Suzanne "Suzy" Chaffee (born November 29, 1946, Rutland, Vermont) is a former Olympic alpine ski racer and actress. Following her racing career, she modelled in New York with Ford Models and then became the pre-eminent freestyle ballet skier of the early 1970s. She is perhaps best known by the nickname, Suzy Chapstick, from the 1970s, when she was a spokesperson for ChapStick lip balm.Chaffee's mother, who taught her to ski at the age of 3, would have been an alternative for the US ski team at the 1940 Winter Olympics. At age 19, Chaffee tried out for, and won a spot on, the first US Ski Team while a freshman at the University of Denver. She finished fourth in the downhill at the 1966 World Championships. Despite a season-ending crash in 1967 at Vail in the World Cup Series, she ended the season as the 10th ranked in Women's downhill skier, and the 16th ranked Women's All-Around skier. Chaffee was named captain of the US Women's team and was one of the favorites in the downhill at the 1968 Winter Olympics in Grenoble, France. She finished 28th in the downhill, blaming her poor showing on using the wrong wax, but she made a global impression with her skin-tight silver racing suit. She retired from ski racing after the 1968 Olympics. She was also a three-time world freestyle skiing champion (1971–73). She was inducted into the National Ski Hall of Fame in 1988.As a social activist, Chaffee championed Title IX legislation (equal opportunity for women in school sports). She was the first woman to serve on the board of the U.S. Olympic Committee, and has been a member of the President's Council on Physical Fitness under four U.S. presidents. She was a co-founder in 1996 of the Native Voices Foundation, an organization that seeks to develop Olympians from among Native American tribes.Chaffee credited rumors that she was having an affair with Ted Kennedy as helping passage of the Amateur Sports Act of 1978. "The gossip got the bill through," she told Sports Illustrated Besides her long-running television ad campaign for ChapStick in the 1970s, she also endorsed Revlon cosmetics, Dannon yogurt, and Seagram spirits. She appeared in films such as Ski Lift To Death and Fire and Ice.In 2008, she ran for a seat on the Sedona, Arizona, City Council, but lost.
When I was a kid my coach told me, "You're a pretty young thing but you're never going to make it." That's what got me to the Olympics - like "I'm going to show you." So when people do these things it's actually an opportunity to use both the light and dark energy. They call it the Holy Grail. To use the light and dark side to get your full power and potential.
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Marriage is only possible for me if it's an open marriage. A building situation where each helps the other grow. I've been dating younger men because they still have that spontaneity and creativity. But I haven't found yet to have an open marriage with.
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I loved to go fast. Downhill was my best event. I had a great tuck. I could out-tuck the guys. I loved that. I was a great downhiller.
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Skiers are in love with a risk sport and they're uninhibited - even in conversation.
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The Communist Romanian head of the IOC Eligibility Committee says "I know you are an unscrupulous actress hired by the States to infiltrate the IOC" and then he says, "You know, you've done irreparable damage to the sporting world. You've opened up people's thinking."
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Those were wonderful days. I was a virgin when I was a ski racer.My freestyle days were my coming of age time. It was the early '70s, so it was a time where everything - life was an experiment. Everything was legal then. It was very mid expanding. I just always appreciated that time.
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It's foolish for society to impose the restriction of one man to the married woman. I'm not advocating sexual promiscuity, but I think it's possible for a woman to have many kinds of sexual relationships with many men and that shouldn't affect the status of the marriage.
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Those were just wonderful days. I was a virgin when I was a ski racer. My freestyle days were my coming of age time. It was the early '70s, so it was a time where everything - - life was an experiment. Everything was legal then. It was very mind expanding. I just always appreciated that time.
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The streaking syndrome started a new feeling about freeing the body.
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Fact
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Olympic skier.
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Was featured in a long-running ad campaign for "Chapstick" in the 1970s in which she was dubbed "Suzy Chapstick."