David and Renie Gorsuch to be inducted into U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame
Vail Valley Foundation/Special to the Vail Daily
David and Renie Gorsuch built a retail empire in the Colorado Rockies — this, after a reasonably successful skiing career — and made the Gorsuch name a prominent one within the ski world.
Now, the Gorsuches will be inducted into the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame on Friday, March 24, at this year’s ceremony at Big Sky Resort in Montana.
David and Renie Gorsuch are officially part of the 2021 Hall of Fame class, which is being celebrated as part of back-to-back nights of recognition. The 2022 class will be honored on March 25.
“Like all of us, Renie and Dave invested their heart, soul and being in Vail,” fellow Vail pioneer Elaine Kelton said in a 2021 interview with the Vail Daily, not long after Dave Gorsuch’s June 26 death at age 82. “Their life was directed in three directions: their kids, bringing up Vail and bringing up skiing.”
Prior to their retail business, David and Renie both skied for the U.S. national team and both were part of the 1960 Olympic team. They married in 1961 and soon after started Gorsuch Ltd., with the first stores being in Gunnison and Crested Butte.
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Their fashion approach of being both high-end modern and timeless Western really hit a nerve with the target audience. This success led to a move to Vail — at the suggestion of Aspen’s own John McBride, it’s told — and the rest is history. The Gorsuch store has long been a familiar sight in Vail’s Clock Tower Building.
Special to the Vail Daily
Today, the Gorsuch Ltd. stores can also be found in Park City, Beaver Creek and Aspen. Aspen’s Jeff Gorsuch, one of David’s three children, is the patriarch behind the Aspen locations, which includes stores in both The Little Nell and on the Cooper Avenue Mall, as well as Gorsuch Ski Café at the base of Aspen Mountain. There is also a retail store in Snowmass Village.
Renie, in that 2021 article by the Vail Daily, called her late husband “the most honest man I’ve ever known.”
According to the Hall of Fame bio, Renie “can still be found on the floor of the Clocktower store and elsewhere, keeping tabs on the family business.”
The Gorsuches are the only inductees from Colorado as part of the 2021 class, which does include special recognition of alpine skiing legend Bode Miller, who was officially part of the class of 2018.
The 2022 class includes a pair from Colorado in Steamboat Springs snowboarder Shannon Dunn-Downing — the first American to win an Olympic snowboard medal at the sport’s 1998 debut in Nagano — and Breckenridge’s CJ Mueller, a pioneer in speed skiing.
