Olympic Information Services/Courtesy photo
The Silverthorne-based United States Ski Mountaineering Association announced on July 5 the organization had appointed Anthony Armstrong to the newly created executive director position.
Armstrong brings more than three decades of executive leadership to the association and is expected to lead the organization into the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, where the sport of ski mountaineering will be making its Olympic debut, according to a news release from the organization.
Armstrong has gained most of his executive leadership experience from his current role working as vice chairman of investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Over his years at Morgan Stanley, Armstrong has worked on several big transactions, mostly in the tech world. Most recently, Armstrong helped Elon Musk with the acquisition deal of Twitter and, while he was living in Europe, helped with the merger of Porsche and Volkswagen.
“I have tended to work on some large, interesting, really complex transactions,” Armstrong said. “That is what I have done for the last 30 years.”
Prior to becoming the vice chairman of investment banking at Morgan Stanley, Armstrong had an unconventional childhood. He lived in South Africa for the majority of his adolescence. Armstrong was 18 when his family immigrated to Colorado where he developed a strong passion for the outdoors.
“I moved to Colorado the Thanksgiving of my senior year of high school,” Armstrong said. “I graduated from Littleton High School in 1986, and I went to Colorado State. I absolutely fell in love with the mountains. In fact, the first time I ever skied my parents took me skiing for my 18th birthday at Winter Park.”
Armstrong remembers enjoying skiing from the moment his skis touched the snow, but he was forced to put his mountain pursuits in Colorado on hold as he pursued his career in finance.
“My job took me all around the world, but I always wanted to get back to Colorado,” Armstrong said.
While living outside of Colorado, Armstrong continued to explore several sports, including Nordic skiing, telemark skiing and ski mountaineering. In 2003, Armstrong raced as a member of Team USA as an age group triathlete at the world championships in Queenstown, New Zealand.
Armstrong and his wife Beth finally got their opportunity to return to the Centennial State last September when the couple made the move to Boulder. With their youngest child now in college, both Anthony and Beth were looking for a way to get involved in the community, ideally working for a nonprofit organization.
Beth took on several positions at various organizations, while Armstrong found himself selected as the ideal candidate for the executive director position with USA Skimo.
“It is local to Colorado, and I thought it was a way for me to put my over 30 years of finance, arranging financing and doing deals to work in a fun and productive way,” Armstrong said.
Now a little over two weeks into the job, Armstrong has already been busy in his new position and has worked to establish some of the organization’s main goals ahead of the 2026 Winter Olympic Games.
One of the main things USA Skimo and Armstrong have recognized over the last two weeks is that the organization cannot prioritize every constituent.
“If you prioritize everything, then you prioritize nothing,” Armstrong said. “The way that we are thinking about it is that all these constituents matter, who are you going to focus on first? Our view, unsurprisingly, is to support our athletes and have success in 2026 in Cortina. That is the single best thing we can do to support the broader community.”
With a strong focus on the athletes vying to make the 2026 Olympic skimo team, he acknowledged other USA Skimo priorities and projects may fall to the wayside in the short-term, but Armstrong is hopeful that the excitement surrounding the 2026 Olympics — and hopeful team success in Italy — will ensure the long-term success of the organization.
Armstrong and USA Skimo have already sketched out a plan for how the organization will support its athletes over the next several years.
USA Skimo intends to not only work to build a strong integrated relationship with the U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee, but also to develop sponsors to make sure the athletes have the right products, financial resources and support to allow their full focus to be on their performance before and during the Winter Games.
The last thing Armstrong and USA Skimo want to focus on is building a base of financial support for the organization.
“Doing what we can do to grow the base of financial support for ski mountaineering so we can do all of the things that other, more established, governing bodies have,” Armstrong said. “U.S. Ski and Snowboard has training centers, they have partnerships with ski resorts, they have nutritionists and trainers on staff. Those things come over years and years of working and investment.”
Armstrong says he will continue to work toward these goals by cultivating and building relationships with USA Skimo’s U.S. Olympic & Paralympic Committee partners.
“I am on a rapid-fire meeting, listening and learning tour as it relates to the priorities I just listed,” Armstrong said.
Armstrong also recognizes the importance of major sports having a hub to operate out of. In the ’70s, long-distance running started to thrive out of the Pacific Northwest with the emergence of Nike. Cycling has had a hub in France for years.
With a strong ski mountaineering background and culture in Summit County, Armstrong would like to push for the county to become a hub for the sport in some capacity, with a local youth development group being a potential option.
“Summit County is one of the main hubs,” Armstrong said. “The development of those hubs and providing resources to those communities is critical to us. We view that development of those communities and development of those resources in those communities as a critical element of a successful, competitive ski mountaineering community.”
In the coming months, Armstrong will iron out how USA Skimo can provide resources to the Summit County ski mountaineering community so that both the organization and local athletes can benefit each other.
The 2026 Milano Cortina Winter Olympic Games are scheduled to begin Feb. 6, 2026. The inaugural ski mountaineering portion of the games will consist of a men’s sprint, women’s sprint and a mixed-gender relay, for a total of three medal events.
