13 Facts About Buddy Werner

Wallace Jerold "Buddy" Werner was an American alpine ski racer in the 1950s and early 1960s.

Buddy Werner raced for the University of Colorado in the mid-1950s, making the 1956 Olympic team in his sophomore year, joining his elder sister, Skeeter Buddy Werner.

Buddy Werner was selected for the US Olympic Team three times: 1956,1960, and 1964.

Buddy Werner finished fourth in the slalom at the 1958 World Championships in Austria at Bad Gastein.

Buddy Werner took fifth in the giant slalom, and was challenging Toni Sailer for the combined title with only the downhill event remaining.

In contention for a medal in the downhill, Buddy Werner fell a few seconds before the finish.

Buddy Werner lost a ski and a pole and eventually crossed the finish line, but was fourteen seconds back in a distant 37th place, which knocked him down to seventh in the combined standings.

Buddy Werner again finished fifth in the giant slalom, and eighth in the downhill, but did not finish the second run of slalom, which knocked him out of the combined.

At the 1964 Olympics at Innsbruck, Buddy Werner placed eighth in the slalom at Axamer Lizum, behind medalist teammates Billy Kidd and Jimmie Heuga, and seventeenth in the downhill at Patscherkofel.

Buddy Werner was scheduled to complete his bachelor's degree at the University of Colorado in June 1964, and co-owned a ski shop with his sister Skeeter at the base of the fledgling Storm Mountain ski area, which later became Steamboat Ski Resort.

Buddy Werner was posthumously inducted into the National Ski Hall of Fame later that year.

Buddy Werner was inducted into the Colorado Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame in 1977.

The Buddy Werner League is a national youth ski racing program, similar to Little League for baseball.