Stephani Victor

Sport: Alpine Skiing
Residence: Park City UT

Former film student and actress Stephani Victor is living her own gold-medal- if improbable-script. Loading her car in 1995, she was pinned against her vehicle when an out-of-control car veered into her driveway. Both legs were amputated above the knee. Three years – 11 reconstructive surgeries- later, she took her disabled skiing lesson: since then she has won two Paralympic medals a World Championship and 5 Overall World Cup titles.

Born in Iowa, she started ski in Pennsylvania in the sixth grade after the family moved outside Pittsburgh. In 1999, promoting a role in a movie during the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, she took her first disabled ski lesson. The athlete in her told Victor she could medal at the 2002 Paralympics (she did): the filmmaker in her said Paralympics gold would be a perfect ending for her movie (happened in Torino). “I’ve been an abled-bodied track and soccer athlete but no other sport fed my soul the way alpine skiing does.”

For most people marriage is a highlight year. Not only did Victor wed her longtime coach Marcel Kuonen, she then added to the season highlight reel winning gold in the slalom at the 2006 Paralympics and later became the World Cup co-champion and the Co-Grand Marshal of the Fourth of July Parade with Combined gold medalist Ted Ligety. Her Paralympic  run was the climax of her latest movie, a documentary she began after her accident in ’95. “Thanks to Marcel, I have my gold medal ending”. Look for the film release in late 2008.

Her athletic accomplishments also include a downhill bronze medal at the 2002 Salt Lake City Paralympic Games; a gold medal in slalom at the 2006 Torino Paralympic Games; fourteen career world cup victories, 5 Overall World Cup globes (1 combined, 1 in GS and 3 in slalom) and finally in 2007, Stephani won the IPC World Cup Overall Champion Cup globe.

Stephani has studied dance and ballet in preparation for what she hoped would be an acting career.  Now Stephani is an ardent Sierra Club member, she also supports the founders of Innerbonding, who created an interactive computer program called SelfQuest, which facilitates healing the wounded self for prison inmates. After ski racing Stephani plans to further her career as a documentary film director and motivational speaker.