VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Photo Credit: USA Nordic Sport

Ski Jumping

Norwich

Inducted 2025

A six-time national champion ski jumper, Holland competed in the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics. 

At the 1992 Albertville Olympics, he was the top American in both the large hill (12th) and normal hill (13th) events. He also competed on the FIS World Cup circuit from 1989 to 1993, with a fifth-place finish at Garmisch-Partenkirchen on New Year’s Day in 1992. That winter he also had two other top 10 World Cup finishes.

Holland’s Olympic and World Cup career came after he suffered a severe training injury in 1987 at Lake Placid, in which he broke four vertebrae. Due to the injury, his career was also marked by innovation, from tinkering with his own equipment to drastically changing his technique: During the 1992 season, he broke from the traditional style with skis straight and body extended forward, and instead turned the tips of his skis out like a “V” and sailed farther than he ever had before. His trip to the Olympics completed a remarkable comeback.

After graduating from the UVM in 1995 and retiring from competition, he moved to Utah where he co-founded Backcountry.com. The business has grown over the past three decades to become one of the world’s biggest online outdoors retailers.

After the US Ski Association abandoned ski jumping in 2007, Holland helped start and fund USA Ski Jumping (now USA Nordic Sport), a nonprofit that runs men’s and women’s national ski jumping and Nordic combined programs, keeping the sport alive.

He was inducted into the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2022 at Harris Hill in Brattleboro, a place where he often competed as a youngster. Harris Hill was founded by VSHOF Inductee Fred Harris. Holland joins Jeff Hastings in the Vermont Sports Hall of Fame, a fellow Olympic jumper from Norwich, Vt.