Sarah Will
Competition | 2010
Growing up in Vermont, Sarah Will had a season pass at age 4 to the Pico Mountain Ski Resort and, five years later, became a member of the Pico Mountain Ski Team. She would go on to compete on the nationally ranked ski team at Green Mountain College. After college, Sarah would continue her pursuit of skiing, moving to Aspen, Colorado. But in 1988, she caught some powder in a cat track causing her to crash hard and leaving her paralyzed from the waist down
During her recovery, Sarah read the book Bold Tracks: Skiing for the Disabled by fellow Hall of Famer Hal O’Leary. She ventured to Winter Park’s National Center for the Disabled and within a year she was back on the slopes on a monoski. training for Paralympic competition.
At the Albertville, France Paralympic Winter Games in 1992, Sarah won gold medals in the downhill and super-G. Two years later, at the Lillehammer, Norway Paralympic Games in 1994, she won three gold medals, adding a gold in the slalom. In Nagano, Japan in 1998, Sarah won gold in the giant slalom, slalom and super-G and took silver in the downhill. But Sarah Will, saved her best performance for her home country crowd. At Salt Lake City in the 2002 Paralympics. she swept gold in all four races: downhill, giant slalom, slalom and super-G. With 12 gold medals and one silver, Sarah ranks as one of the most decorated athletes in U.S. ski team history.
Sarah was one of the first adaptive athletes to compete at the X Games in the first ever Monoskier X cross, where she earned a bronze medal in the women’s category. The following year she placed 4th in the open Monoskier X Cross, being the only woman in a field of 16 competitors.
After retiring from competition, Sarah worked as a commentator for ESPN’s X Games. She also served as a commentator for NBC Universal Sports coverage of the Paralympic games in Vancouver, BC and the following games in Sochi, Russia.
