Olympic skier attracts media attention for devotion to faith, family

Published: 2006-02-17

TURIN, Italy (CNS) -- With a holy man on her skis and her husband and 4-year-old son close behind, a cross-country skiing Olympian from Gunnison, Colo., has taken Turin by storm. In the first week of her Olympic debut at the games, Rebecca Dussault's manager, promoter, fundraiser, photographer and webmaster husband, Sharbel Dussault, was busy working the phones and hunting for Internet access in the remote Italian mountain village of Pragelato. Their site, www.dussaultskis.com, was clocking 1,200 hits a day, Dussault said, and her husband had been staying up until 2 a.m. to go through the flood of e-mails, respond to requests for interviews and update the site launched early this year to document the family's pursuit of the Olympic dream. In just the first few days after the Olympics began, Dussault had done interviews for big-name Italian and U.S. radio and newspaper outlets, including National Public Radio, The Washington Post and Turin's major daily, La Stampa. "Even USA Today did a piece on Sharbel," she told Catholic News Service Feb. 15.

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