I’m really honored to receive Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame’s 2019 Paul Robbins Award. Until Paul died suddenly in 2008, he was a mentor, friend, sounding board, guiding light, and non-stop source of comic relief for me. I still miss him (sniff).
From the Vermont Ski & Snowboard Hall of Fame’s site:
Paul Robbins started writing about ski racing in the 1960s. His work appeared in many magazines, including Skiing, SKI and Ski Racing. Robbins worked at eight Winter Olympics, every one since 1980 in Lake Placid. He had served as a press officer for the U.S. Ski Team, as well as a commentator on Nordic sports for CBS and NBC. He was a friend to athletes, coaches, administrators, writers and readers. He died unexpectedly at age 68 in 2008.
The award recognizes ski and snowboard journalists who, with the same commitment as Paul Robbins, perform their skill in written, broadcast or photo journalism with ethics, humor, good taste, and always with the promotion of Vermont skiing and snowboarding and the larger communities in mind. The recipient is selected not solely on the basis of one story, but rather, on a lifetime of service to the ski and snowboard community.
2019
PEGGY SHINN 
Peggy Shinn grew up and learned to ski in Vermont’s Northeast Kingdom but did not start writing about the sport until after she moved back to Vermont in 1997. She began by covering local skiing for the Rutland Herald and soon was contributing to just about every ski publication in North America, including Ski Racing, Skiing, SKI, and Ski Press, as well as several other newspapers and websites. In 2008, she became a founding writer for TeamUSA.org and since then, has covered five Olympic Games. For her feature writing, she is a four-time winner of the Harold S. Hirsch Award, presented annually by the North American Snowsports Journalists Association.
On February 6, 2018, her second book, World Class: The Making of the U.S. Women’s Cross-Country Ski Team, hit the shelves. Two weeks later, Kikkan Randall and Jessie Diggins won the U.S.’s first Olympic gold medal in cross-country skiing. The book chronicles the history of women’s Nordic skiing in the U.S. and how the women built a team that could compete on the world stage. In spring 2019, World Class received the International Skiing History Association’s Ullr Award and NASJA’s Harold S. Hirsch Award. Her first book, Deluge, chronicled Tropical Storm Irene, flash floods in Vermont, and how the state saved itself.
Until he passed away in 2008, Paul Robbins was a mentor, a friend, a guiding light, and non-stop source of comic relief for Peggy in this crazy world of ski writing. In World Class, she titled a chapter “Onward” in honor of Paul, as that was how he signed off on his emails. She keeps a picture of Paul, in his trademark tam, on her desk.
Peggy lives in Rutland with her husband, daughter, and hopefully one day soon, another cat.
Peggy Shinn 
“I was born in Rutland Hospital in 1973 and grew up in Killington, the son of ski bums. Having skied since the age of five, I began snowboarding in 1985 at Sonnenberg Ski Area in Barnard, Vermont. During my Junior Year of High School, I wrote an award-winning essay about snowboarding and realized the pen could provide a path to fulfilling my riding dreams.