Brian Santos
Competition | 2015
Hometown: Mt. Shasta, California
Brian Santos was born with a misshapen right eye which limited his vision, making him dependent on his left eye. Then, in 1981, he was involved in a freak accident in which he was struck by a golf ball, losing his left eye, leaving him dependent on his near-sighted right eye to see. After the accident it was his brother who gave him the motivation to ski.
Brian partnered in all of his Paralympic competitions with his guide and fellow Hall of Fame inductee, Ray Watkins. Together, they competed in the B2 visually impaired events at the Innsbruck Winter Paralympics in 1988 but failed to win a medal. He made the U.S. Disabled Ski Team for the Men’s Downhill event in the 1988 Games in Innsbruck, Austria but was unable to start. His first Paralympic successes came in the Albertville Games in 1992 when he won gold in the Men’s Giant Slalom B3 event and Men’s Super-G B3 event. Brian returned two years later to the 1994 Games in Lillehammer, Norway, winning all four events in the expanded B3 program: giant slalom, super-G, slalom, and downhill.
In 1995, Skiing magazine described Brian as “the dominant blind skier in the world”. Brian retired from competitive skiing in 1996 and later became a coach at the College of the Siskiyous.
This induction makes Brian Santos the very first visually impaired alpine ski racer to enter the Hall of Fame and Ray Watkins to be the first sighted ski guide to be inducted.
