VERMONT SPORTS HALL OF FAME

(Photo Credit: US Skiing)

Middlebury

Alpine Skiing

Inducted 2023

A two-time Olympic alpine skier and two-time U.S. champion in downhill, Doug Lewis became the first American male to reach the podium in the downhill at the World Championships with a third-place finish in 1985 in Bormio, Italy. 

In the first World Cup race of 1986 he finished second at Las Lenas, Argentina. He won his first of two national downhill titles also in 1986.

He raced in the downhill for the U.S. in the 1984 Sarajevo Olympics along with teammate and gold medalist Bill Johnson, and later that winter he earned his first World Cup points with an eighth-place finish at Whistler, B.C.  He also competed in Calgary in the 1988 Olympic Games, retiring from ski racing at the end of the 1988 season.

Lewis, who grew up in Middlebury and learned to ski at the Middlebury Snow Bowl at age three, graduated from Green Mountain Valley School in Waitsfield. He won the 1980 US J2 Championship as a sophomore and in 1981 at age 20, he made his World Cup debut in the downhill at Vail, Colorado.

He has remained active in ski racing. He coached for five years at GMVS and has been a skiing ambassador for the Sugarbush Resort. Lewis is a co-founder of Eliteam, a program to improve summer conditioning for young ski racers, in Waitsfield and in Park City, Utah. He also is a well-known alpine skiing color commentator on NBC and Universal Sports.  

The 1991 UVM graduate was named to the U.S. Ski-Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2007 and the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 2019.