Nancy Greene

Nancy Catherine Greene Raine, was born on May 11, 1943. She is a Canadian Senator for British Columbia and a champion alpine skier. Greene was born in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.

Greene relocates with her family to Rossland, British Columbia before she was age 3. Rossland is a mountainous area and the site of the first ski competition ever held in Canada in 1897.

 

Greene began at a young age and while in high school she competed in the Canadian Junior Championships. She would go on to become Canada’s most decorated ski racer in history with the most World Cup victories for male or female.

 

Nancy began ski racing in local high school races at about the time that Lucile Wheeler became the first Canadian skier to win an Olympic medal, a bronze in Downhill at the Cortina Olympics. Lucile, from Ste.

 

Jovite, Quebec, went on to win two gold medals at the World Ski Championships in 1958. That same year Nancy won her first trophy, placing second to her sister Elizabeth in the Canadian Junior Championships.

 

Two years later Nancy and her sister were both on the Canadian team for the 1960 Squaw Valley Olympics and Nancy had the good fortune to room with Anne Heggtveit from Ottawa who won the gold medal in the slalom. From that point on, Nancy was determined to win a gold medal in the Olympics.

 

Nancy was Canada’s top ski racer through the 1960’s, winning gold and silver medals at the 1968 Grenoble Olympics and overall World Cup titles in 1967 and 1968. Her total of 13 World Cup victories is still a Canadian record. She won 17 Canadian Championship titles in all disciplines.

 

During Nancy’s nine year racing career, she won three U.S. Championship titles and nine Canadian titles. The introduction of the World Cup in 1967 coincided with Nancy’s arrival as one of the top ranked skiers in the world.

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She narrowly won the 1967 overall title with a victory by 7/100th of a second in the last race of the year, defeating a strong French ski team that had dominated the World Championships the previous summer.

 

As the 1968 Olympics approached, Nancy was a favourite to win in all three ski events, but an ankle injury just a month before the Games jeopardized her chances. A disappointing tenth place in the opening downhill seemed to indicate that Nancy was not in form, but expectations rose with her silver medal performance in the slalom the following day.

 

Nancy did not let her fans down, she attacked the giant slalom course with everything she had, and crossed the line with the gold medal. Her victory, by a margin of 2.68 seconds is still considered one of the most decisive wins in Olympic history.

 

 In December 1994, Nancy and Al decided to leave Whistler and turn their energies and talents once again to the development of a new destination ski area, Sun Peaks Resort near Kamloops in the interior of British Columbia.

 

Once again Nancy and Al have been leaders, building the first condominium hotel in Sun Peaks Village Nancy Greene’s Cahilty Lodge named after a local pioneer ranching family. Nancy and Al make their home in the lodge which opened for business in December 1995.

 

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