![Buddy Werner](https://bssef-com.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Buddy-Werner-150x150.jpg?strip=all&lossy=1&ssl=1)
More than one-third of our team is in the Buddy Werner program. But how many of you know who Buddy Werner was? In short, he is widely regarded as America’s first world-class Alpine ski racer.
Werner was the first American to win the famed Hahnenkamm downhill (1959), and he was named to the U.S. Olympic Team three times (1956, 1960, and 1964). From Steamboat Springs, Colorado, the mountain upon which the ski area is built is named Mount Werner in his honor. Werner died in 1964 at the age of 28 in an avalanche in Switzerland while filming a ski movie.