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s she walked into the Olympic Stadium in Calgary that frigid 1988 day, Mary Pat Guest couldn’t have been prouder. She was carrying the flag of the Puerto Rican Olympic team, and how she and older brother Kevin Wilson made it from Middleburg to compete on one of the grandest sporting stages of all is a terrific tale still worth telling more than 25 years later. She was Mary Pat Wilson back then, the only female on the nine-person Puerto Rican Olympic team and one of six skiers represent-
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Yellowstone Park Vacation Rental $1400/week 1/2 mi from NE Gate Cooke City area Mary Pat Wilson carried the flag for the Puerto Rican team at the Winter Olympics in Calgary in 1988
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By Leonard Shapiro For Middleburg Life
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February 2014
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Olympic Memories For A Lifetime
Mary Pat started at Hill School and Kevin entered Loudoun County High School. All the Wilson kids had learned to ski as youngsters on family vacations in the Pennsylvania Poconos, where they owned a home, and on trips to Colorado. Mary Pat was a natural for the Hill School ski club and mini-Olympics started a few years earlier by long-time local residents and Hill parents Ann MacLeod and Polly Rowley. And Kevin later honed his skills as a back-country skier in Colorado. Kevin now lives in LaPlata, MD, and works in Washington, DC, in the family business. He was skiing one day at Keystone Resort about 60 miles from Denver and was intrigued when he heard two men talking about the possibility of a Puerto Rican ski team in the Olympics. They were Felix Flechas and Walter Sandza, two environmental engineers and good friends, both working for the EPA in Denver at the time. Both were excellent skiers and born in Puerto Rico. About two years before Calgary, they petitioned the Puerto Rico Olympic Committee to allow them to represent the island nation. After competing in high-level racing events around North America, the PROC granted their request and Kevin and Mary Pat, a recent graduate of Western State College in Colorado, soon joined up as well. The team trained out of Keystone for more than a year. The resort provided lift tickets as well as coaching from its instructional
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ing the U.S. territory participating in memorable Olympics dominated by stars like skier Albert Tomba of Italy and figure skaters Katarina Witt of East Germany and Brian Boitano of the U.S. Puerto Rico’s ski team should have been one of the more intriguing offbeat stories at those Olympics. But they were totally overshadowed by the debut of the publicity-savvy Jamaican Bobsled Team and the geeky British ski jumper, Eddie “The Eagle” Edwards, a media darling because he was so inept, dead last by yawning margins in the 70- and 90-meter events. The Puerto Rican skiers were mostly under the radar those two weeks, virtually ignored by their own local media back home. Puerto Ricans are passionate about some sports—particularly baseball, basketball and boxing—but only a few natives have ever seen snow, let alone skied on it. Mary Pat and Kevin were exceptions. Like their four other siblings, they were born in Puerto Rico, the children of Jim and Barbara Wilson. Jim Wilson had a land development business in Puerto Rico and also owned the racetrack in San Juan. When Mary Pat was in fourth grade and Kevin a 10th grader, the family moved to Dresden Farm in Middleburg.
staff. All the Puerto Rican skiers knew full well they weren’t fast enough to compete for medals, but they also felt certain they weren’t going to embarrass themselves, either. Kevin, in fact, finished a very respectable 43rd in the slalom and 61st in the giant slalom. Mary Pat missed the second to last gate in the giant slalom and was disqualified after what she described as a “really good run, probably middle of the pack.” Her slalom result is listed in the record book as “did not finish,” but, she said, “I still have great memories. “It was the fact that you competed, that you trained hard and you were trying to do the best you could,” Mary Pat said. “We weren’t contenders, but we gave it our best shot. You put your reputation, and your health, on the line. It was the effort, and the experience of being in the Olympics.” Mary Pat, still the only female skier ever to represent Puerto Rico in the Olympics, also had that grand experience of carrying the flag in the opening ceremonies at McMahon Stadium. “In hindsight, you realize how much of an honor it was,” she said. “I’m still excited that I did it. I can relate to all the other athletes who compete and try. I know what it feels like.” n