Words by Abi Butcher | Photos by Jesse Hoffman and Dave Kozlowski
As Wendy Fisher opens her laptop to show me a clip of her and her sons Devin (10) and Aksel (12) skiing in the latest Warren Miller film, a lasagne recipe flashes up on the screen. “You see?” says the mother-of-two, grinning, “I’m just a normal mom, I do this stuff too!”
But I’d beg to differ. Wendy, a double World Extreme Ski Champion and Olympian, might be a mum — and a great one at that, too — but she is anything but normal.
This is a woman who won the US Extreme Skiing Championships then found out she was pregnant, then expressed for her young kid between runs at the same competition a year later, and still finished second. She’s someone who once earned $700 in an hour by drinking shots of schnapps in Lech while working; someone who is every night, without fail, asking to stop dancing on the bar in Portillo, Chile where we are skiing together.
“Wendy is utterly badass — a badass kind of mum that her sons must be incredibly proud of.”
After two hours’ sleep even on a quiet day with relatively tough, low-tide conditions, Wendy is utterly badass — a badass kind of mum that her sons must be incredibly proud of.
We are Portillo for the Superstars Ski Camp that big mountain skier Chris Davenport has hosted every year since 2003. I was learning, Wendy was coaching (as she has done since 2003), along with Mike Douglas, Ingrid Backstrom and this year, Cody Townsend. It’s a ski hard, play hard kind of place and I quickly learned first-hand how good Wendy’s mothering skills were when, two nights in, she kindly lead me to my bed after I’d enjoyed one too many Pisco sours.
