Kidd, Snite Riley in VT Ski Hall Class of '06

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STOWE, Vt. (Oct. 18) - Olympic slalom silver medalists Billy Kidd and the late Betsy Snite Riley plus former U.S. champion Marilyn Shaw McMahon and ski academy pioneer Warren Witherell are part of the Class of 2006, which will be inducted Sunday night into the Vermont Ski Museum Hall of Fame.

Kidd, a Stowe native and silver medalist in slalom at the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria, also was the combined gold medalist and slalom bronze medalist at the 1970 World Championships in Val Gardena, Italy. He retired after the championships and a short time later won the professional world championship, making him the only skier to win both the amateur and pro world titles in the same season.

Heading into the 1964 Olympics, no American man had won an Olympic skiing medal. Kidd and Jimmie Heuga ended that shutout in the slalom; Kidd was second behind Austrian great Pepi Stiegler - the father of current U.S. Ski Team racer (and Olympian Resi Stiegler - while Heuga was bronze medalist. Heuga has indicated he plans to attend the ceremony for his longtime friend, who was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in Ishpeming, MI, in 1976.

Betsy Snite grew up in the renowned Ford Sayre ski program and collected the slalom silver medal (behind Canadian Anne Heggtveit) at the 1960 Olympics in Squaw Valley, CA. She later owned a ski shop in Stowe and died in 1984. A two-time Olympian, she also was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 1976.

Another Stowe native, Marilyn Shaw - then just 15 - was the U.S. combined champion at Sun Valley, ID, in 1940 and was the slalom gold medalist a year later at the U.S. Championships in Aspen, CO. In 1986, she was inducted into the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame. She died in 1989.

In 1970, Witherell, a regional coach for the U.S. Ski Association, agreed to coach an aspiring racer from the Boston area, Martha Coughlin, at Burke Mountain. At the end of the winter, before heading back to her high school, she hung a sign on his office reading "Burke Mountain Academy." The name stuck, Witherell received accreditation and had four students the next year as the academy formally opened - and led to today's various ski academies nationwide; he headed BMA until 1984 and currently is involved at Crested Butte Academy in Colorado. Finn Gundersen, director of alpine education for the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association - and Witherell's successor as headmaster at BMA, will speak about the innovative concept and Witherell's tenacious vision and leadership.

Also to be added posthumously to the Vermont Hall are Roland Palmedo, who helped get Stowe's ski area started and then former his own area not far away at Mad River Glen, and Perry Merrill, who helped drive the growth of skiing in Vermont as head of the Vermont Division of Forests and Parks for 37 years before retiring in 1966.