Alexander Cushing; unlikely bid brought Olympics to Calif.
RENO, Nev. -- Alexander C. Cushing, the founder and chairman of one of the world's largest and best known ski resorts, died Saturday at his summer home in Newport, R.I. He was 92.
Mr. Cushing, who helped expand the sport in the United States by bringing the 1960 Winter Olympic Games to his Squaw Valley USA near Lake Tahoe, died of pneumonia, the resort said.
Mr. Cushing opened the California resort in 1949 with one chairlift, a rope tow, and a 50-room lodge. Today, it is one of the world's premier resorts, with 34 lifts and an Alpine village complete with upscale restaurants, shops, and lodging.
Among other accomplishments, Mr. Cushing set standards for the ski industry with advanced lift systems and cutting-edge facilities, said Warren Lerude, a corporation board member.
``Alex Cushing was one of the great pioneers in the ski industry in America," Lerude said. ``By bringing the Winter Olympics to Squaw Valley, he . . . helped spark the development of the ski industry in the United States."
Mr. Cushing bid for the games as a publicity stunt, never dreaming he might get them, he told the Globe in 2002.
Most Olympic observers believed the Games would be held in the Austrian city of Innsbruck. If Olympic officials preferred to break the European lock on the Winter Games, Lake Placid in New York was thought to have the inside shot.
Mr. Cushing's fledgling resort was little known outside California.
``The Europeans said there was no such place, that it didn't exist, that it was a real estate scheme," Mr. Cushing told the Globe. ``We didn't have much. But we had some ideas."
Mr. Cushing and his backers argued that the Europeans had unfairly dominated the hosting of the event and that the Games had become too expensive and lacked intimacy.
He stunned the sports world by beating out internationally known resorts in Europe. He made the cover of Time magazine in 1959.
The Winter Games were the first to house all the athletes in one village and the first to tally the results with computers. They were also the first televised, exposing 10 million viewers to what was then considered an elitist sport. Millions of middle-class families caught the skiing bug, and resorts proliferated.
The Games brought international attention to the Sierra resort and sparked a development boom at Lake Tahoe, sparsely populated at the time.
Ironically, Mr. Cushing acknowledged he was never much of a skier.
``I was never a good skier," he said in 1995. ``I could get down the slopes. But now, it's a lot more like snipping daisies and flowers."
Mr. Cushing fought with environmentalists and government officials for years over everything from ski runs to diesel fuel contamination.
In 1989, the Sierra Club and
In 1999, resort officials were accused of blasting large chunks of a mountain and allowing the excavated material to wash into a sensitive stream without permits.
Born in New York City, Mr. Cushing was the grandson of a wealthy Boston tea merchant. He graduated from Harvard Law School and joined the Navy the day after Pearl Harbor.
He built a career as a Wall Street lawyer. On a trip to the West, he broke his ankle and fell in love with the Sierra Nevada mountains. He gave up a legal career and opened the resort with the backing of relatives and friends.
