Nicole 'Nikki' Stone (born February 4, 1971) is a former American Olympic skier. In her career Stone has won 35 World Cup medals, 11 World Cup titles, four national titles, two year-long Aerial World Cup titles, and a World Championship title. She also became the first pure aerialist ever (male or female) to become the year-long Overall Freestyle World Cup Champion. She was inducted into the National Ski Hall of Fame in 2003. She competed in the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, and is best known for being the first American to win a gold medal as inverted aerial skier. Aerial Skiing is a sport where athletes ski into a 10 feet (3.0 m) snow jump at approximately 40 miles per hour (64 km/h), flip and/or twist to a height of 50 feet (15 m) and land on a 45 degree hill. Eighteen months before this second Olympic appearance, Stone sustained a career-threatening spinal injury in which doctors believed she would never jump again. At the 2002 Olympics, she carried the Olympic torch off the plane, along with Bill Spencer, that had brought it to the U.S. from Greece.
