A high-scorer on the U.S. teams in the 1992, 1994 and 1998 Olympics and in the 1989, 1993 and 1996 F.I.S. championships in twelve seasons on the team, Tommy Moe’s greatest moments came when he took gold and a silver at the 1994 Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.

Born in Missoula, Montana on February 17, 1970, Tommy Moe started skiing when he was three. He went to high school at Glacier Creek Ski Academy in Alaska. His first breakthrough year came in 1989 when he made the U.S. World Championship Team at age 19. Building a reputation for going fast, Tommy stacked up top finishes in downhill and Super-G, winning the 1989 U.S. National Super-G and at his home hill in Alyeska, Alaska; he won the World Junior Championship Super-G and combined. Tommy was definitely on is way the next year when he won the 1990 U.S. giant slalom title.

Tommy’s first Olympics came at the 1992 Albertville Games in France. He placed 20th in downhill and 28th in Super-G. The next year, he committed himself to training harder and finished 5th in the 1993 World Championship downhill in Japan. Tommy’s first podium on the World Cup tour came with a 2nd place in the 1993 downhill in Whistler Mountain, Canada.

1994 was undoubtedly Tommy’s best season. At the Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway, he etched the run of his life, cutting a brilliant line down the Kvitfjell slope and in front of 30,000 spectators, blazed across the finish four-hundredths of a second, a half-ski length , ahead of Norway’s Aamodt, transfiguring himself into the years most renowned downhiller. Not since Bill Johnson a decade earlier, had an American won an Olympic downhill.

Four days later, he proved the Olympic gold was no fluke by winning the silver in the Super-G. Tommy Moe had just become the first American male to win two medals in the same Olympics.

One year later on that same downhill course in Norway, in fact in a section the Norwegians called the “Tommy Moe Channel” he fell and badly tore his knee. Although he was back skiing a year later, his career would continue to be plagued with injuries. Tommy retired in 1998 along with teammate AJ Kitt and together they raced the King of the Mountain Pro Tour.

Highly skilled at reading a racecourse or whitewater rivers (when he’s not skiing), you can often find Tommy salmon fishing in his beloved Alaska.

Tommy Moe was elected to the U.S. National Ski Hall of Fame in 2003.