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Show Park City's own Olympians (Dick Mitchell: The world is his stage -- ""' .,. ,,. - i " " ' i' , J J" 1 7 'J. , A ... ! : - A ' f w' v . f l"- " ! . -v t ' , ; v.y " . - - w ' ' Wyf " ' ''.''' '' "" "" f ,' J-aCrf ' f f . r -I :-i ''-' ; 1 ' i I f; - -7;' ft,;- . ' : ' - - - I Mitchell volunteered to forerun the Olympic Downhill. Down-hill. "It was like committing suicide for nothing." But he says just being in the opening ceremonies with all those people cheering for them, wearing their uniforms, uni-forms, hearing their national anthem and knowing they were representing their country was, "the thrill of a lifetime." That's saying quite a lot for a man who has since received 10 flying medals including the Silver Star, has ocean raced from California to Hawaii, and was acting as an attache in Saigon when it fell. But it was during the Olympics Mitchell got his first taste of dealing with the " Communists. "During the qualifying races I had met a Russian skier and we became friendly with very little language between us. There was just a sense of camaraderie." "One day I invited him up ' to see our rooms and I gave him a tube of American toothpaste. tooth-paste. He gave me a can of the finest crab, packed in Siberia, I have ever, to this day tasted. "It turns out we had been watched by one of their extra 'coaches,' a guy we figured out later was KGB. My friend obviously had gotten talked to after that. When I saw him again the next day on the street he wouldn't even meet my eye or answer my hello. After that, I never saw him again." Mitchell feels good about today's team and the recognition recog-nition they receive. "Hell, we were lucky to get any some vintage White Stag clothing that was really ugly, and some Mackinaw coats to wear in the opening ceremonies. cere-monies. (Mitchell still has that coat and will wear it in the opening ceremonies of the Celebrity Classic here Thursday.) "Once we got to Europe we had our baggy ski pants tailored and our leather lace-up boots hand-made in Austria. I skied on a pair of Kastles that I had gotten from the factory over there and they didn't even match. And this was the first year safety bindings were introduced. intro-duced. Mr. Marker gave us some pretty primitive stuff to use." Maintaining the amateur "Simon pure" status was critical in those days. Mitchell Mit-chell explained they weren't allowed to have their picture taken with their skis over their shoulder for fear of it looking like an endorsement. The team ate meals right off the menu at the hotel. There were no formal or even informal diet restrictions, or any plan for them. "Today there is a whole psychology to the sport there just wasn't then. I remember being uptight before a qualifying race and my coach took me up to the train station for a beer. Since I'd sworn off drinking during the event it was a treat, but we never really did talk about 0 the race or any strategy." The day before the Olym- 1 pics opened, four of the official eight representatives from the U.S. team were i, chosen to race. Mitchell s came in fifth. One of those he lost out to was the famed 1 Buddy Werner. Dick Mitchell shown here with Jan Mann in the Park City Performances production of "Mame." press on the sports page in those days." And as far as the endorsements go, well, "there were people even then taking things under the table. This way, at least, all the sponsorships are more equal and upfront. It is just the evolution of the Games." Currently Mitchell is an agent for Gump and Ayers Real Estate in Park City. He .recently completed acting in . commercials for Ford, Prows-wood Prows-wood and the Utah Drug and Alcohol Abuse program. "I wanted to race, sure, and I was disappointed not to make the team, but I didn't ski like Werner. He was hell bent for leather all the time. He either won or crashed. And he had a great European following. They called him 'The Colorado Kid.'" There were assumed standards stan-dards even for the length of skis then. Mitchell says you skied on 210s for slalom, 215s for giant slalom and 220s for downhill. They were wooden skis but had steel edges. by Teri Gomes Park City theater audiences audi-ences have seen Dick Mitchell Mit-chell play a variety of roles onstage; butler, pirate and producer, to name a few. But Mitchell's stage characters don't hold a candle to many real-life roles he has played: Vietnam fighter pilot, attache, consultant to the Bank of America and Olym pic alpine team member in Cortina, Italy. "There were eight of us chosen for that 1956 team and we found out in the spring of '55," Mitchell recalled. "We were told to have a good summer and they'd see us in the fall. There was no training program pro-gram at all. I was living in Ogden at the time so I'd come down to Alta and run up and down the hills to try and prepare." Mitchell received a leave of absence from the Air Force to participate that winter. He left with his teammates, who included Buddy Werner, for Europe in November of 1955 to begin training on the unfamiliar European slopes. "We weren't given much |