Gretchen Kunigk didn’t step into a pair of skis until she was fifteen years old. But she took to it like a natural. In the 1930s, most skiing was not downhill but instead was primarily ski jumping or cross-country skiing.

Why? Primarily because the notion of a chairlift had yet to be invented.

Gretchen won her first ski races while still in high school and at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma she joined the ski team. Enroute to a ski race in Sun Valley Idaho she met Don Fraser, a young skier who was an early pioneer of the slalom.

Don was also a veteran of the 1936 U.S. Olympic team and while he thought Gretchen’s style was a bit awkward, she definitely had talent and style.
By 1939 they were married and, together, made the U.S. Olympic Team for the 1940 Olympics. But the advent of World War II meant the Olympics were cancelled that year.

Don joined the Navy and when he left to deploy overseas, Gretchen returned to Sun Vally. She spent the remaining war years helping wounded veterans learn to ski in the winter and to ride horses in the summer.

It was the beginning of a lifelong focus on the importance of rehabilitation.

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Don and Gretchen Fraser

Then the 1944 Olympics were cancelled as well. Gretchen’s Olympic dreams were over.

When Don returned from the war they moved back to Washington state and opened their own small business. But Don continued to encourage Gretchen to train and prepare for 1948.

Could that even be possible? By 1948 Gretchen thought she was too old—she was twenty-eight. But she made the team again and was mentally ready to face the competition. The competition, mostly Nordic skiers, paid little attention to Gretchen or the other members of the U.S. team.

After all, no American had ever won a Gold Medal in downhill skiing.

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Gretchen loved to ski in Sun Valley

The games were held in St. Moritz—where they will be held again in February 2026, for the first time since Gretchen tested her mettle on those slopes.

Initially, the games were a series of frustrations for the women’s team. They didn’t have a coach, so a member of the men’s team was assigned to assist them each day. The men resented the assignment, and the directions and advice were contradictory and often incomplete.

Finally, a solid coach was brought in.

On race day itself there was another surprise, a new twist to the scoring. For the first time, the scorekeeping would be electronically monitored, with a link between the judges at the base of the mountain and the starting gate at the top.

Gretchen had been first on the initial run, and didn’t feel she had done as well as she should have done. But by the second race she was ready.

She stood in that starting gate, 5’3” and 117 lbs., blond pigtails at the ready. Then the new starting mechanism malfunctioned. Gretchen stood frozen in that starting

position for an unimaginable seventeen minutes before the buzzer sounded. She focused. Calmed her nerves. Then she flew.
Gretchen won that race. Gold Medal. An American first.

The crowd in St. Moritz was shocked. “Who?” Many asked. They’d never heard of her.

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Gretchen Fraser with the clock stopped at 57.7 seconds. Her winning time!

“Too old. Too American. Too inexperienced.” But Gretchen Fraser showed what she could do when she was determined to compete. She could quiet her mind, focus her body and ski full out. A real competitor.

Gretchen won many races after that one spectacular performance but she didn’t repeat her Olympic stardom. She was ready to be home.

But she was still competitive. She rode horses and flew private planes. Gretchen also continued to work in rehabilitation for military veterans, at Fort Lewis, in Sun Valley, and Utah.

She said, “It’s great to win a medal but it is what you do with it afterward—how you use that medal to impact the world—that is even more important.”

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This painting of Gretchen Fraser hangs in the restaurant ‘Gretchen’s’ at the Sun Valley Resort

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