His athletes turned in a record-setting medal showing at the 2018 Winter Paralympic Games in South Korea. Now, Durango’s Gary Colliander has an award of his own to show for his work in PyeongChang.
Colliander, 41, was named the Paralympic Coach of the Games on Thursday at the Team USA Awards ceremony in Washington D.C. Colliander was one of three finalists for the award along with sled hockey coach Guy Gosselin and snowboarding coach Graham Watanabe.
“This is pretty cool, and it was kind of surprising because I hadn’t known about the award,” Colliander said in a phone interview with The Durango Herald after being nominated. “Obviously, anything like this is always an honor to be recognized for as an individual, but it is cool because it is really a recognition of the whole team and what we accomplished.”
Colliander, husband of Durango’s Olympic biathlete Tracy Barnes, is a former coach of the Durango Nordic Ski Club. He coached at the local club from 2012-16 before he signed on to be a coach for the U.S. Paralympic team in December 2016.
The U.S. Paralympic team had never won a gold medal in biathlon before this year’s Games. This year, the team won two golds and seven medals in biathlon overall. As a whole, the Nordic skiing program brought home 16 medals, including six golds.
“My focus definitely was on biathlon,” Colliander said. “It was one area the team was trying to build up. What I saw in front of me, 14 months before the Games, I thought we could really make some strides. They were close already, they just needed a little push, a few extra things to make it happen.”
Durango’s Brittani Coury was a finalist for Female Paralympic Athlete of the Games. She won a silver medal in snowboarding’s banked slalom. Coury earned lots of love and numerous gifts at the awards ceremony, but the award went to Nordic skier Oksana Masters, who overcame an injury to win five medals.
Another athlete under Colliander, Dan Cnossen, was named the Male Paralympic Athlete of the Games.
Star snowboarder Shaun White was named the Male Olympic Athlete of the Games, and fellow snowboarder Chloe Kim earned Female Olympic Athlete of the Games honors.
Jason Cork, another former Durango Nordic Ski Club coach who was with the program from 2004-09, was named the Olympic Coach of the Games for his work with the U.S. Nordic Ski Team. The lead coach for Jessie Diggins, Cork coached the Olympic team to a historic Games, as Diggins and Kikkan Randall won the nation’s first Nordic medal for the women’s cross-country ski team with the gold in team sprint. Diggins also had three top-five individual finishes, the best result ever at an Olympics for an American women’s Nordic skier.
The award ceremony was filmed and will be televised during a 90-minute special from 4-5:30 p.m. May 12 on NBC Sports.
jlivingston@durangoherald.com
