Энн Хеггтвейт: Канадская лыжная легенда

Canadian alpine ski racer

Anne Heggtveit, (born January 11, 1939) is a former alpine ski racer from Canada. She was an Olympic gold medallist and double world champion in 1960.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario, Heggtveit was raised in New Edinburgh, one of the oldest areas of the city. She was encouraged into alpine skiing by her father, Halvor Heggtveit, a Canadian cross country champion who qualified for the Winter Olympics in 1932, but did not compete. Her parents had emigrated from Norway to North Dakota. She learned to ski at Camp Fortune ski area in the nearby Gatineau Hills of Quebec, northwest of Ottawa, and was a student at Lisgar Collegiate Institute in Ottawa. Heggtveit was a ski racing prodigy, invited at age seven to serve as a forerunner to a downhill race at Lake Placid in 1946.

At the age of 15 in 1954, Heggtveit first gained international attention when she became the youngest winner ever of the Holmenkollen giant slalom event in Norway. She also won the slalom and giant slalom at the United States national junior championships, and finished ninth in the downhill and seventh in the slalom at the World Championships in March at Åre, Sweden. After leading the top half of the giant slalom, she fell twice near the finish was well back in 31st, which dropped her final placing in the combined to 14th. At a time when Europeans dominated alpine skiing, Heggtveit was inspired by the breakthrough performance of teammate Lucile Wheeler of Quebec, who won Olympic bronze in the downhill in 1956, and three medals at the World Championships in 1958 at Bad Gastein, Austria. Wheeler won gold in the downhill and giant slalom events, and took silver in the combined. Heggtveit finished in the top ten in three events, with an eighth in the slalom, seventh in the downhill, and sixth in the combined. At the 1960 Winter Olympic Games in Squaw Valley, California, Heggtveit won Canada's first ever Olympic skiing gold medal. Her victory in the Olympic slalom also made her the first non European to win the world championship in slalom and combined. Heggtveit was the first North American to win the Arlberg Kandahar Trophy, the most prestigious and classic event in alpine skiing.

Heggtveit was awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy as Canada's outstanding athlete of 1960. She was also the first recipient of the John Semmelink Memorial Award in November 1961, named for her fallen teammate. Her performance on the world stage was again recognized in 1976 when she was made a member of the Order of Canada, the country's highest civilian honor. Anne Heggtveit was inducted into the Ontario Sports Hall of Fame in 1995. She was in the first induction of the Lisgar Collegiate Institute Athletic Wall of Fame, as part of the 160th Anniversary celebrations.

Following her competitive career, Heggtveit married James Ross Hamilton in August 1961, and resided in Quebec. They had two children and later relocated to nearby Vermont in the United States. She was later an accountant and photographer. She is sister to Alexander Heggtveit, MD, cardiac pathologist with ties to Brooklyn, NY, Ottawa, Hamilton, and Seaforth, Ontario, and great aunt to Katie Heggtveit, granddaughter of Alexander, a social entrepreneur with ties to Toronto, Ontario, currently living in Nashville, Tennessee since 2023, recently inducted into the Toronto Sport Hall of Honor.