Winter 2009
Heart of a Champion
At the Olympics or on the bunny hill, gold medalist Barbara Ann Cochran gives all she's got
By Susan Reid
Photographed by Daria BishopIn 1972, Barbara Ann Cochran of Richmond, Vermont, won the gold medal in slalom at the Olympic Games in Sapporo, Japan. Second oldest of the "Skiing Cochrans, Barbara Ann was 21 years old and an accomplished member of the U.S. Ski Team. And yet, there was surprise on the part of the media, team members and even her own family that the petite ski racer with the "smooth and quiet style pulled it off. She was only the third U.S. women's Alpine skier to win gold, after Gretchen Fraser in 1948 and Vermonter Andrea Mead Lawrence in 1952.
"I was surprised that everyone else was so surprised, she recalls today. She knew she had the skills and "mental toughness to win, she says.
In her own words, Barbara Ann describes that day — Feb. 12, 1972 — as she prepared to race down a mountain in Japan and capture Olympic gold:
"We stayed in Sapporo and it was quite a long bus ride, 45 minutes or so, to get up to the mountain for the race. I remember I was reading "Hawaii by James Michener, and I could not put that book down, so it was great to have that much time to read.
"I was very confident. I didn't know if I would win, but I knew that I could win. I knew I had the skills to be able to do it.
"When we got there, it was pretty much the regular routine of studying the course — we always hiked it. They don't do that any more. We started from the bottom and we would go gate by gate, hiking up the course to memorize it so we would know exactly where we were going, to set our plan. … It's a lot of visualization. Not only does hiking up the course allow you to memorize it in your head, you get really warmed up by the time you get to the top.
"When we were hiking up, there was a Canadian girl near me. She was wearing gloves and I was wearing mittens and my hands were toasty warm and she said her hands were really cold, so I said, ‘Wear my mittens and I'll wear your gloves and get them warmed up for you.' So we did that. Before the race, I got my mittens back. I always thought there's no sense in wearing gloves if you get so cold that you can't really feel what you're doing anyway, so I thought it would be much better to wear mittens.
"I had forgotten who the girl was, but on Facebook, I saw Kathy Kreiner's name (a gold medalist in 1976 at the Winter Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria) and I friend-requested her. Then she talked about the mittens. It was her. I heard that the sale of mittens went up after the Olympics, and I guess mittens became a tradition for her, too, after that.
"The snow in Japan felt a little different. I don't know if it was because it was so close to the ocean and the salt water. I just remember thinking I had never skied on anything exactly like that before.
"I felt some pressure, but I always told myself, ‘Just do the best you can,' and if that meant coming in first, that was great; if it meant coming in dead last, but it was the best I could do on that particular day, then I had to accept that.
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It takes heart to win a gold medal — courage, resilience, dedication — but it takes another quality of the heart to reach out and help another competitor. Think of Barbara Ann on that cold Olympic mountainside, offering up her mittens to a rival — an act of simple kindness in the midst of one of the most intense competitions in the world. That kind of heart still informs her life today in Vermont, and almost every winter weekend she can be found teaching children at Cochran's Ski Area, the family hill started in 1961 by her parents, Mickey and Ginny Cochran, behind their house in Richmond.
Dressed in an old Carhartt jacket and faded ski pants, Barbara Ann patiently leads her novice skiers down the gentle beginner's slope, arms outstretched like airplane wings. Her own elegant turns are as natural as walking, but there isn't the slightest hint of impatience in her voice as she starts youngsters out at the beginning.
Barbara Ann is the director of the Ski Tots program at Cochran's, passing on the techniques and the joy of skiing that her father, a U.S. Ski Team coach, and mother taught their children, the legendary "Skiing Cochrans — Marilyn, Barbara Ann, Bob and Lindy. The four siblings trained their own combined 10 children on the family hill and today, among the next generation of Cochrans, three are on the U.S. Ski Team hoping to compete in the 2010 Winter Games in Vancouver: Bob's son Jimmy Cochran, and Lindy Cochran Kelley's daughter, Jessica Kelley, and son, Tim Kelley.
Hundreds of Vermont children have gotten their start at Cochran's. After Mickey died in 1998, Cochran's became a nonprofit dedicated to Mickey and Ginny's goal of providing affordable skiing ($20 still buys an adult lift ticket, $14 for juniors) and race training "the Cochran way. Many of these local children, now grown, return with their own families. Zach Barile, a 38-year-old father of two, says he drives to Cochran's every weekend from his home in Winchester, Mass., to get his two children "in the program. Barile grew up in Waterbury Center, and "BA (Barbara Ann's nickname) was my coach, he says.
