Meet Vail’s newest Olympic gold medalist at free celebration

On a regular rush-hour afternoon at City Market in Vail this winter, an abnormal scene secretly took shape:

In the middle of the produce aisle, a 4-year-old girl spoke to Liz Lemley like she was a big sister — not an Olympic champion.

There was no paparazzi. No autograph seekers. No lineup of fans fawning over the first American mogul gold medalist since Hannah Kearney. Was it evidence of a shocking lack of awareness or acknowledgement of the Ski and Snowboard Club Vail alumna‘s accomplishment? Perhaps inhabitants of Shiffrin’s kingdom have become desensitized to global titles. On the other hand, maybe this is just what it means to live in a ski town.

Olympians have to buy groceries, too, right?

“This is the busiest time of the day,” said Michael Friedberg, the man whose daughter was lucky enough to chat with the Olympic champion about a certain competition in Cortina, which had finished up about a week prior to the chance encounter.

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“We’re at City Market and it’s like, ‘here’s your Olympic gold and bronze medalist,'” Friedberg continued. “No one is even taking a second look in her direction.”

Freidberg, who retired from World Cup mogul skiing in 2003 and now works in real estate, didn’t want the opportunity to celebrate Lemley’s accomplishment as a community slip through the cracks. The Vail resident rallied the tightly knit mogul community together to organize a free celebration set for May 9 from 3:30-6:30 p.m. at Vail Brewing Company in EagleVail. The event offers a chance to meet the champ, enjoy live music and even bid on some Olympic swag.

“I think it’s really important to celebrate and support our champions,” Friedberg said. “And inspire other people to follow in her footsteps.”

Lemley won her first World Cup at 16 and was a double-gold medalist at the 2024 Youth Olympic Games. That fall, John Dowling — who started coaching Lemley at Ski and Snowboard Club Vail when she was 11 — signed on as her private instructor.

“My ultimate goal is to go to the 2026 Olympics,” Lemley told the Vail Daily before the 2024-25 season. “And win.”

But before her campaign even started, it was over: Lemley tore her ACL in a training run prior to the World Cup opener in Ruka, Finland.

“We thought we were poised to take the World Cup by storm, go to the Olympics — do all those things — and then we had to start from scratch,” Dowling said in a phone call on Wednesday. “The razor’s edge she had to walk to get back to form and then win at the Olympics is incredible.”

Lemley pulled the upset on defending champion Jakara Anthony, leading Jaelin Kauf to an American 1-2 finish. Lemley returned to snag a bronze in the duals event, too. When asked about the significance of his pupil’s performances, Dowling said, “It’s hard to measure it because there’s so much that went into it.”

“We started on a mission two years ago to go to the Olympics. Yeah, with the hope that she would succeed brilliantly. But then right as we were getting started, she tore her ACL,” he continued. “It seems like everything we did, the way we did it, it all had to happen that way to end up where we did. From our training camps to little bits of preparation we did. Working with her on things like tennis drills or whatever it was — just to get her back to that athletic mode — everything seems so significant now.”

Friedberg knows better than most about Lemley’s impact on the sport in America. And while organizing the event wasn’t motivated by any desire for attention, Friedberg isn’t a random citizen, casual fan or neutral observer. Friedberg started mogul skiing with Toby Dawson under Kauf’s parents through the ski school, since SSCV didn’t have a dedicated mogul program at the time. Eventually, the pair migrated to Breckenridge, where they worked with Dowling and made the U.S. Ski Team. When Friedberg retired from the World Cup, he moved to Vail. In 2008, he became SSCV’s mogul program director, a role he passed off to Dowling in 2013.

Having brought Lemley back from an ACL injury to take the top step of the ultimate podium, Friedberg believes his former coach has now cemented himself as “one of the, if not the best in the biz.”

With the two-year mission complete, Dowling is set to return to SSCV as the mogul program director, effective June 1. One of his first projects is organizing a summer training camp in France. Young athletes will get a chance to train alongside Lemley.

“The training opportunities in North America are not that great this spring and summer so we looked into it right away,” Dowling explained. “(Liz) is going to be training there as an athlete in residence and giving some talks about her Olympic experience and her approach to skiing.”

Lemley has enjoyed some celebrity status since her win. She hopped in the Altitude Sports Network booth with John-Michael Liles at a recent Colorado Avalanche game and also met Hilary Knight at a Seattle Torrent contest. But the former event prevented her from attending a celebration for local Olympians at Checkpoint Charlie in Vail. While logistics will prevent the valley’s other two mogul Olympians, Tess Johnson and Dylan Walczyk, from attending the May 9 celebration, Friedberg hopes as many folks as possible turn out.

After all, he knows first-hand the lasting impact of meeting a hero.

“I remember waiting at the bottom of the chair lift in Breck at a World Cup, waiting to get Edgar Grospiron’s autograph,” he said, recalling an encounter with the 1992 Olympic champion.

“The accessibility of this in our community is part of what makes it so special,” he continued. “This is a chance for everybody to not only celebrate but meet an Olympic champion.”