Thetford
It was Dennis Donahue, a Thetford resident, former Olympic biathlete and longtime alpine skiing coach with the club, who helped Cunningham cultivate a passion for the sport. Like many who have come through Ford Sayre’s programs, Donahue helped grow a love for skiing that Cunningham didn’t think existed. That affection continues to this day; Cunningham now competes for St. Lawrence University and was named to the U.S. Junior Biathlon Team in the spring.
Donahue, 74, a Essex Junction, Vt. native and two-time U.S. Olympian, was one of five Vermonters to be inducted into the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Museum’s Hall of Fame in October.
Cunningham was the least bit surprised by the nod.
“Dennis cultivates a deep connection to classic skiing,” Cunningham, a Georges Mills, N.H. native, said via email this week. “He is almost a therapist in the way he watches what your body says while skiing and tells you things from his experience that force you to look intently at what you do. … Everyone on Ford Sayre looks to Dennis as an example of a genuine character with much to teach and the trained and experience of a true professional.”
Hannah Kearney, the Norwich native, Hanover High graduate and two-time Olympic medal-winning mogul skiing star, also was named to the 2018 Hall of Fame class, as was Foster Chandler, longtime director of the New England Ski Areas Council; Janet and Brad Mead, who installed the first country’s first T-bar on their ski area in Rutland in 1940; and Paul Johnston, the former vice president at Stratton Mountain.
It was an honor came with plenty of good fortune in a life lived involved in a sport that — from the beginning — seemed to define his life’s work.
“Put it this way, I didn’t do this to get into the Vermont Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame,” Donahue said with a laugh on Tuesday during a phone interview. “The results always got better. I was never shooting for number one. I enjoyed the work. I enjoyed the travel. I enjoyed the racing. I enjoyed my teammates. It was a good experience.
“I’ve been involved, I had a little bit of a sense (that a Hall of Fame nod was possible)” he added. “It’s humbling.”
Skiing was more than just a hobby when Donahue was growing up. It was just what he did. His parents, aunts and uncles all were avid skiers. He learned to love skiing, and cultivated a talent for speed on the mountains. Donahue continued that passion at Holderness School and, later, at Middlebury College, where he was part of the ski team from 1962-66.
It was at Middlebury that John Morton, a Thetford resident and 2011 Hall of Fame inductee who spent 11 years as the head coach of Dartmouth College’s ski team, met Donahue, a focused, soft-spoken, hard-working athlete two years ahead of him.
“We were teammates at Middlebury,” Morton said on Wednesday. “He was a mentor for me. … My first couple of years at Middlebury, my objective was to just keep up with Dennis.”
Like many college and universities during that time, it was policy for male students to enroll in Reserve Officers Training Corps for at least two years. Both Donahue and Morton stuck with the program for four years.
After college, both were approached about a joining an elite unit of the military based out of Fort Richardson near Anchorage, Alaska, tasked with training biathletes to compete on the international stage at the U.S. Biathlon Training Center. Donahue and Morton jumped at the chance.
“It was professional, very impressive,” Donahue said. “The coaches, the equipment, the travel, it was high intensity. … I was encouraged. That sort of competition kept me going.”
Added Morton, who was Donahue’s roommate on many international trips: “Our mission was to train for and compete in biathlon world championships, major biathlon international championships and the Olympics. To me, it sounded like the ideal set up. … Those of us in biathlon, we loved being in Alaska.”
Biathlon, which combines cross-country skiing and rifle shooting in a relay-style event, had not even been on Donahue’s radar in college. But the army had been looking for fast cross country skiers, Donahue said. Shooting was what the military taught best.
“The coaches were so good at the basics,” Donahue said. “I’m not saying it was easy, but they knew what they were doing. They themselves were elite shooters in the army. They knew their stuff. I think for many countries, not just the U.S., programs try to find fast skiers and teach them how to shoot. It doesn’t work the other way around.”
Donahue competed in the 1972 Olympics in Sapporo, Japan and the 1976 Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, but he never earned a medal against a deeper pool of international competition. For Morton, Donahue’s biggest impact on the sport came during the 1973 Biathlon World Championships at Lake Placid, N.Y., where Donahue became the first American to shoot a perfect race.
“American athletes, even through the late ’60s, never on any kind of basis had any outstanding performances, though we did have some occasional encouraging results,” said Morton, who now designs skiing, hiking and biking trails for Morton Trails. “Dennis hit all his targets. … It was a big breakthrough. Nobody had ever shot that well in the past. That kind of opened the door, showed the rest of us that it could be done under the stress and challenge of World Cup competition.”
Donahue retired from competition in 1976, and was drawn back to the East Coast by a love for teaching and coaching. He did both at the Holderness School for seven years and moved to the Upper Valley in 1985, where he got involved with Ford Sayre as a coach. He’s been coaching at with the club ever since.
“He’s really responsible for Ford Sayre in its current form,” said David Lindahl, whom Donahue coached during his time at Holderness and who now works as Ford Sayre’s parent program leader for the junior Nordic team. “For Nordic, when I coached as a student coach in the mid-80s, there were a few kids here and there, to what it is today: over 200 kids and one of the largest programs in the country. You can trace that back to when Dennis got involved.”
As a coach, Lindahl said, Donahue had his own way of teaching.
“Dennis, I think I would classify as your stereotypical Vermont Yankee,” Lindahl said. “No nonsense. He wasn’t mean, but one where it came to personal responsibility. He gave you the tools to do that. … Dennis was one who taught kids how to do things themselves. He wasn’t one to coddle you. He instilled self-responsibility at a time, growing up as a teenager, where that becomes important.”
Added Cunningham: “He is a connoisseur in the art of gracefully striding uphill in the cold heart of winter on a paper-thin layer of wax. … His frequent reminder that I need to ‘chill out’ and not ski like a gorilla taught me not only to ski fast, which was my primary goal, but also enjoy the paradoxical act of gliding uphill on wax that is meant to stick. The latter accomplishment on its own is worth of a standing ovation.”
Cunningham had biathlon in mind before he met Donahue, but didn’t have the chance to compete during his high school years; he has since gained access to the Lake Placid training center as an collegiate athlete at SLU, at which point Donahue lent him a laser rifle and gave him summer lessons on how to aim.
“Dennis helped me build a foundation of skills that have helped me propel to where I am now,” Cunningham said. “He got me started on the biathlon path.”
Josh Weinreb can be reached at jweinreb@vnews.com or 603-727-3306.