The fact that you are likely to rub shoulders with — or even be trained by — an Olympic-class skier or a member of the U.S. Ski Team at Cochran's only adds to the mystique of the place. Yet at the hill itself there is only evidence of the pedigree, not pretensions.
Inside the lodge, a utilitarian shelter that is more warm-up hut than lounge, rows of racing bibs hang from the ceiling, each one telling a skiing story. Barbara Ann's Olympic skis, a pair of maroon and gold 190 Rossignol Strato 102s, are there, too, hanging unceremoniously by a couple of ropes and hooks. There is always work at the ski hill, it seems, and some things just don't get done, like proper mounting of Olympic skis or displaying photos of Cochran champions. Jimmy Cochran says he loves the place, but the old hill farm is a stubborn brute at times and if it's not tended, it quickly falls into disorder. "It's a labor of love to keep it going, adds Marilyn's son, Roger Brown, a former U.S. Ski Team member.
The four "Skiing Cochrans dominated U.S. ski racing in the late '60s and '70s and all four have been Olympians, although Barbara Ann — despite the family's stunning list of national and World Cup titles — is the only Cochran to win an Olympic medal. Today the four siblings are on the Cochran board of directors, but just Barbara Ann and her older sister, Marilyn Cochran Brown, work at the ski area in winter. (Bob is a family physician in Keene, N.H.; Lindy Cochran Kelley coaches at the Mt. Mansfield Ski and Snowboard Club in Stowe.) Marilyn manages the ski area, performing an array of functions from running the lifts to making grilled cheese sandwiches in the lodge. Barbara Ann sticks mainly to teaching, and she is passionate about it.
"I think the first time I gave a lesson I was 10 years old, she says. "It was over on the hill behind the house. All we had then was the rope tow. A couple wanted to know if they could get a lesson. So Dad said, ‘Anyone want to give a lesson?' And I said, ‘I will!'
"The teacher in me was coming out even at 10. I remember it was a great lesson for me because I kept telling them they had to get all their weight on the outside ski or the downhill ski, and I would show them and show them, but they couldn't get it, so I finally went to Dad and asked him what to do. What he told me was invaluable. He said: ‘Sometimes you can say the same thing in different words and they'll understand it a lot better. For instance, why don't you tell them to get all their weight off of their uphill ski?' And so I did it, and it was like magic.
Joe Cutts, a member of the Cochran's board of directors and the deputy editor of Ski Magazine, says Barbara Ann "is just so warm and unpretentious. It's not like she hides the fact that she won an Olympic gold medal, but she doesn't say, ‘Come learn from a gold medalist,' she just says, ‘Come and learn how to ski!'
"She's perfectly willing to trot out the medal just for fun, to show the kids. The thing looks like it's been through the wash a couple times, chewed by the dog. You can tell it has not been locked away in an airtight case. It's neat to be in the lodge at Cochran's, the humblest ski club in Vermont, hanging out with the little kids, and there it is, the gold medal, just sitting there, being passed around, anyone could swipe it, and Barbara Ann doesn't really know who has it — she's just so laid back and calm about it.
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Unlike some Olympians, Barbara Ann did not spin her gold medal into a life of easy money. She says she's not good at marketing herself. Twice married and divorced, she lives in a modest home in Starksboro, and much of her adult life has been spent simply working as a high school teacher in Vermont, teaching on weekends at Cochran's, and raising her two children as a single mother. Like many Vermonters, she has found it difficult at times to make ends meet, especially when paying the bills for her children to take part in ski racing and training at the Mt. Mansfield Ski and Snowboard Club.
This year, however — with daughter Caitlin off to the University of New Hampshire and son Ryan a senior in high school — Barbara Ann decided to leave her job at Mount Abraham Union High School in Bristol. Over the past 10 years, Cochran has been trying to develop a business on the side, and now she has decided to commit to it full time. The enterprise — called Golden Opportunities in Sports, Business and Life — offers performance and focus training to athletes, college-bound students studying for their SATs, parents, and any individual seeking a "competitive edge.
"I am pulling from lessons I have learned from all aspects of my life, she says, "from parenting, courses I took for teaching, things from my Dad when he was coaching, or things I have tried while coaching or teaching in the classroom. The culmination of my whole life is in this program.
