Tommy Ford
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Hometown
Bend, Ore. -
Team
2022 U.S. Olympic Alpine Team , Alpine A -
Years on Team
15 (since 2009) -
Born
03/20/1989 -
Club(s)
Mt. Bachelor Ski Education Foundation -
School:
Dartmouth College
"Winning doesn't need to be a priority"
9 Things You Didn't Know About Tommy Ford
- 1. At the 2019 Birds of Prey giant slalom, Tommy won by a margin of .80. He became the first American male to win a World Cup since teammate Travis Ganong won a downhill on Jan. 27, 2017, and the first American male podium finisher since Ted in January of 2018 in Garmisch, Germany. This result ended the longest drought for the Land Rover U.S. Alpine Ski Team since the late 1990s.
- 2. With his first World Cup win, Tommy joined Ted Ligety and Bode Miller as the only American men to win a World Cup tech race since Phil Mahre’s last World Cup win in 1983!
- 3. In 2020, Tommy had his career-best season, finishing the season ranked fifth in the world in giant slalom.
- 4. Tommy began skiing by walking around his yard in his skis when he was a little boy. He loved the snow and the smiles it creates!
- 5. One of Tommy's favorite memories is ping pong game against Chef Brett Eisen in Ohau, New Zealand..
- 6. If he could choose one actor to play him in a biographical film, he says it'd be Bruce Lee, "because I want to be like him." He adds that Bruce Lee is his favorite athlete because he's well-rounded.
- 7. Off the hill, Tommy is involved with BGL International Freilassing, which is a soccer team comprised of many different nationalities, "I am involved because it is a simple game that can bring together people of different backgrounds and inspire joy."
- 8. He's into rock climbing, drawing, surfing, camping, snapping photos and mountain biking...and he does a lot of these activities with girlfriend and teammate Laurenne Ross.
- 9. "My mother and father both raced and coached. My brother also raced so I have been around racing all of my life. I started with MBSEF around the age of seven. From there I just kept having fun and racing."
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Olympian Tommy Ford is one of the fastest movers in ski racing. The U.S. Ski Team took notice after he locked four gold medals at the 2006 U.S. Junior Championships. That proved to be a good look because Ford went on to score World Cup points in his rookie season and then grab a spot on the 2010 Olympic team for giant slalom.
Ford sat out the entire 2014 Olympic season while still recovering from a major freeskiing crash he suffered in France at the end of the 2013 winter. That didn’t stop him from fully applying himself in both injury recovery and education. Ford went back to school and put down two solid semesters at Dartmouth. The year off also gave his teammates a chance to win a few more U.S. Championship titles; something Ford has quickly become a legend for earning. What an impressive comeback for Ford in 2015. After earning himself a top 20 result at World Championships, Ford went on to grab two more top 30 results—one each at Garmisch-Partenkirchen and Kranjska Gora—along with a 2nd place finish in the GS at U.S. Alpine Championships in Sugarloaf, Maine.
His most impressive season, though, was the 2018 season. He kicked it off with a bang, landing his best-ever World Cup top 10 and it was onward and upward from there. Ninth in Kranjska Gora, Slovenia and then ended the season with a career-best eighth place in Åre, Sweden. That kind of steady progression bodes well for 2018-19, especially considering Åre will be hosting World Championships.
In 2019, Tommy had the best season of his career, finishing the season ranked ninth in giant slalom in the world. During the 2020-21 season, Tommy was once again off to a solid start, grabbing fourt top-10 results in six starts, including another podium (second-place) at Santa Caterina, Italy. Unfortunately, a horrific crash in the second of two Adelboden, Switzerland giant slalom races sidelined him for the remainder of the season. He'll look to come back strong for the 2021-22 season, en route to Beijing 2022.
FIRST TRACKS
Ford grew up in Bend, Ore. and started to ski at Mt. Bachelor around age two. "My mother and father both raced and coached. My brother also raced so I have been around racing all of my life. I started with MBSEF around the age of seven. From there I just kept having fun and racing." He joined the U.S. Development Team right out of high school and has been climbing the ranks ever since.
OFF THE SNOW
Ford is into skateboarding, rock climbing, drawing, snapping photos and mountain biking...and he does a lot of these activities with girlfriend and teammate Laurenne Ross. Also a big fan of filming and editing, he and former teammate Nolan Kasper would create short video edits from the road all season and post them on Ford's blog. Ford was a student at Dartmouth and probably the Pacific Northwest’s biggest WuTang fan.