Olympians are almost always inspiring. Their athletic talent, work ethic, sacrifices made, and challenges overcome have made them pinnacles in their sports. Their words and actions can motivate us to achieve our own successes, from a weekend 10k running race to a junior national championship.

But every once in awhile a champions' champion comes along. He or she is the one who doesn't just inspire us but inspired our other champions. On May 31, 2009, six Olympic skiers gathered in Rutland, Vermont, to pay tribute to just such a champion: Andrea Mead Lawrence, who died on March 31, 2009, at age 76 from cancer.

Lawrence lived in Mammoth Lakes, California, for over 40 years, but Rutlanders have always considered her one of their own. Not only was she born in Rutland, her parents founded nearby Pico Ski Area. Lawrence liked to say that her spirit was in the West, but her soul was in Vermont.

The Olympians who gathered at Rutland's Paramount Theater spoke in front of a packed house and credited Lawrence - the first (and so far only) American skier to win two Olympic gold medals at the 1952 Games in Oslo - with helping them reach their Olympic peaks, whether they medaled or not.

And their tributes were both inspirational and insightful.

Following Rutland Mayor Chris Louras, Vermont Governor Jim Douglas, and Senator Patrick Leahy (by video), Penny Pitou, the 1960 Olympic double silver medalist and New Hampshire native, was the first Olympian to speak.

Pitou first heard of Lawrence after the Vermonter won her two gold medals. Pitou was 13 at the time and as an up-and-coming skier, she wanted to meet the Olympic champion "whose background was so much like my own," Pitou said.

In 1955, Pitou had the opportunity to not only meet Lawrence but compete against her at the Olympic tryouts - an event Pitou was going to skip until she heard Lawrence would be there. Both women made the 1956 Olympic team, Lawrence the veteran and Pitou "pretty wet behind the ears" but willing to learn anything and everything Lawrence would teach her.

"I saw how she behaved at the starting gate, how she talked to the other competitors and handled the press," said Pitou. "I learned early on from her that a lot of success in sports is mental."

Pitou raced three events at the 1956 Olympics but downhill was her specialty. She was one of the last racers to start at the 1956 Olympic downhill - so far back that a couple of the starters had already gone home, she said. The course was fast at the top and narrow in the middle with a tricky compression near the finish. Pitou  cleared everything but the compression.

After the race, she found Lawrence drinking hot cocoa in the hotel bar. "Well, how did it go?" Pitou remembered Lawrence asking.

"Terrible," replied Pitou, who was only 17 at the time. "I crashed. I'm going home and back to school. This is it for racing for me."

Lawrence looked at Pitou and said, "You might like to know you had the fourth fastest time before you fell. I'd stick with it if I were you."

Pitou says Lawrence's "words in Cortina changed the course of my life." She also learned how important a mentor is in helping young people achieve success. Pitou stayed with skiing for another four years and at the 1960 Olympics took the silver medals in downhill and giant slalom.

Pitou also related a story from 1960 and 1964 Olympian Linda Meyers Tikalsky, who credited Lawrence for helping after the young skier's confidence flagged while training in Europe. While inspecting a giant slalom course in Grindlewald, Switzerland, Lawrence kept asking Meyers which line she would take. "She thinks I know something!" Meyers Tikalsky remembered thinking. "She [asked me] a third time, and I was convinced that I knew how to do it."

Meyers started that race in the 70s and finished 13^th.

Rick Chaffee, who competed in the 1968 and 1972 Olympics and is the brother of Suzy Chaffee, remembers receiving a medal from Lawrence after a race at Pico when he was six. After awarding Chaffee the medal, she told the crowd a story about how the little skier made a tricky blue gate that most kids had missed. At that moment, Chaffee knew he was a ski racer, "and a smart one at that."

Billy Kidd, who grew up in Stowe, Vermont, spoke by video from his home in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. "At the 1964 Olympics, almost everyone thought that American men couldn't win medals in skiing because they never had," Kidd recounted. "But I was from Vermont, and Andrea Mead was from Vermont, and I thought, well, she won medals, maybe I can too."

Kidd earned a silver medal in slalom at the 1964 Olympics in Innsbruck. Years later, he saw video footage of Lawrence's amazing recovery after falling in the first run of the 1952 Olympic slalom. "Perseverance, determination, never give up," he said.

At the 1972 Winter Olympics in Sapporo, Barbara Ann Cochran was the next American - and next Vermonter - to win a gold medal in skiing. She not only credited Lawrence for inspiring her but also the other Olympic medalists who came along - Pitou, Kidd, Betsy Snite, and Jimmie Heuga. Snite took the silver in slalom at the 1960 Winter Olympics, Heuga the bronze in slalom at the 1964 Innsbruck Games.

"By 1972, the legacy of the people that had come before me had really burned a hole in my heart to do the best that I could do," she said. "I absolutely knew that I was capable of winning a gold medal at the Olympics."

Mogul skier Donna Weinbrecht credited Lawrence for being a great role model who "paved the way for women in sport" and for being "a true pioneer."

"When you're doing what you love and it's your passion, you don't realize the trails that you're blazing," said Weinbrecht, who took the gold medal in the inaugural freestyle event at the 1992 Olympic Winter Games in Albertville.

Like Lawrence, Weinbrecht is a three-time Olympian and listed a few other traits that both women shared. One of the most important for up-and-coming athletes: "Focus on doing well, not the end results," she said. And have fun.

Two-time Olympian Doug Lewis praised the "heroes to the people who were heroes to me." Lawrence's gold medal performances created an enthusiasm for skiing in Vermont that led to the formation of ski clubs to foster young racers. In 1971, ski-racing parents and the various ski clubs in the state started the Vermont Alpine Racing Association (VARA), which not only helped foster Lewis's ski racing career but others, such as Olympic gold and silver medalist Diann Roffe, a New Yorker who trained at Burke Mountain Academy in northern Vermont in her teens and earned her medals at the 1992 and 1994 Olympic Winter Games.

Rosie Fortna was the last of the Olympians to speak. The 1968 Olympian is now on the board of the Vermont Ski Museum, which opened in 2002 with Lawrence as its first Hall of Fame inductee. Fortna said that Lawrence chose the following words to be inscribed on her Hall of Fame plaque:

"It's not the number of medals you win but what you do with the rest of your life."

In addition to her Olympic fame, Lawrence was a renowned environmentalist in California. She founded the Andrea Lawrence Institute for Mountains and Rivers (ALIMAR) in 2003.

The tribute to her life was presented at the Paramount Theater in Rutland by the Pico Ski Education Foundation and the Vermont Ski Museum.