Queen of Speed

Snow falls thickly in early May as Cathy Breyton and I sit at her kitchen counter, cups of coffee and thick slices of homemade apple pie between us. Her cozy farmhouse is tucked away in the foothills of the French Pyrenees at the end of a long dirt road in a three-farm hamlet called Le Buret. The warm voice and joyful laugh I’d heard on the phone has come to life as a petite lady with wavy grey hair and a flicker dancing in her eye. Watching her electric energy as she moves around the room at 70 years old, it makes perfect sense that she was once the fastest female speed skier in the world. 

Cathy’s formative years were spent gazing expectantly at the sky for the first snowflakes to fall in her natal Villard-de-Lans, France. In Villard-de-Lans, ski lifts rise straight up from the 4,000-person town, perched on the high plateaus of the Vercors mountain range. Once you can walk, your first big life decision is choosing between ice skates or skis. Her parents chose skiing for her and her little sister Annie, and their father would drive them to races around the country. A cinephile and bon vivant who ran a dry-cleaning service, their father never missed out on supporting his daughters’ pursuits.

Cathy quickly excelled, moving her way up from youth races to a season on the French Alpine ski team, competing in the European Alpine Cup by the age of 17. But the rigidity of the slalom gates didn’t align with her desire to see the world. Raised in the ’60s, an era buzzing with the American dream, she couldn’t wait to reach beyond the confines of her valley—particularly if it involved crossing the Atlantic. One day, her father brought home the ski technician for Dynamic skis. “The first American I ever met,” she recalls. “He told me about ski ballet and moguls. I was entranced, I needed to see it, I knew skiing was my ticket [to America].”

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