Born: 19 April 1932, United States
Died: 30 March 2009
Country most active: United States
Also known as: Andrea Mead
The following is republished from the Library of Congress. This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Andrea Mead first competed in the Olympics, at just age 15, in the 1948 Olympics with Gretchen Fraser. Four years later, after she married U.S. Olympic skier David Lawrence, the 19 year old skier was back at the Olympics and ready to compete again. This time, Fraser was at her side as her coach. Her incredible performance that year won her gold medals in both the slalom and the giant slalom.
Lawrence’s win in the slalom is one for the records. She fell partway through the first run and finished fourth. The fall was so quick, Lawrence hardly knew that it happened. “[E]verything happened so fast I don’t remember whether I actually hit the ground,” she said in the Evening Star. “I just knew I had to get back on my feet fast and get through that gate.” She came back in the next run far ahead of her competition and won gold for the event, making it one of the few times in skiing history when a competitor fell, but came back to win a medal. Her win in the slalom was also the first time that any Olympic skier had won gold in more than one event.
The incredible Andrea Mead Lawrence didn’t stop there, though. Over the next four years she went on to have three children, win the national slalom title and national women’s downhill title, and then compete in the 1956 Olympics where she placed fourth in the giant slalom. She later turned her career to environmental activism, working to protect the Sierra Nevada Mountains. After her death in 2009, one of those mountains was officially named for her (Mt. Andrea Lawrence Designation Act of 2011).
The next medalist for U.S. skiing was Penelope “Penny” Pitou in the 1960 Olympics. Pitou missed the gold in the downhill ski race by only one second, winning her a silver medal. She blamed it on a curve that made many of her competitors fall. “It’s a 90-degree turn but you don’t dare slow down. If you do, you lose a heck of a lot of time on the straight stretch below. I started my turn a little too high and slid into the whole thing sideways,” she later said.