch. The 15-mile drive proved to too much for a daily commute, but this is where I plan to build a home and retire.”

Dressed in his trademark cowboy hat and boots—a uniform he trades in only for a baseball cap featuring the skull-and-crossbones of his buccaneer ancestor—Billy shows me around his property after our round. He says if he wins the lottery, he’ll put his home on the homestead parcel and put the rest of it in trust for his children, Stirling, Christian, Hayley. “But since that isn’t too likely,” he says, “I hope to follow the example of Jim Temple’s sons, Jeff and Jamie, who have taken their thousand-acre Storm Mountain Ranch, built homes for themselves and then sold off a few carefully developed small parcels at a premium price to preserve the vast majority of the land as open space. Their model is one that is being followed by a number of landowners in the valley.

“This land is a classic piece of the American West. It is beautiful. I can see four wilderness areas from the little knoll at the homestead. There is an elk preserve north of my property and a wild bird refuge at the south end of Stage Coach Lake. Whatever I do with the land, what I hope is that when my kids come here, they don’t look up at the ranch, cringe, and say, ‘Isn’t that embarrassing how he ruined the land up there.’ I would like them to be proud of the fact that I tried to save and preserve this land.”

As we part, I realize that Billy, like our playing partners on this day, isn’t just a champion skier; he’s a champion of our land, our values and our heritage. And this commitment yields much happier returns for him and future generations than those “boomerang” shots he’s perfected on the golf course.

Frequent CAG contributor Dick Durrance II is an award-winning photographer and the author of Golfers and The PGA Tour: A Look Behind the Scenes.

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