Last ski season, a run in Vail's China Bowl long known as Chopsticks took on a new name: Gillett's Dream. The man it honored, George Gillett Jr., the former owner of Vail Associates who went on to own the Montreal Canadiens and co-own Liverpool Football Club, died on September 22, 2026, in Denver. He was 87.

Gillett was born on October 22, 1938, in Wisconsin, and built his fortune in meatpacking and media before sports became the thread running through his business life. According to the Vail Daily, his interests at various points reached the Harlem Globetrotters and the Miami Dolphins. But the place that claimed him was a Colorado valley.

He bought Vail in 1985, and he arrived with a clear idea of what a ski company was for. Speaking to the Vail Trail newspaper that year, he said he wanted to "hold up a mirror, and remind ourselves that we are primarily in business for the customers." The years that followed brought expansion on the mountain and a new generation of high-speed quad chairlifts. The Colorado Snowsports Museum, which inducted him into its Hall of Fame in 2005 as a Sport Builder, credits his tenure with detachable lifts, more groomed terrain, and a service-minded approach that drew a wave of new skiers to the state.

The turning point for Vail's reputation abroad came in 1989, when the resort hosted the World Alpine Ski Championships under his ownership. The Denver Post described that event as the moment the Europe-centered ski world placed Vail firmly on the global map. He also reached back into Vail's own history, hiring founder Pete Seibert away from Arrowhead, then a separate ski area, and bringing him back into the company he had started.

His ownership of the resort ended in the early 1990s, when heavy debt and soaring interest rates caught up with the business, and Apollo acquired his shares in 1992. The company later went public and grew into a global resort operator. Gillett, however, did not leave. He and his wife, Rose, stayed in Vail and raised their four sons there.

Asked why, he answered plainly. "We loved Vail in ’85 when we had a chance to acquire Vail Associates," he said in remarks recounted by the Vail Daily. "That wasn’t hollow or insincere; we really did love it, and so we’re here because we love the valley and we love the people." He gave much of the credit for staying to Rose, a devoted hiker, saying: "I live where Mrs. Gillett wants to live, and she loves this valley." At Beaver Creek, the terrain called Rose Bowl carries her name.

His next great chapter came in hockey. On January 31, 2001, he acquired a controlling 80.1 percent stake in the Montreal Canadiens along with the team's arena, now the Bell Centre. Under his ownership the club became one of the NHL's most profitable, as CBC Sports reported. In June 2009, during the team's centennial season, he reached agreement to return the Canadiens to the Molson family. "Our family has been very proud to be associated with the Montreal Canadiens over the past eight years and particularly to be a part of their centennial season," he said at the time.

Paul Kelly, then head of the NHL Players' Association, offered a warm send-off as Gillett left the league: "Mr. Gillett was really a fine owner." Kelly added that Gillett "brought a lot of creativity and ingenuity and colour to the sport."

Soccer followed. Together with Texas businessman Tom Hicks, Gillett completed the acquisition of Liverpool Football Club in early 2007. The partnership's time at Anfield ended in October 2010, when Fenway Sports Group took over the club, according to Liverpool FC.

Through all of it, Gillett kept a modest view of his own place in skiing history. When the Colorado Snowsports Museum honored him, he said he could not compare himself with the pioneers he admired. "Those are people I’d put on a pedestal," he told Vail Beaver Creek Magazine. "I’m just a kid; I’m just a skier."

He and Rose also gave years of time and money to the valley they loved, including support for the Vail Valley Foundation's work on early childhood education across Eagle County. "Rose and I sat down many times to say, ‘What really makes a great community?’" he once said, adding that alongside winter and summer sport, "you couldn't diminish the importance of medicine, culture and education."

What George Gillett built is still in use every winter morning. Skiers ride fast chairlifts up mountains he helped modernize, a bowl at Beaver Creek bears his wife's name, a run in China Bowl bears his own, and the customer-first standard he set in 1985 is still the one people in the valley reach for when they describe what their mountain should be. In Montreal, he was the owner who carried the Canadiens through their hundredth season and then handed them back to the Molson family. And in Eagle County, he and Rose backed early childhood education, because they sat down together, many times, and asked what makes a community great.