VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

Jericho

Mountain Biking

Inducted 2023

Cross country mountain biker Lea Davison of Jericho was a two-time Olympian and competed for the U.S. in seven world championships, with her high a second-place finish in 2016. She also won a bronze in the 2014 world championships, was third overall in the 2015 World Cup series, and was an eight-time U.S. national champion and a two-time Elite Cross Country champion. 

In her first Olympics, the 2012 London games, she finished 11th and four years later in Rio, she came in seventh. Her bid for a third Olympics in 2020 in Tokyo, ended with the games postponed for the pandemic. She retired from competition in early 2022 after a 20-year athletic career.

An excellent athlete in track and alpine skiing at Mount Mansfield Union High graduating in 2001, she began her cycling career during her junior year at MMU. Vying to become an alpine ski Olympian at a young age, her mentor as a youth racer was VSHOF inductee and Olympic gold medalist Barbara Ann Cochran.

She went on to Middlebury College where she ran cross country and skied for the Panthers, and had an 11th place finish in downhill in the 2002 NCAA Championships. It was then her mountain biking career took off.

In 2007, Davison co-founded Little Bellas, a non-profit, all-girls mentoring mountain bike program with her sister, Sabra. Two VSHOF inductees Sarah Schreib and Marilyn Cochran, also active in the program.