Talent runs deep in Persons-Moe family

T welve years ago, Cliff and JoAnn Persons were among the fans in Lillehammer, Norway, who cheered when JoAnn's son, Tommy Moe, won Olympic gold and silver.

This time around, they'll be cheering for Olympic athletes, too, from the comfort of their rural Whitefish home. Cliff's son, Steve Persons, is the alpine assistant coach for the U.S. Snowboard Team that will compete in Torino, Italy, later this month.

"We'll be watching all of it," JoAnn Persons said. "We love it."

There's so much skiing and snowboarding talent in the Persons and Moe clan that it's a job in itself keeping track of who's competing where at any given time. But give them a minute and they spill forth the details of a family that's nothing short of a dynasty in winter sports.

Members of the blended family represent alpine skiing, snowboarding and telemark skiing at high levels. The two families merged when Cliff and JoAnn married nearly 16 years ago. They each had three athletic children whose ages coincidentally matched.

Tommy Moe, the most famous of the bunch, is Whitefish's claim to Olympic fame.

He was introduced to skiing on the slopes of Big Mountain, where his father, Tom Moe, was a ski patroller.

"We moved [from Missoula] to Whitefish when he was a baby," his mother said. "He was on skis at 2."

He raced with the Big Mountain Ski Club until the winter of 1983-84, when his family moved to Palmer, Alaska. In 1986 he was named to the U.S. Ski Team.

Moe, 35, was the first American man to win the Olympic silver medal in the Super G and one of only two American alpine skiers to win an Olympic downhill gold. He retired from World Cup ski racing in 1998 after a 12-year run.

In addition to his Olympic success, Moe won a World Cup super-G in Whistler, B.C., and had four other top-three results and a total of 10 finishes in the top 10.

These days, he's an ambassador for Jackson Hole Mountain Resort, frequenting regional ski shows to promote the Wyoming ski resort. Moe also is a sales representative for Spyder Active Sports Inc., a manufacturer of ski wear.

But there's more.

For a handsome sum, skiers can buy the privilege to ski with the Olympic gold medalist.

"People hire him to ski with him for a day," JoAnn said. "He really enjoys that."

Moe, who was unavailable for comment, also does a lot of backcountry skiing in Alaska, where one of his favorite trips, his mother said, is the Kings & Corn Adventure Trip each spring that features corn-snow helicopter skiing and king salmon fishing.

Two years ago, Moe married fellow U.S. Ski Team racer Megan Garrity on top of Mount Alyeska in Alaska.

While Moe built an impressive resume from racing, his free-skiing abilities gained the respect of his Jackson Hole peers.

Todd Jones, co-owner of the Jackson-based film company Teton Gravity Research, works with some of the world's premier free skiers. In Jones' estimation, Moe is one of the top five free skiers in the world, according to the Jackson Hole Resort Web site.

He left his legacy on Big Mountain with a ski run, Moe Mentum, and a ski league named after him.

Moe's brother Mike, 39, of Girdwood, Alaska, is a speed skier whose top speed reached 119 miles per hour. He still competes in the Arctic Iron Man, an Alaskan competition in which skiers are pulled to the top of a mountain by snowmobiles and then race downhill.

"He got second in that last year," JoAnn said.

Her daughter, Tera Moe, 42, also is an accomplished skier, but doesn't compete. She lives in Whitefish and has raised two snowboarders, Christi Moe, 18, and Evan Moe, 16.

"I carried all of my kids in a backpack until they could ski," JoAnn recalled. "Same with the grandkids. Tommy jokes that skiing is in his genes."

SKIING IS IN the Persons' genes, too.

At the same time Tommy Moe was honing his downhill skills, so was Steve Persons.

"He started with the ski team on Big Mountain, right along with Tommy," Cliff Persons said.

But Steve's fancy turned to snowboarding in the sport's earliest days.

"He used to make snowboards in the garage," his father recalled. "He'd ride them until they were broken, then he'd come back and make another one."

Steve, 35, was among the mountain's early die-hards who would hike up and snowboard down in the days before boards were allowed on the lifts. He followed the sport to California, where he won a race that spurred him to try out for the U.S. Snowboard Team, of which he was one of the first members.

"He won several firsts in the World Cup," Cliff said.

After the 1994 Olympics, he came back to Whitefish to head up his own racing program and created Team Fish. He was one of four snowboarders on the team vying for Olympic spots. All of them narrowly missed making the team for the 1998 games in Nagano, Japan.

"Steve's back was starting to bother him some by then, so he turned to coaching," his father said. "He started his own group. It was still called Team Fish."

He has continued to coach snowboarding through the years and most recently was picked to lead the U.S. development team. But before he even started that job, he was tapped for the assistant position with the Olympic team.

"He's been setting gates for the World Cup," Cliff said. "We're hoping he can set one of the courses at the Olympics, for the parallel GS, that's their venue."

Steve's girlfriend, Jen Grace, barely missed qualifying this year for the Olympics. She was the first snowboarder to represent Ireland at the World Snowboarding Championships and is a notable contender on the snowboarding World Cup tour. Grace is sponsored in part by Big Mountain.

Neil Persons, 39, pursued telemark skiing. In 1995 he made the U.S. team, and fellow skiers at Big Mountain followed in his bootsteps. By the time the U.S. Open Telemark Race was held in 2002 on Big Mountain, nine of the U.S. team's 16 members were from Whitefish.

Neil now works for the railroad, but competed in the world championships last year in Norway. This year he suffered a knee injury when he swerved to avoid hitting a deer.

"He's skiing again, but he's not racing this year," Cliff said.

Like his brothers, Christian Persons, 42, also went through the alpine program on Big Mountain.

"All three of the boys were on the [ski] patrol at the same time in 1989 to 1990," their father recalled.

Christian also turned to telemark skiing, and while he didn't compete at the level Neil did, he held his own in the racing world, winning the Pro-Am races a few times on Big Mountain in his younger years. He's been s college-preparatory chemistry teacher in the international arena for many years, teaching in countries such as Bolivia, Peru and Oman. Right now he's teaching in Morocco, but has plans to relocate to Alaska.

Cliff and JoAnn remain avid skiers as well. Cliff logged more than 30 years on Big Mountain, working for the ski patrol and as a groomer for 12 of those years. He's president of Whitefish Builders, a construction firm.

JoAnn, who raced in her early years and literally grew up on the slopes, also can't resist a good powder day.

"I'm still up there doing my best," she said.

Features editor Lynnette Hintze may be reached at 758-4421 or by e-mail at lhintze@dailyinterlake.com