Muffy Davis once again calls the Wood River Valley home
BY MARIA PREKEGES
After 17 years away from the Wood River Valley, skier Muffy Davis has moved back home. Davis moved from the Wood River Valley to Park City, Utah, in 1999 to train for the 2002 Paralympic Games. To say that time of her life was just the beginning for this superstar athlete’s career would be an understatement, as her competitive spirit and drive started at a very young age, right here in the Wood River Valley.
Davis was a promising young ski racer and a top-ranked Junior ski racer when she crashed during a training run on Bald Mountain at the age of 16. That ski accident left her paralyzed from the chest down and in a wheelchair for life. But being in a wheelchair couldn’t slow this woman down. This is really the start of her remarkable story. Davis took the drive and hard work that she always had with ski racing and went forward to create an incredible career in athletics.
When Davis moved to Park City, she already had one Paralympics under her belt and a medal to show for it. Davis won the bronze medal in slalom racing in the 1998 Paralympics in Nagano, Japan.
“It’s your entire career,” Davis said. “It’s your job, what you do every day, preparing, training, what you eat, how you recover, it was my job. That, and the fundraising – getting, sustaining and keeping in touch with sponsors. Really, that was my full-time job for many years. That and public speaking.”
Davis’s hard work paid off as her list of medals and accomplishments quickly grew. In 2000, she won the World Championship in Anzere, Switzerland, in giant slalom, and in 2001 and 2002 she was the World Cup overall champion in women’s monoskiing. The 2002 Paralympics in Salt Lake City is where her medal count really exploded, with three silver medals in the downhill, super-G, and giant slalom.
Throughout all of her training and winter Paralympic Games, Davis somehow fit in meeting her husband, courtship, marriage and a family.
“I met Jeff Burley in 2000 when he was working for the National Ability Center in Park City as a recreational therapist. We really got to know each other on an adaptive river-rafting trip down the Grand Canyon. Then we started dating the summer of 2000. Jeff was instrumental in coaching and helping me with my racing and training for 2002. He then proposed Christmas of 2002 and we were married on the rim of the Grand Canyon in August of 2004.”
Davis retired from competition after the 2002 Games. Instead, she turned her substantial drive toward
fundraising and donor development for the University of Utah’s Rehabilitation Center, working to help others with spinal and neurological issues.
“I worked with them for four years, with one year off in the middle while my husband and I traveled around the world volunteering and teaching adaptive sports in developing countries,” Davis said. “That was in 2006 and 2007.”
She then left the hospital and went to work for a startup company in market and brand development for two years. Her daughter, Elle, was born in 2008.
“I was fortunate that I could take a full year off and just be a mom,” Davis said. “I did some speaking throughout all this time. Whenever a client called, I worked it into my schedule.”
In 2010, Davis jumped into another activity, handcycle racing, and returned to Paralympic-level competition.
“Elle was born at full term and I had a normal, uneventful delivery – a complete miracle,” Davis said. “But afterwards, I looked at my body and really wanted to get back in shape. That’s when I started handcycling, and being a competitor. I set a goal to do the Salt Lake City Marathon four months after she was born. That was the only way I could get myself to train.”
At that race she met other adaptive cyclists, which propelled her back into Paralympic competition. Two years later, Davis went to U.S. Nationals where she won the time trial, putting her on the U.S. World Championship Team later that summer. At the Worlds, she won three silver medals.
“I knew nothing about cycling,” she said. “I just knew how to push myself hard and compete. I called my husband and we decided I should give it my best shot to get to London and compete in the Summer Games. So you could say I owe my daughter for my three gold medals. Our Christmas card after the London Games was us each wearing one of the medals because we all sacrificed. It was truly a team effort and fitting that we won three, one for each of us.”
After all of her accomplishments, Davis and her husband decided it was the right time to move back to the Wood River Valley.
“We knew we needed a quality-of-life change for our family,” Davis said. “For me, the only option was to come back here to the Wood River Valley. We found a wonderful house that would work perfectly for me in a chair and offered us everything we wanted. Jeff didn’t know what he was going to do for work, but we just knew we needed a change. Then, a few weeks later, Higher Ground had an opening in Jeff’s field, a recreational therapist in the veterans programming. He applied and we decided if he got the job it was just meant to be for us to move. He got the job and started working for them in May.”
Davis and her family are settling in very nicely.
“This a very special place and I’m thrilled to be back home and give our daughter the same wonderful opportunities I was fortunate to have growing up in such a terrific place. I feel like I have truly come home.”
And, of course, she is looking forward to another ski season. Her daughter Elle will be on the Sun Valley Ski Education Foundation’s Devo Team with coach Orlie Sather.
“He used to coach me so we’re coming full circle. It’s just so exciting. And I get to be a true local again. It’s been way too long.”