Vermont skier Ryan Cochran-Siegle, a second-generation Alpine racer from Cochran’s Ski Area in Richmond, repeated his Olympic medal-winning feat of four years ago by scoring silver in the men’s super-G Wednesday at the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy.
“It’s an honor,” the 33-year-old Starksboro resident could be heard saying as he received his latest medal on television after a race that combined the speed of downhill with the gate-dodging turns of giant slalom.
In 2022, Cochran-Siegle — who had broken his neck in a competition crash the winter before — missed out on gold by 0.04 of a second. On Wednesday, he skied third and watched racer after racer fail to beat him before top finisher Franjo von Allmen of Switzerland bested him by 0.13 of a second.
Four years ago, Cochran-Siegle’s mother — 1972 slalom gold medalist Barbara Ann Cochran — was home in her pajamas when she turned on a laptop to watch her son win his first silver in Beijing, China. This time, the 5-foot-1 Cochran matriarch was slopeside in Italy, cellphone camera in hand, as her 6-foot-1 son won his second medal.
Cochran-Siegle was raised at the namesake Richmond ski area that his grandfather, the late mechanical engineer Gordon “Mickey” Cochran, began in 1960 when he planted some poles, fastened a few pulleys, strung up some rope and hooked it all to a tractor engine to create its first rope tow.
“Mickey” Cochran went on to hew saplings into racing gates, never dreaming that several of his children and grandchildren would go on to the Olympics and turn the area into the nation’s first nonprofit slope upon his death in 1998.
Cochran-Siegle snagged his latest silver after suffering a bout of food poisoning and missing out on a medal in Saturday’s downhill.
“I was really happy with my ski today,” Cochran-Siegle told U.S. Ski & Snowboard after his Wednesday win. “I felt like I went out there, skied with a lot of heart. … But the meaning? It hasn’t set in. I did not expect this.”
