STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK
Steve Porino has skied at nearly every major ski resort in the world—first as a downhill ski racer on the U.S. Ski Team and later as a reporter for NBC Sports and other media outlets.
He spends summers on the back of a motorcycle as he covers the Tour de France and Tour of California for NBC Sports.
But when it comes time for him to put up his feet and relax, you’ll find him at home in Sun Valley.
“I’ve skied around the country and around the world. I’ve seen it all, and this is the town I want to be in,” said Porino. “It’s a place where everyone is so friendly, and everyone congregates around the mountain.”
Porino and his wife Amanda moved their family to Sun Valley last summer after falling ski tip over tail in love with Sun Valley during the 2016 U.S. Alpine National Championships.
Steve had come here to cover the ski races, which featured such stars as Mikaela Shiffrin.
“I was amazed by the turnout from the community,” he said. “The place was filled with people. Apple’s Bar & Grill was buzzing. And that was pretty impressive for someone like me who grew up in a place that you had to explain what ski racing was.
“We hadn’t planned to move at all. But we went back home to Bend and, within a week, we were packing.”
The youngest of four children, Porino put on his first pair of skis at age three. When his father--a banker-- moved the family to Chicago, he learned to race at small Midwestern ski hills like Wilmot Mountain , an hour north of Chicago on the Illinois/Wisconsin state line.
One of his early race coaches was Lindsey von’s father Alan Kildow.
When his father was transferred to Manhattan, Porino enrolled in Burke Mountain Ski Academy in Vermont at age 14 and raced as a downhill racer on the U.S. Ski team from 1988 to 1992. He also coached the Snowbird Ski team in Utah from 1993-96 while earning a communications degree at the University of Utah.
He broke into journalism when he wrote a few articles while a ski coach at Snowbird and the late Gary Black of Sun Valley recruited him to be an editor at Ski Racing Magazine from 1997 to 2004.
Porino then took over for Bob Beattie when Beattie went to burger college for three months to open a Wendy’s. And he found himself working alongside Olympian Christin Cooper, who grew up in Sun Valley, and Sun Valley resident Tim Ryan.
Porino was honored with the FIS Journalist Award for growing the public awareness of alpine ski racing in America in 2015.
A couple weeks ago, he delivered an impassioned speech at the Janss Pro-Am Classic, during which he reminded those in attendance of how special Sun Valley is.
One reason is the fact that Bald and Dollar mountains are just a short five- to 15-minute drive away from most aspiring ski racers in the Wood River Valley.
The Midwest may not have a lot of vertical to ski—Wilmot Mountain has just 230 feet of vertical. But one of the reasons it produces so many good skiers, Porino said, is because ski racers practice over and over again.
“Everyone talks about it takes 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery of a skill. Repetition, repetition, repetition. If you want to be a great golfer you practice your putt over and over again. Same with ski racing. You run those gates over and over again.
“But skiers often have to put in four hours to get 15 minutes of actual practice,” he said, as he recalled going all the way to places like Chile and Austria to get 53 minutes of downhill training out of the whole trip. “My daughter spent nearly six hours by the time she drove through the traffic in Bend and up to Mt. Bachelor to get a couple hours on the snow. Here you can ski get eight runs in a couple of hours. We have efficiency here in the way our kids can lap Dollar and Greyhawk.”
Sun Valley also has incredible riches in its venues—from the air barn used to practice aerial moves at Sagewillow to the new workout facility in the Community School dorm, which boasts the quality of a training facility you’d find at the country’s major ski academies, he added.
Porino also praised the community’s efforts to offer affordable ways to introduce its children to the sport of skiing, whether through the week-long programs Sun Valley Company offers to school students or the Learn to Ski program at Rotarun Ski Area in Hailey.
“Alpine asking is culturally front-and-center to this town and that’s not the case elsewhere. Here, people give money to the LASER program at Rotarun, opening the doors to give children a chance to develop a passion for the sport. And, if those kids do show a passion, we have people stepping up to make sure they can continue to develop that passion.”
Amanda shares her husband’s enthusiasm for Sun Valley, having grown up in a small town in Vermont. She quickly made friends here, in part by joining the DIVAS women’s ski program.
And she’s learned she can always find someone when she needs a little help with their children—Carly, 14; Reece, 11, and Beau, 18 months.
“It takes a village to raise kids and it’s great to have people jump in and help so I’m not alone when Steve is out of town for work.”