Andrea Mead Lawrence, who as a 19-year-old newlywed at the 1952 Olympics rocketed down the Norwegian slopes to win two gold medals in Alpine skiing, a feat unmatched by any American, died Tuesday at her home in Mammoth Lakes, Calif. She was 76.
Lawrence, known as Andy, seized national attention by skiing at the age of 15 in the 1948 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, Switzerland. Articles about her were as likely to mention her pigtails, blue-gray eyes and stylish knickerbockers as to describe her spectacular 60-mile-an-hour turns. Life magazine said of her in 1947 that her “only interest in boys is how well they ski.” By 1952 she was married to David Lawrence, a former United States giant slalom champion, and was on her way to the Olympics in Oslo.
In the Oslo Olympics, Lawrence won the giant slalom, but she fell in the first of two runs in the slalom six days later. She was in fourth place as she waited in the starting gate to begin her second run.
In future years, people would ask how she felt at that moment and in the ensuing 1 minute 3.4 seconds, during which she beat the world’s best women on skis to win her second gold medal.
“When I took off for the second run, I was released as the full force and energy of who I am as a person,” she said in an interview with The San Jose Mercury News in 2002. “In a way, the second run was a perfect run. There are few times in our lives where we become the thing we’re doing.”
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