megan.harrod@usskiandsnowboard.org
2022 Olympic silver super-G medalist Ryan Cochran-Siegle and the famous “Skiing Cochrans” were recently featured in HBO Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel.
As the description says under the trailer,
Sixty years ago, a schoolteacher named Mickey Cochran and his wife Ginny bought some overgrown farmland in northern Vermont and began to transform their backyard into a tiny ski hill for their four young kids. Mickey used his background in engineering to construct a rope tow and snapped off saplings to use as gates. The point wasn’t to beat anyone, he believed, but to have fun and get a little bit faster and a little bit faster with every run. Soon the neighborhood kids were coming to bomb the hill after school once Mickey installed lights on the back of their home, which had become a lodge for the community to gather in. All four children became among the very best ski racers in the country; they all went to the Olympics, son Bob won the prestigious and infamous Hahnenkamm, and middle daughter Barbara won gold in slalom at the 1972 Olympics. The next generation of Cochrans began making the US Ski Team as well, totaling TEN Cochrans in all. The youngest is Ryan Cochran-Siegle who was having the best year of his skiing career in 2020 when he fractured his neck in a harrowing fall at the Hahnenkamm and had to be airlifted to the hospital. He had fusion surgery on his C6 and C7 vertebrae and, miraculously, was able to represent the US last month in Beijing. 365 days after starting a new life after surgery, he unexpectedly won silver in Super G, almost 50 years to the day after his mother’s win in Sapporo. Today, Cochran’s Ski Area has grown to four main trails and a T-bar in addition to the rope tow – but is far from cry from the mountains in the Alps other Olympians train on. The ‘Skiing Cochrans’ as they are affectionately known, are continuing to carry out the vision of their late parents by allowing the kids of Northern Vermont, no matter their parents’ means, the opportunity to ski and have fun.
