Sportspeople from Haute-Savoie

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.

Roddy Darragon (born August 31, 1983 in Le Grand-Bornand) is a French cross-country skier and non-commissioned officer who has competed since 2002. Competing in three Winter Olympics, he earned France's first ever Winter Olympic cross-country skiing medal with a silver in the individual sprint event at Turin in 2006.
Darragon's best finish at the FIS Nordic World Ski Championships was a 35th in the individual sprint event in 2005. His best World Cup finish was fourth in a sprint event in the Czech Republic in 2005.

James Couttet (6 July 1921 – 13 November 1997) was a French alpine skier and ski jumper. As an alpine skier he competed at the 1948 and 1952 Olympics and won two medals in 1948: a silver in the slalom and a bronze in the combined event. As a ski jumper he placed 25th in the normal hill at the 1948 Games. Couttet won a full set of medals at the world championships: a gold in 1938 and a silver and bronze in 1950. He retired in 1955 to become a skiing coach and prepare the French alpine skiing team for the 1956 Winter Olympics. He later helped design and build ski lifts. He was married to Lucienne Schmidt-Couttet, a fellow alpine skier who competed at the 1948 Olympics.

Adrien Duvillard (7 November 1934, Megève – 14 February 2017) was a French alpine skier who competed in the 1956 Winter Olympics and 1960 Winter Olympics.His son Adrien and his brother Henri Duvillard were also successful skiers.
At the 1956 Winter Olympics he finished 4th in the Giant Slalom, earning France's best result at those games.

Benoît Chamoux (19 February 1961 – 6 October 1995) was a French Alpinist, who claimed to have summited 13 of the Eight-thousanders in the Himalayas.
Three of these climbs are disputed and are not formally recorded (Makalu in 1995, Cho Oyu in 1990 and Shishapangma in 1990). His official recorded number of ascents is 10.