Edie Thys Morgan: From Olympian to Mentor – A Complete Ski Racing Journey

From Olympian to mom to columnist, Edie Thys Morgan continues to make her mark in the sport

If there is an athlete who has genuinely had a full circle experience in ski racing, it’s Edie Thys Morgan.

As a junior racer, World Cup competitor, Olympian, parent, coach, and, of course, writer, Morgan continues to make her mark and grow with the sport.

All of these phases proved a learning experience for the 58-year-old New Hampshire resident, who still coaches U14 athletes and guided both of her children through collegiate racing careers.

Growing up and learning to ski in Tahoe, Calif., Morgan’s two older sisters raced but quit after high school. Her older brother, Barry Thys, made the U.S. Ski Team, but his time was short-lived due to injury. Morgan, however, made the team as a teenager in 1984.

“Oftentimes, the youngest kid ends up being the fastest. You’re the scrappiest; just trying to keep up. It’s survival,” Morgan says.

Starting as a speed specialist, Morgan switched to tech after blowing out her left knee two years in a row at ages 17 and 18.

“I had to requalify for the team by skiing tech. That’s the best thing that ever happened to me,” she says. “It preserved me more.”

That’s not to say that the scrappy athlete didn’t endure a staggering litany of further injuries, especially after returning to speed.

Injury Train

She returned to racing during the 1985-86 season, competing in Europa Cup tech events and notching her first World Cup race. By the following season, she was on the World Cup speed circuit full time, taking 20th in downhill at the 1987 World Championships in Crans-Montana. The following season, at age 21, she cracked the top 10 on the World Cup and notched her first Olympics in Calgary in 1988, finishing ninth in the super-G and 18th in the downhill.

“I know it’s cookie cutter, but walking into the opening ceremonies at that first Olympics in Calgary … that’s a highlight,” she says.

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The following October, she broke her wrist and then her leg in December, but still attempted to race in the 1989 World Champs in Vail, missing a gate and taking a DNF in the super-G.

The following January, Morgan blew out her right knee and then, in October, broke the same wrist on the same training hill in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. Nonetheless, she competed at the Saalbach World Champs in 1991 and managed to notch the best results of her career, a second in the Furano World Cup SG that March, followed by a fourth place in the Vail downhill. The following season was another Olympic year – Albertville 1992 – before which Morgan made “the fateful boot switch.”

The boot switch, she says, was the beginning of the end of her international era of racing.

“It was not a good choice. I didn’t have good counsel on that,” she says. “I got to the Olympics and my brother brought my old boots over. I stuck them on and just riding up the Poma, I started to cry. I was like, these feel like home.”

She competed in the downhill, finishing 25th, and experienced a DNF in the GS.

Following the Olympics, Morgan suffered a herniated disc. Although she came back and was able to race, scoring a top 15 and a handful of top 30s, Morgan says “the writing was on the wall” as far as her future with the U.S. Ski Team.

“In the spring of ’93, I got a letter canceling my insurance before I got any official communication from the Ski Team,” she says. “When they want you to be done, they can make it inhospitable for you.”

Next Chapter: College

On the bright side, however, Morgan had the remainder of her full circle journey ahead, beginning with a surprisingly rewarding period of racing for Sierra Nevada College, the pursuit of an undergraduate degree in business that took her to seven separate colleges.

“Every time I got injured, the blood hadn’t dried before my dad said, ‘Where are you going to college this quarter?’ I never thought I’d race in college. I thought it would be such a step down from what I’d been doing. As it turned out, it was all of the good stuff: getting up early and training, being part of a team and high-level competition without the weirdness and travel. It was super fun,” she says.

During college, Morgan discovered she had a lot to offer the sport through coverage and analysis, launching the column Racer eX for Ski Racing Magazine under the direction of the publication’s founder, Gary Black.

“I wrote a commentary piece about watching the Olympics in ’94, feeling like a loser, sort of wanting a do-over,” she says. “That grew into a regular column, Racer eX, and also covered ski racing for Gary.”

Morgan graduated from Sierra Nevada in 1994 at the age of 29, definitively ending her race career. Her enthusiasm for collegiate racing, however, has only grown since then.

“We can get so caught up in the junior racing grind — all the expectations, the pressure. Then you get past it. I feel like all my messaging has been about the long road, pursuing the sport as long as possible to get the joy out of it.   That’s one reason I beat on the college thing. There are 17 NCAA graduates on the World Cup tour. All of them rediscovered joy when they went to college.”

Morgan’s first full-time job was working on staff at SKI Magazine in New York City, which she considers a hurdle as terrifying as the trickiest racetrack.

“To me, that was scarier than any downhill,” she says — totally out of my comfort zone and even my imagination. But I think it was the ski racer in me that allowed me to go for it. In fact, it wouldn’t let me not go for it.”

Morgan moved with the publication to Boulder, Colorado. Shortly thereafter, she met and married Stratton graduate Chan Morgan. They had their first son, Chauncey, in 1999 and Oliver followed in 2001.

Writer and coach

After helping coach her sons and continuing coaching junior racers around the region, Morgan turned Racer eX into a parenting blog directed at parents of athletes U-14 and under.

“It was to encourage them to chill out a little bit. I was going through it myself. Every youth organization — they want to pick a superstar. It makes their job easy to catch a superstar. It’s the siren song of the prodigy, but it’s  not reality,” she says.

Morgan realized the importance of ski racing not being a young person’s be-all, end-all. It’s why she was a huge college advocate, not just for the education but for the race experience.

“I didn’t want to snuff out their aspirations for being on the national team, but at the same time, there was no way they were not going to go to college,” she says of her sons. “Growing up in the East, college racers were their heroes. The college racers were the ones they saw and they were good. My kids saw that college racing was legit. That’s what they aspired to.”

Her son Oliver is a junior who is skiing for Dartmouth, while Chauncey graduated from Colby and will continue racing at Plymouth State while getting his MBA.  

“They have their priorities straight,” Morgan says. “They love the sport.”

Morgan, despite the many impacts she has made on ski racing, continues to love the sport and grow with it.

“That’s what the writing has done; it keeps me learning. I joke that if you want to improve your odds as a ski racing parent, you have to adopt more kids. You get invested in their success, their happiness. With writing, every time you interview someone, you learn about them, their story. You’re rooting for them. You grow. I hope my kids stick with it when they’re done. I hope I stay involved that way, in my writing. That’s how you stay engaged. I like knowing these kids.”