Susan Howlet Butcher (December 26, 1954 – August 5, 2006) was an American dog musher, noteworthy as the second woman to win the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race in 1986, the second four-time winner in 1990, and the first to win four out of five sequential years. She is commemorated in Alaska by the Susan Butcher Day.
Jean-Claude Killy (born 30 August 1943) is a French former World Cup alpine ski racer. He dominated the sport in the late 1960s, and was a triple Olympic champion, winning the three alpine events at the 1968 Winter Olympics, becoming the most successful athlete there. He also won the first two World Cup titles, in 1967 and 1968.
Primo Carnera (Italian pronunciation: [ˈpriːmo karˈnɛːra]; 26 October 1906 – 29 June 1967), nicknamed the Ambling Alp, was an Italian professional boxer and wrestler who reigned as the boxing World Heavyweight Champion from 29 June 1933 to 14 June 1934. He won more fights by knockout than any other heavyweight champion (IBU, NBA, NYSAC) in boxing history.
William John Vukovich Jr. (March 29, 1944 – August 20, 2023) was an American driver in the championship car division of USAC and the CART series.
Émile Allais (25 February 1912 – 17 October 2012) was a champion alpine ski racer from France; he won all three events at the 1937 world championships in Chamonix and the gold in the combined in 1938. Born in Megève, he was a dominant racer in the late 1930s and is considered to have been the first great French alpine skier.
Allais won the bronze medal in the combined (downhill and slalom), the only alpine medal event at the 1936 Winter Olympics in Garmisch, Germany. These Olympics were the first to award medals in alpine skiing. The previous year, he had won the silver medal in the downhill and combined at the 1935 world championships. In 1937 he was a triple world champion at Chamonix, France, winning all three events (downhill, slalom, and combined). The following year at Engelberg, Switzerland, he won the combined, and took silver in the downhill and slalom. He created the École Française de Ski which taught innovative methods of Anton Seelos (who was his trainer and instructor), characterised by parallel turns, controlling the speed by sideslipping, and turning by ruade (French: kick, back kick), i.e. kicking the backs of the skis up and pivoting on the tips while rotating the body in the direction of the turn. The École du Ski Français (ESF) is now the biggest Ski school in the world in terms of numbers of ski teachers, and is present in every single French ski resort, and even abroad.
After a spell in North and South America (Squaw Valley, California and Portillo, Chile) Allais held the post of technical director at Courchevel from 1954 to 1964, where he introduced many ideas from the U.S. regarding slope preparation and piste security. He later worked as a technical consultant for other resorts, notably La Plagne and Flaine. One of the Saulire couloirs at Courchevel is named after Allais.
As a consultant to Skis Rossignol, Allais helped to design the laminated-wood Olympic 41 ski (1941), and the first aluminum skis to win major ski races, the Métallais (1959) and Allais 60 (1960). The Olympic 41 later served as the basis of Rossignol's very successful Strato (1964).
In December 2005, 93-year-old Allais made the trip to the French Senate in Paris where he was honoured, along with a number of other ski instructors. His life has been all about skiing; he learned his skiing early, raced all over Europe, then coached the French Olympic ski team for seven years. Allais fought in World War II on skis, and even courted his wife at a ski meet. He turned 100 in February 2012.Allais died after an illness in a hospital in Sallanches in the French Alps on 17 October 2012.
James Michael Eisenreich ( EYE-zin-ryke; born April 18, 1959) is an American former Major League Baseball player with a 15-year career from 1982 to 1984 and 1987 to 1998. He played for the Minnesota Twins and Kansas City Royals of the American League, and the Philadelphia Phillies, Florida Marlins and Los Angeles Dodgers of the National League. He played first base, outfield and designated hitter.
Gustavo "Guga" Kuerten (Portuguese pronunciation: [ɡusˈtavu ˈkiʁtẽ]; born 10 September 1976) is a Brazilian former world No. 1 tennis player. He won the French Open singles title three times (1997, 2000, 2001), and was the Tennis Masters Cup champion in 2000. During his career he won 20 singles and eight doubles titles.
Kuerten suffered from injuries that limited his attendances at tournaments in 2002 and from 2004 and 2008. After two hip surgeries and a few attempted comebacks, he retired from top-level tennis in May 2008. He was inducted into the International Tennis Hall of Fame in 2012. In 2016, Kuerten was asked to be a torch bearer for the Rio Olympics.
John Donald Budge (June 13, 1915 – January 26, 2000) was an American tennis player. He is most famous as the first tennis player — male or female, and still the only American male — to win the Grand Slam, and to win all four Grand Slam events consecutively overall. Budge was the second man to complete the career Grand Slam after Fred Perry, and remains the youngest to achieve the feat. He won ten majors, of which six were Grand Slam events (consecutively, a men's record) and four Pro Slams, the latter achieved on three different surfaces. Budge is considered to have one of the best backhands in the history of tennis, with most observers rating it better than that of later player Ken Rosewall.Budge is also the only man to have achieved the Triple Crown (winning singles, men's doubles and mixed doubles at the same tournament) on three separate occasions (Wimbledon in 1937 and 1938, and the US Championships in 1938), and the only man to have achieved it twice in one year. Budge was the world Number 1 amateur in 1937 and 1938 and world Number 1 professional in 1939, 1940 and 1942.
Richard Lee Petty (born July 2, 1937), nicknamed "the King", is an American former stock car racing driver who competed from 1958 to 1992 in the former NASCAR Grand National and Winston Cup Series (now called the NASCAR Cup Series), most notably driving the No. 43 Plymouth/Pontiac for Petty Enterprises. He is a member of the Petty racing family. He was the first driver to win the Cup Series championship seven times (a record now tied with Dale Earnhardt and Jimmie Johnson), while also winning a record 200 races during his career. This included winning the Daytona 500 a record seven times and winning a record 27 races in one season (1967).He was inducted into the inaugural class of the NASCAR Hall of Fame in 2010. He is also statistically, one of the most accomplished driver in the history of NASCAR, having racked up most wins (200), most poles (123), tied for most championships (seven), most wins in a season (27), most Daytona 500 wins (seven), most consecutive wins (10) and most starts (1,185).He earns broad respect in motorsport where beyond driving, he remains very active as both a team owner (GMS Racing) in the Cup Series and owner of Petty's Garage (a car restoration and modification shop) in Level Cross, North Carolina. During his 35-year career, Petty collected a record number of poles (123) and over 700 top 10 finishes in a record 1,184 starts, including 513 consecutive starts from 1971 to 1989. Petty was the first driver to win in his 500th race start, being joined by Matt Kenseth in 2013.
The Richard Petty Museum was formerly in nearby Randleman, North Carolina, but moved back to its original location in Level Cross in March 2014. Petty has also voiced a role in Disney's animated films Cars and Cars 3, playing The King, a character partially based on himself.
William Thomas Romanowski (born April 2, 1966) is an American former football linebacker who played in the National Football League (NFL) for 16 seasons. Nicknamed "Romo" and "RomoCop", he spent the majority of his career with the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos. Romanowski was selected by the 49ers in the third round of the 1988 NFL Draft and played six seasons each in San Francisco and Denver. He was also a member of the Philadelphia Eagles and Oakland Raiders for two seasons each. At the time of his retirement, Romanowski won four Super Bowl titles, two each with the 49ers and Broncos, and twice received Pro Bowl honors during his Broncos tenure. He also led a controversial career due to often engaging in unsportsmanlike behavior, which resulted in altercations with opponents and teammates.