It is a sad day for the world of ski racing as legendary Austrian-born ski coach Erich Sailer has passed away at age 99.
Sailer immigrated to America in the 1950s and coached Buck Hill Ski Team in Burnsville, Minnesota for decades and transformed it into one of the nation’s premier training grounds for slalom skiing. The U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame inductee pioneered summer ski training camps at Mount Hood and set a new standard for developing top talent in the United States. Sailer coached scores of elite athletes including Olympians Kristina Koznick and Lindsey Vonn.
Lindsey Vonn is currently training in New Zealand where she penned this heartfelt tribute to her late great ski coach.
Lindsey Vonn:
Yesterday my coach passed away. It’s hard to put into words how much of an Impact Erich Sailer had on my life but I will try…
Erich was more than my ski coach. More than my father’s ski coach. Erich was my family. My father has known him for 62 years and he has been a part of my life since I was born. There is no doubt that I would not be the person or skier I am today without him. The entire ski racing community would not be the same without him. He single handedly did more for skiing than any other coach in America and perhaps the world. Even from the small but mighty Buck Hill, Minnesota-which he put on the map as a premier racing program.
Today we mourn but also must celebrate Erich. He would want us to be on the mountain, doing what we love to do; ski. I know he’s got his hand timer up there, making sure we are always getting faster and still getting upset with me when I’m leaning too much on my inside ski.
Erich… I will try to make my last turns in ski racing fast for you… I will try to make them mean something more for you. You always believed in me… even now, at 40. Your passion and love for skiing was the same as when I was a kid. I’m so thankful I got to see you this summer. Thankful to hear that belief in me one last time. I will use that when I’m in the starting gate this last season but also for the rest of my life. I will never forget you. Never.
Ich liebe dich Erich. Give my Mom a hug up there for me. Until we meet again.
Erich Sailer interview, March, 2025:
U.S. Ski and Snowboard Hall of Fame
Successful athletes require successful coaches and when it comes to ski racing, no coach can claim a record like Erich Sailer’s. For 50 years the feisty Austrian has stood next to slalom courses, tirelessly drilling alpine racers into world class competitors. His passion for our sport and his gift for teaching racers to go faster have touched some 25,000 skiers, including five of the women who represented the U.S. team in Torino: Lindsey Kildow, Kristina Koznick, Julia Mancuso, Sarah Schleper and Resi Stiegler.
His request to build better ski racers has been a year round job since 1956 when, as a newcomer to the U.S., he pioneered summer ski racing on this continent with a camp at Timberline on Oregon’s Mt. Hood. “I had to learn a lot,” he admits. “We had 16 injuries in 20 days on the soft snow.” He not only learned, he expanded and by 1967, he launched a camp on the Bear Tooth Pass outside Red Lodge, Montana. It soon became the biggest ski racing camp in the country, attracting 700 skiers in a forty-day session.
But Sailer’s greatest achievements have been in the Midwest, not on the mountains. In 1960, he came to Buck Hill (or Buck Bump as the locals call it) in Burnsville, Minnesota. The 45 member ski team had never won a race but within a year, four racers were headed to the Junior Nationals. “That’s when I said I’m going to put somebody on the U.S. Ski Team from the flatlands,” remembers Sailer. True to his mission, 15 racers from Buck Hill have made that team and four have competed at the Olympics, including Lindsey Kildow and Kristina Koznick who represented the U.S. in Torino.
While Sailer has helped thousands of skiers to earn medals, he too has collected some prestigious awards. In 1998, he was the first to be honored as USSA’s Development Coach of the Year and the USOC named him Ski Coach of the Year. In 2004, he was presented with the USSA’s Tom Reynolds Lifetime Achievement Award.
Called the “Yoda of Ski Coaching,” Sailer helped start the US Ski Coaches Ski Association and even more important, he’s inspired dozens of world class competitors to “pass it on” and also coach, including: Karl Schranz, Pepi Gramshammer, Bill Marolt, Anderl Molterer, Billy Kidd and Andy Mill.
Above all, Erich Sailer proves that it’s not the size of the mountain that makes champions; it’s the commitment to excellence.
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