Anne Heggtveit

Heggtveit was raised in New Edinburgh and learned to ski at Rockcliffe Park with her father and uncle, both Canadian cross-country champions. She began competitive skiing at Camp Fortune and then went to Europe for further training from the age of 14. At 15, she won her first world-class race, the Holmenkollen Giant Slalom in Norway, in 1954. For the following five years, however, she had such a run of bad luck that she decided the 1960 Olympics would be her last competition.

On a practice run in Switzerland in January 1960, Heggtveit was struck on the leg by a man shovelling snow. His shovel cut her shin to the bone and she was forced to stop training and return to Canada. Yet she still entered the US Nationals in Utah and won the Ladies’ Slalom and the Ladies’ Giant Slalom, followed by the Ladies’ Giant Slalom in Aspen at the famous Roche Cup. By the Olympics she was the top-ranked woman skier in the world.

© 2007 Website designed and maintained by