Jim Shea, Jr.

Jim Shea, Jr. (born June 10, 1968, Hartford, Conn., U.S.) is an American skeleton sledding champion, winner of a gold medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics.

Shea’s grandfather and father were also Olympic athletes. His grandfather Jack Shea became the first double gold medalist in the history of the Olympic Winter Games when he won the 500- and 1,500-metre speed-skating races at the 1932 Games in Lake Placid, N.Y. His father, Jim Shea, Sr., competed in Nordic combined and cross-country skiing at the 1964 Winter Games in Innsbruck, Austria. In 1988 the younger Jim Shea moved with his family to Lake Placid, where he soon began to participate in sliding sports. He tried bobsledding and lugeing but eventually became fascinated with skeleton sledding, in which competitors ride a low-lying sled in a headfirst, prone position. By 1995 Shea had joined the U.S. national skeleton team.

Determined to rise to the top in his sport, Shea spent two months hitchhiking across Europe to compete in World Cup events. In 1998 he became the first American to win a World Cup race, and the following year he became the first American to win a world skeleton championship. Back on his home track in Lake Placid in 2000, he won the gold medal in skeleton at the inaugural Winter Goodwill Games.

When Shea qualified for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah, it marked the first time that an American family had produced three generations of Winter Olympians. Skeleton sledding returned as an Olympic event in 2002 after a 54-year hiatus, thanks in part to international lobbying by Shea on the sport’s behalf. Despite trailing defending world champion Martin Rettl of Austria during most of his final heat, Shea edged out Rettl by a razor-thin 0.05-sec margin. Shea had hoped that his 91-year-old grandfather would attend the Games, but only days before the opening ceremonies Jack Shea died of injuries sustained in an automobile accident.

Shea retired from skeleton sledding in 2005. He was president of the Shea Family Foundation, a nonprofit organization devoted to supporting youth participation in a variety of winter sports.