Statue erected in Colorado to honor Paralympian skier

From the Snowmass Sun:

Cara Dunne and her seeing-eye dog Haley look as if they are ready to walk over to the Elk Camp Gondola and head up the mountain.

But this bronze likeness of a girl and her dog will forever be frozen in time at one end of the Base Village Plaza.

“Cara is the most amazing individual you would ever meet,” said Houston Cowan, co-founder of Challenge Aspen, who had been her skiing guide since the mid-1990s.

Partially blind from birth with retinal cancer, she had both eyes removed by the time the she was five, but she accomplished much in her short life that ended on October 20, 2004.

In 1984 when she was 12 years old, Cara won two bronze medals and one silver at the winter Paralympics in Innsbruck, Austria, and in 1988, she returned to win two more silver medals, one in the downhill and the other in giant slalom.

She gave up competing for a while in order to attend Harvard University where she graduated magna cum laude in 1992 as class president. This was followed by a law degree from UCLA in 1997.

In 1995, she decided to return to competitive skiing and heard about Houston Cowan, who had been a guide for the B.O.L.D program in Aspen, which was then under the directorship of Peter Maines. At the time, Cowan and Amanda Boxtel were beginning to build Challenge Aspen and Dunne helped to develop their programs for the visually impaired.

“I became her skiing guide and helped her train to be on the U.S. Disabled Ski Team. We immediately became good friends,” he said.

The two trained on the slopes of Snowmass ski area and during the summer at Mount Hood.

“She was the top totally blind skier in America and one of the top in the world,” said Cowan.

Cara Dunne was invited to try out for the 1996 U.S. Paralympic Tandem Cycling Team and competed in the sport at that summer's Paralympics in Atlanta, winning a silver medal in tandem kilo and a bronze medal in the 200 meter sprint.

She not only became the only competitor to have won medals in the summer and winter Paralympics, but she also fell in love and got married to another cyclist.

With a new life and then two children, she gave up the dream to compete in skiing again, but she didn't give up her love of the sport.

Once her youngest daughter was three–and–a–half years old, Dunne brought her back to Snowmass Village and taught her to ski with the help of Cowan.

“I guided her while she snowplowed with Elise between her legs on Fanny Hill. She is probably the only blind mother to teach her child to ski. It was something to see. I cried on many occasions,” he said.

The creation of a statue to honor this incredible person was the idea of her father, Mike Dunne of Boulder, who works in promotions for winter sports including with the U.S. Ski Team.

After her death, he had been reading an article about her in the Boston Globe, which talked about her being “influential in increasing the opportunities for people with disabilities in sports both in this country and internationally,”

“At that moment I conceptualized the statue all in one piece. I felt that Cara was guiding me. I wanted it to be more than a tribute, it was also a way to promote disabled sports and Challenge Aspen. I hope people read her story on the plaques at the base of the statue and get motivated,” he said.

There was never a doubt in his mind where the statue should go. It was to make its home at the base of the ski area that Cara loved and near Challenge Aspen.

Created by sculptor Jerry Snodgrass of Boise, from donations by Cara's friends, family, her graduating class, Related WestPac, Aspen Skiing Co. and many more, it is a tribute from so many who knew her and those who were inspired by her life story.

Some notables who felt the need to give were Lance Armstrong, Vince Gill, Amy Grant and Scott Turow. The list is too long to mention here, but one of the plaques on the base of the 750–pound statue includes all of the donors.

More than five years after Mike Dunne had the inspiration to immortalize his daughter, the statue has arrived in Snowmass Village with only the landscaping to be finished.

It's been a long road for him to bring his initial idea to fruition, and that road has ended near the Elk Camp Gondola.

“Now I will let Cara do the work,” said Mike Dunne.