Berkshire County Natives Who Competed in The Olympics

Getting to represent your country in the Olympics is the ultimate dream for athletes, but only the most elite in the world get to compete. Many of us know Berkshire County natives who have seen success in other professional sports, but there's also a handful of locals who represented the United State in the Olympic Games.

What do all these athletes have in common? They all participated in the WINTER Olympics. You can take the kid out of New England, but you can't take New England out of the kid.

Chris Mazdzer

Chris Mazdzer - born in Pittsfield, MA on June 26, 1988, Mazdzer is an American luger who competed at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, finishing 13th on both occasions. At the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, Mazdzer won the silver medal in the Men’s Single Luge becoming the first U.S. men's singles luge medalist and the first and currently only non-European to win a medal in that event.

Patrick Weaver 

Patrick Weaver – This Lenox, MA native is a two-time Olympian in nordic skiing   He competed in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, as a member of the U.S. Olympic Cross-Country Ski Team. For the past two years, Weaver has been named the national Nordic Skiing Coach of the Year for his work as head coach at the University of Vermont's team.

Heidi Voelker

Heidi Voelker - This 12 year veteran of the U.S. Ski Team (1984-1997)  was born in Pittsfield on October 29, 1969, and competed in three Winter Olympics 1988, 1992, and 1994. Voelker moved to Utah in 1990 and has been the Ambassador of Skiing at Deer Valley since 1995. Voelker is also featured on Utah's "ski" license plate, introduced in 2007. She is the first living human and woman to be featured on a state license plate.

 Laura Spector 

Get our free mobile app

 Laura Spector - Born on October 30, 1987, Spector was a member of the Lenox High School nordic team but after three years she left and enrolled at the Green Mountain Valley School in Vermont to pursue skiing at a higher level. That's where she began competing in biathlon races. As a biathlete, she competed in the 2010 Olympic Winter Games, where she finished in 65th place in the Women's 15km Individual, finished in 77th place in the Women's 7.5km Sprint and finished 17th in the Women's 4x6 relay with a time of 1:15:47.5.

Krista Schmidinger

Krista Schmidinger - Born on May 18, 1970, in Pittsfield, Massachusetts  Schmidinger learned how to ski at Bousquet while growing up in Lee. The programs and coaches at Bousquet helped launch Schmidinger's career that eventually saw her competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics and 1994 Winter Olympics. She recently began work consulting with Mill Town Capital as they transformed the mountain she learned to ski on.