1. Elizabeth Lee Heiden Reid was born on September 27,1959 and is an American athlete who excelled in speed skating, cross-country skiing, and bicycle racing.
14 Facts About Beth Heiden
1. 2.
Beth Heiden was a speedskating bronze medalist at the 1980 Lake Placid Winter Olympics, where her brother Eric won five speedskating gold medals.
3.
Beth Heiden attended her first Olympics in 1976, at the age of 17.
4.
In cycle racing, which she took up as cross training outside the skating season, Beth Heiden won both the United States National Road Race Championships and the Road World Championship in 1980.
5.
Beth Heiden graduated from the university in 1983 and was inducted into the UVM Athletic Hall of Fame in 1993.
6.
Beth Heiden has been inducted in the Speed Skating Hall of Fame.
7.
Beth Heiden suffered a broken wrist and a ruptured spleen when she fell to the ground in 1980 after a second-floor porch railing gave way.
8.
Beth Heiden has won the California Gold Rush, Great Race, and won every single race she competed in at the cross-country skiing Master's World Championships in McCall, Idaho.
9.
Beth Heiden placed in the top five at the NCAA Western Regionals in 2006 as a guest skier, and achieved a top 20 and two top 15s in the US Supertour in West Yellowstone in 2009.
10.
Beth Heiden's daughter, Joanne Reid, has been a member of the US biathlon national team since 2015 and was an NCAA champion cross-country skier at the University of Colorado Boulder.
11.
For most of her skating career Beth Heiden was a junior, but she belonged to the world top.
12.
Beth Heiden's brother swept the five men's races at the same Olympics.
13.
Beth Heiden is one of only two American women to have become world allround champion, the other being Kit Klein in 1936.
14.
Beth Heiden was inducted in the National Speedskating Hall of Fame in 1989.