On the recordMarch 9, 2010
I wish to congratulate the athletes from New Hampshire who represented our country at the Olympic games in Vancouver. As I watched the games over those 2 exciting weeks in February, I know I joined all Granite Staters in celebrating New Hampshire's enduring tradition of excellence in winter sports. More than 125 years ago, in 1882, residents of Berlin, NH, formed the first modern ski club in America. In 1927, the Dartmouth Outing Club organized the first downhill race in the United States at Mount Moosilauke in New Hampshire's White Mountains, where the Outing Club still hikes to this day. The next year, a Dartmouth professor organized the country's first slalom race. In the 1930s and 1940s, as skiing grew in popularity, J-bars and chairlifts were added at mountains in Europe, in the West and across New England, but none could rival Cannon Mountain's Aerial Tramway in Franconia, which was built by the New Hampshire State Legislature and continues to be the platform from which millions of visitors first see our White Mountain range. At the 1960 winter games in Squaw Valley, CA, 37 years after that first race in the White Mountains, a 22-year-old from Center Harbor named Penny Pitou became the first American to win an Olympic medal in downhill.
