VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

(Photo Courtesy- US Skiing)

Rutland

Alpine and Freestyle Skiing

Inducted 2023

An Olympic and World Cup skier, Suzanne 'Suzy' Chaffee was a trend-setting and successful alpine and freestyle skier whose off-the-slopes activism dramatically helped change the amateur and Olympic landscape. 

As a skier, her career highlights included a fifth in the 1966 World Championship downhill in Portillo, Chile, after winning five straight international races. She was the top-ranked woman and captain for the U.S. Olympic team at the 1968 Winter Games in Grenoble, France. Chaffee finished 17th in giant slalom and 28th in the downhill. 

After retiring from the U.S. national team, Chaffee helped develop the professional freestyle tour in 1971, competing at first with men. She then won the first women’s divisions three straight years, 1971 to 1973. 

Post-freestyle tour, Chaffee hosted CBS’ “Challenge of the Sexes,” created the award winning “Suzy Chaffee Ski Workout, lectured, and starred  in films such as ”Butch Chapstick and the Snowdance Kid” and starred in Willy Bogner’s “Fire & Ice,” a worldwide box office hit.

Known for her ‘Suzy Chapstick’ commercials, Chaffee was instrumental in forming the World Sports Foundation, which led to a reform of Olympic rules regarding government, private, scholastic and corporate subsidization of Olympic athletes. She was the first woman on the USOC board of directors. She was a strong advocate for women’s equality in sports and was named to the President’s Council on Physical Fitness under four administrations. She also pioneered super light-weight and flexible colored skis for women. 

Chaffee is a co-founder of the Native American Olympic Team Foundation (NAOTF) with Southern Ute Unity leader, Alden Naranjo, welcoming the tribes back to their ancestral lands to ski, snowboard and share their sustainable wisdom.

She was named to the U.S National Ski Hall of Fame in 1988, the Vermont Ski Hall of Fame in 2009. In 1999, Sports Illustrated selected Chaffee as one of the Top 50 Vermont athletes of the 20th Century. She ranked 27th among the Top 50 Vermonters.