Picabo Street

There are many different meanings to the word hero, a person of distinguished valor, fortitude, or a great and illustrious person. To me a hero is a person that has incredible perseverance, a pure heart, and who is modest. Picabo, I found you.

Picabo Street is one of the greatest women alpine skiers ever. She was the second of two children in Triumph, Idaho. Street was born on April 3, 1971, to Stubby and Dee Street, who really didn't know what to name her. So they initially just called her "Baby Girl." Then they named her after a town in Idaho, which means shining waters. She learned how to ski when her school was doing weekly lessons. Then she was off.

At the age of 16, Picabo was on the US Olympic team and won the national junior downhill and Super G titles. Then one year later in 1989, she became the only American skier to ever win a World Cup downhill championship crown. However her trip to stardom was not always so good. In 1990 she was kicked off the national program for not having enough determination. She didn't care about the training, only winning at that time. At age 18, she decided to rededicate herself to skiing. Then the next year she was back on the US team, and two years later she won a silver medal at Morioka, Japan.

Everything didn't go well for her, though, when she got older. In 1996 she tore her anterior crucial and medial collateral ligaments in her left knee. Those ligaments prevent the knee from moving the wrong way, and those ligaments for a skier are essential. Her knee required reconstructive surgery and a strict rehabilitation. Then during a World Cup downhill race two years later she slammed into a fence while going 70 mph. She broke her left leg in nine different places, and she tore her ACL in her right knee. She was almost 28, and a return to competitive skiing seemed impossible.

Picabo was not going to give up her life of skiing. Through all her struggles Picabo managed to come back and win. After her comeback to World class skiing in a pre-Olympic competition, her bad luck came back. Just like she had done before, she crashed into a fence going 75 mph. She was not severely hurt, just knocked unconscious. Even though she had constant headaches that came from a concussion she still went to the Olympics. Then at the Nagano Olympics she won a gold medal in the downhill competition. Then she turned heads when she finished 5th place at a World Cup downhill in Switzerland. After two years of rehab she had finished from 46th in December of 2000, to 7th in February 2001. Her comeback almost seemed complete when she won a Super Series downhill event in Snowbasin, Utah later in February of 2001.

Picabo Street is an outstanding person and a very modest one. "You know, my best maybe just isn't good enough. And that's OK, that's human," she says. Not only is Street a great person, she is also a great athlete who persevered through it all. That is why she is my hero. For someone to come back from almost near death and relentless injuries, then recover one hundred percent to win a gold medal, is a heroic feat in itself. That is why Picabo Street is such a hero to me, she had a pure heart and had such great perseverance.