Picabo Street facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Picabo Street

Alpine skier
Picabo Street in October 1999
Disciplines	Downhill, Super-G, Combined
Born	(1971-04-03) April 3, 1971 (age 54) Triumph, Idaho, U.S.
Height	5 ft 7 in (1.70 m)
World Cup debut	December 6 1992 (age 21)
Retired	February 2002 (age 30)
Olympics
Teams	3 – (1994, 1998, 2002)
Medals	2 (1 gold)
World Championships
Teams	2 – (1993, 1996)
Medals	3 (1 gold)
World Cup
Seasons	8 – (1993 -2002) (injured 1999, 2000)
Wins	9 – (9 DH)
Podiums	17 – (15 DH, 2 SG)
Overall titles	0 – (5th, 1995)
Discipline titles	2 – (DH: 1995, 1996)
Medal record Women's alpine skiing Representing the  United States Olympic Games Gold 1998 Nagano Super-G Silver 1994 Lillehammer Downhill World Championships Gold 1996 Sierra Nevada Downhill Silver 1993 Morioka Combined Bronze 1996 Sierra Nevada Super-G

Picabo Street (born April 3, 1971) is a famous American former alpine ski racer. She is an Olympic gold medalist. Picabo won the super G event at the 1998 Winter Olympics. She also won the downhill race at the 1996 World Championships.

Picabo Street earned five medals in total at the Olympics and World Championships. She also won the World Cup downhill season titles in 1995 and 1996. She was the first American woman to achieve this. She also won nine World Cup downhill races. In 2004, Picabo Street was added to the National Ski Hall of Fame.

Early Life of Picabo Street

Picabo Street was born at home in Triumph, Idaho. Her parents are Dee, a music teacher, and Roland "Stubby" Street, a stonemason. Her older brother is Roland, Jr.

Her parents let her choose her own name when she was old enough. For her first two years, they called her "baby girl." When she was three, she needed a name for a passport. She was named after the nearby village of Picabo. She grew up on a small farm near Sun Valley. There, she learned to ski and race.

Picabo went to Rowland Hall-St. Mark's School in Salt Lake City, Utah. She joined its Rowmark Ski Academy for one year. Then she returned to Sun Valley to race for the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation. Before the academy, she was part of the local Hailey Ski Team.

Picabo Street's Skiing Career

Picabo Street joined the U.S. Ski Team in 1989. She was 17 years old. She mainly competed in fast events like downhill and super G. Her first World Cup race was a slalom on December 6, 1992, when she was 21. Two months later, at the 1993 World Championships in Japan, she won a silver medal in the combined event.

Olympic and World Championship Success (1994–1996)

After winning a silver medal in the downhill at the 1994 Winter Olympics, a ski run was named after her. At Sun Valley, the "Plaza" run became "Picabo's Street." This run is on the Warm Springs side of Bald Mountain.

In 1995, Picabo became the first American woman to win a World Cup season title in a speed event. She won the downhill title that year. She won the downhill title again the next season, in 1996. She also became a world champion by winning a gold medal at the 1996 World Championships in Sierra Nevada, Spain.

Injuries and Comeback (1997–2002)

In December 1996, Picabo Street had a serious knee injury to her left knee while training in Colorado. She missed the rest of the 1997 season.

A month after winning her gold medal at the 1998 Winter Olympics, she had another bad crash. This happened at the last downhill race of the 1998 season in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. She broke her left leg and injured her right knee. She spent two years recovering after this accident.

Picabo returned to ski racing in late 2000. She stopped competing internationally after the 2002 Winter Olympics in Utah. In that race, she finished sixteenth in the downhill.

Life After Skiing

Picabo Street appeared on several TV shows. These included Nickelodeon GUTS in 1994 and Pyramid in 2002. She also did well on American Gladiators. She even appeared on Celebrity Paranormal Project.

In the late 1990s, after her Olympic success, Picabo became a spokesperson for different products. These included Mountain Dew and ChapStick lip balm. She also worked with Giro Sport Design, a company that makes helmets.

In 2001, she wrote a book about her life called Picabo: Nothing to Hide. In the book, she shared her journey from being a rebellious kid to a world-class athlete. She also talked about the pressure she felt from sponsors to win.

A movie based on Picabo Street's life story was planned in 2009.

She also appeared in two skits on Sesame Street with Elmo and Telly. In one skit, Telly was looking for a place called Peekaboo Street and met Picabo Street. In another, Elmo thought she was a world champion peek-a-boo player. Her name was also mentioned in a song by the band Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Picabo was the runner-up in the NBC reality show Stars Earn Stripes.

Personal Life

Picabo Street is now retired from skiing. She divides her time between homes in Alabama and Winter Park, Colorado. She has a son born in August 2004. On October 25, 2008, she married businessman John Reeser. They had their second son on August 3, 2009.

On ESPN's College Game Day in Boise in September 2010, Picabo announced she was expecting her third son.

Picabo used to name her skis after people who were strong and important to her. Some of these names were "Earnies" (after Dale Earnhardt) and "Arnolds" (after Arnold Schwarzenegger).

In the early 2000s, an internet joke spread about Picabo Street. It claimed she made a donation to a hospital, and they named a part of it the "Picabo ICU" (sounding like "Peekaboo! I see you!"). Another version said she became an ICU nurse and would answer the phone saying, "Picabo, ICU!" These jokes were not true and were explained as false by Snopes.

Images for kids

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  Picabo Street in October 1999

See also

Learn more about Picabo Street!

In Spanish: Picabo Street para niños