The 90s—Growing with the consumer in mind
Southern Vermont was well-represented at the 1998 Games: SMS sent six athletes to Nagano—Powers, two alpine skiers, two Nordic skiers and one biathlete—accompanied by snowboarders Betsy Shaw of Manchester and Ron Chiodi of Stratton. It was the first time the sport had been included in the Winter Olympics, with events in halfpipe and giant slalom.
As Powers accepted his historic medal, his achievement represented not only his own talent and hard work, but the strategic goals of his school and Stratton Mountain Ski Resort, where he first had competed as a nine-year-old in the U.S. Open, one of snowboarding’s most prestigious annual events. “It was awesome for me and for Stratton,” he says of the Olympics. “The place where I grew up riding…it became a pipeline, a place where young riders could get to the next level.”
“If it weren’t for Stratton hosting the U.S. Open, I most likely never would have started snowboarding,” says Shaw, who raced in the GS at the Nagano Games and now lives with her family in Middletown Springs. “I still remember watching my first Open on the Suntanner slope: The girl who won was wearing a bikini. That afternoon, I was slipping my sneakers into snowboard bindings and trying to stay standing while riding sideways down the hill. A friend gave me money to enter the competition the very next year. Winning the slalom in 1991 was one of the highlights of my career.”
In the 1990s, several trends transformed the American ski industry: the rise of snowboarding, corporate consolidation and resort expansion, and a growing commitment to the environment. Stratton was at the vanguard of each.
