Kenneth John Read (born November 6, 1955) is one of the most respected sports leaders in Canada. This World Cup alpine ski racer from Canada was a specialist in the downhill and a two-time Olympian. He won five World Cup races during his ten-year international career, all in downhill.
Read grew up in Vancouver, Kingston, and Calgary, and currently resides in Calgary and Canmore. He is the father of World Cup alpine racers Erik and Jeffrey Read.
Ski racing
Read was a member of the Canadian alpine ski team from 1973 to 1983 and competed in two Olympic Winter Games. A lifelong Calgary resident, Read was part of the "Crazy Canucks", the Canadian downhill team of the late 1970s and early 1980s, that consistently challenged the Europeans with a daring racing style. Canadian Corner, a section of the Lauberhorn near Wengen in Switzerland - the heavily twisting curve at the left-hand transition to the Alpweg is named after the Crazy Canucks, as both Dave Irwin and Ken Read fell here in 1976.
Read's first World Cup top ten finish came in January 1975 in a combined event at Kitzbühel. Later that calendar year, he became the first Canadian (and North American) to win a men's World Cup downhill race, in Val-d'Isère, France on December 7, 1975, where he was one of four Canadians to finish in the top ten. Read went on to win four more World Cup downhill races and his point total for the 1980 season placed him second in the downhill final standings. He was the first non-European to win both the Austrian downhill Hahnenkamm at Kitzbühel, and the Swiss race Lauberhorn at Wengen. These two victories complemented his 1978 win at Les Houches near Chamonix, France, in the Arlberg-Kandahar, ski racing's oldest classic event. Another victory in January 1979 at Morzine was disallowed because of a non-conforming suit due to a manufacturing flaw. His outstanding season in 1980 was marred by an unfortunate binding release, just fifteen seconds into the Olympic downhill where he was considered the gold-medal favourite.
Honours
Read was named Canada's Athlete of the Year in 1978 (Lou Marsh Award) and Canadian Male Amateur Athlete of the Year in 1980. In 1991 he was made a Member of the Order of Canada Canada's highest civilian honour. He was inducted into Canada's Sports Hall of Fame in 1985, into Canada's Skiing Hall of Fame (Honour Roll of Canadian Skiing) in 1986, and to the International Ski Racing Hall of Fame in 2010. Along with his four teammates, the Crazy Canucks were inducted into Canada's Walk of Fame in 2006.
After racing
In his post-competitive years, Read has had an enormous impact on sport in Canada and worldwide. A testament to this continued work to advance Canadian sport was recognized by The Globe and Mail naming Read to their "Power List" for three successive years in 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Following his retirement from competition in 1983, Read became a broadcaster with CBC TV Sports and a columnist. He also launched the "Breath of Life" Ski Challenge, which, over the next 23 years raised over $3.8 million for cystic fibrosis research. Two movies have been produced covering the careers of the Crazy Canucks: the documentary "The Dream Never Dies" (1980) and a TV movie called "Crazy Canucks" (2004), which is based on a novel he and Matthew Fisher wrote called "White Circus" (1987).