Summit Daily file
Editor’s note: Readers nominated their all-time favorite Summit County athletes for Peak Performers: The Mount Rushmore of Summit County athletes. Voting is live until March 7 at SummitDaily.com/peakperformers.
Nominee: Sigurd Rockne
Sport: Alpine skiing
A co-founder of Breckenridge Ski Resort with fellow Peak Performers nominee Trygve Berge, Sigurd Rockne also was an Olympic downhill skier for Norway at the 1956 Winter Olympics in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.
The 1956 Olympian together with Berge operated the Peak 8 ski school for the first 10 years after the ski area opened.
Berge and Rockne found their way over to Breckenridge after working for a time in Aspen as ski instructors. Rockne helped at the ski school for his lifelong friend and Norwegian Alpine ski legend Stein Eriksen, who Rockne competed against in many races as a downhiller.
In summer 1961, it was Rockne and Berge who laid out the resort’s initial trails, including Rounders, Callie’s Alley, Eagle Lane, Springmeier and Spruce, among others.
Rockne also will be remembered in Summit County history as one of the main figures who brought Breckenridge’s Ullr Fest to town in 1963.