Olympic alpine skiers for France

James_Couttet

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.

Charles_Bozon

Charles Bozon Jr. (15 December 1932 – 7 July 1964) was an alpine ski racer and world champion from France.Born in Chamonix, Haute-Savoie, Bozon won a gold medal in the slalom at the 1962 World Championships, held at his hometown of Chamonix in a snowstorm. Earlier, he had won a bronze medal in the slalom at the 1960 Winter Olympics in Squaw Valley, California, and two world championship silver medals in the combined in 1956 and 1960.
Bozon suffered fractured vertebra in the giant slalom at the world championships in 1958 and vowed not to compete again. He did not compete in the Olympics in 1964.Bozon died in 1964 at age 31 in a mountain climbing accident near Mont Blanc. He and 13 climbing companions were killed in an avalanche on the Aiguille Verte, a 4,122-metre (13,524 ft) mountain in the Mont Blanc massif. The climbing party had reached an elevation of about 2,700 m (9,000 ft) when the avalanche occurred. Bozon's father, Charles, Sr., had died on the same slope in an avalanche in 1938.Less than three months earlier, an avalanche in Switzerland claimed the lives of two noted alpine racers, Buddy Werner of the U.S. and Barbi Henneberger of West Germany.

Franck_Piccard

Franck Piccard (born 17 September 1965) is a French former Alpine skier.
A native of Les Saisies, Piccard won a total of four Alpine Skiing World Cup races.
At the 1988 Olympics in Calgary he won a gold medal in the Super-G competition (the first winter Olympic gold-medal for a French athlete since ski racer Jean-Claude Killy in 1968, who became a three-times gold-medallist) and a bronze medal in the downhill. At the 1992 Olympics in Albertville he won a silver medal in the downhill. He also could achieve a bronze-medal in the Super-G-Race at the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships 1991.

First excellent success was winning a gold-medal in the downhill race in the FIS Alpine skiing Junior World Championships 1982 at Auron. First "World Cup Points", he could catch on December 10th, 1983, placed 4th in the Super-G at Val-d’Isère, first win was in the Super-G on March 23rd, 1988, at Beaver Creek. At the begin of his skiing career he did prefer starting in Downhill and Super-G races, later he changed to the giant slalom. Last World Cup race was on February 10th, 1996, in the giant slalom at Hinterstoder; he was placed 27th (therefore one place - and 0,38 sec. - behind Hermann Maier at his debut in World Cup Races). Afterwards, he did start in so-called FIS-races and in the French Championships, until the year 2000. He could achieve a three-times French Champion (1985 till 1993).Another results in the FIS Alpine Skiing World Championships:

Bormio 1985: Alpine Combined 6th; Downhill 15th.
Crans-Montana 1987: Super-G 10th; Alpine Combined 10th.
Vail 1989: Super-G 10th.
Saalbach-Hinterglemm 1991: Super-G 3rd; Giant slalom 13th; Downhill 15th.
Sierra Nevada 1996: Giant slalom 15h.
In the giant slalom at Morioka in 1993 he didn't finish the first run, held on February 9th.After retiring from downhill skiing, Piccard competed in long-distance cross-country skiing at the national level in 2006–2009. In 1988, he was awarded the Prix de la ville de Paris by the French Academy of Sports.His father gave him the name Franck in tribute to Frank Sinatra. Piccard's siblings Leila Piccard, Ian Piccard and Jeff Piccard also competed as alpine skiers, as does his daughter Lucie. Another brother, Ted Piccard, has competed in both alpine skiing and skiercross.