Anchorage’s Kris Thorsness (third from right) celebrates winning goal in 1984.
Forty years after she became Alaska’s first Olympic medalist, Kris Thorsness is back at the Summer Olympics.
She’s 64 and her memories remain crisp of the day she became a gold medalist as a member of the U.S. women’s-8 rowing crew at the 1984 Los Angeles Games.
Lately she’s making new memories in Paris as one of 12 judge arbitrators for the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS). Those are the people who make some of the toughest decisions in sports, like the one that resulted in this week’s presentation of gold medals to a group of American figure skaters, some two years after Russia was stripped of the medal in team skating for doping at the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Thorsness, a 1978 West High graduate who works as an attorney in Rochester, New York, became one of about 350 arbitrators worldwide about two years ago, when a member of the CAS executive committee surprised her with a phone call.
“I’ve heard about you,” he said. “Would you be interested in being an arbitrator?”
Yes she was.
“We also send 12 arbitrators to the Olympic games,” he told her. “Is that something you’d be interested in?”
Yes, yes, yes.
“I was jumping up and down,” Thorsness said. “We talked for about one-and-a-half hours and toward the end he laughed and said, ‘You haven’t even asked what it pays.’ ’’
Thorsness said she isn’t getting paid for her time in Paris — where she’s on call 24 hours a day — but the perks are pretty sweet.
#MemorylaneMonday Recognize this former Badger, Olympian and recent Hall of Fame inductee?
You betcha, it's Kris Thorsness! pic.twitter.com/P4YNqsuZT8
— Wisconsin Rowing (@BadgerRowing) October 22, 2018
First-class airfare to Paris. Accommodations in a four-star hotel. VIP access to events, including great seats at the Opening Ceremonies, which she said were fabulous.
And per diem.
“Very nice meals in Paris for free,” she said. In a Facebook post last week, she said she ate snails for the first time. Her verdict: “They were heavenly.”
Thorsness is in elite company in Paris. Among her arbitrator colleagues are Paraguay’s attorney general, a retired federal judge from Australia, an Egyptian who is a senior counsel for a global technology company based in Dubai; and the Dean of Faculty at China Foreign Affairs University in Beijing.
It’s a group that boasts degrees from Oxford, Cambridge, Columbia and other prestigious universities. Thorsness earned her undergraduate degree at the University of Wisconsin — the place she learned to row — and her law degree at Boston University.
And she has something none of the other arbitrators do: An Olympic medal.
A member of the inaugural class of the Alaska Sports Hall of Fame, Thorsness is a true pioneer of Alaska sports.
She reached heights unscaled by Alaskans — besides her Olympic gold, she owns three silver medals from the World Championships — at a time when sports were far different than they are now. Kids didn’t play on travel teams. They didn’t move to the Lower 48 while in high school so they could get more attention from colleges. There was no Dome, no Sullivan Arena, no Alaska Airlines Center, no Coastal Trail, no path to the big leagues paved by others. When Thorsness graduated from West High, Title IX was six years old and not widely implemented nationwide.
Thorsness made it big anyway, and Alaska enthusiastically followed her journey to Olympic glory.
“I get chills right now thinking about it,” she said. “Being from Alaska — and I’ve always considered myself an Alaskan — and having the opportunity to represent the state at that level was, is and always will be so very meaningful for me.
“And the extent that it’s still meaningful to people there — that’s wonderful.”
Perhaps no one rooted harder for Thorsness than her brother John, four years her senior. He rowed at the University of Washington and urged Thorsness to try out for the team at Wisconsin. Rowing was a passion they shared through the decades.
John died unexpectedly three years ago this month, and Thorsness carries memories of him in Paris. If he was still here, she said, he would have joined her there and been her plus-one at all of the VIP gatherings and sporting events she is attending.
“He was the best brother a girl could ever have,” she said, and he and the rest of the Thorsness family was instrumental in building Anchorage’s rowing community.
In the 40 years since Thorsness struck gold in Los Angeles, the list of Alaska medal winners has grown from one — Thorsness — to 19.
Together they have collected 26 medals, including four in Paris. Eagle River’s Alev Kelter won bronze with the women’s rugby sevens team; UAF alum Sagen Maddalena won silver in women’s 3-position smallbore; and Homer’s Kristen Faulkner won gold in the women’s cycling road race and gold in the women’s team pursuit.
Faulkner’s first gold medal came on Aug. 4 — 40 years to the day after Thorsness won gold in Los Angeles. (“I think I went to high school with her dad,” Thorsness said on Facebook.)
Two Kristens from Alaska, two gold medals, four decades apart.
Too good to be true, but it is.
Thorsness said she keeps her medal in a sock drawer, but it has made dozens of public appearances, including one in Anchorage when it was still newly minted.
“Being able to bring that back to Anchorage, Alaska, is one of my most happy times,” she said.
