The world’s first look at Team USA during the opening ceremony of the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games will also shine a spotlight on Oregon sheep ranchers who provided wool for the athletes’ blazers.

But this isn’t the Shaniko Wool Company’s first time to the parade.

Rancher and yarn producer Jeanne Carver in tiny Maupin remembers Olympic uniform company Ralph Lauren’s initial contact with her. It was in 2012, during the controversy created by Team USA’s London Games uniforms being made in China.

“I couldn’t believe” when they called, she said. “And I figured that actually doing business with them would probably never happen. I believe I said, ‘Things like this don’t happen to people like us,’” referring to the ranches that make up the Shaniko Wool Company.

When the Ralph Lauren company placed an order, “it was beyond anything I could have dreamed about,” Carver said. “And it’s still just as exciting today as it was then.”

The remotely located company, named after the nearby Shaniko ghost town, has grown to include 10 ranches in the western U.S. that collectively shear about 500,000 pounds of Merino wool each year, said Carver.

The company also provided wool for the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, and Carver’s family property, Imperial Stock Ranch, supplied wool for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, and 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. This is the first time the Oregon ranchers have contributed to Team USA’s summer uniforms.

Wool uniforms in summer doesn’t surprise Carver. She said people who have worked closely with sheep for generations, especially those near Shaniko, once deemed the “Wool Capital of the World,” know that the natural material is the original performance fiber and a premier fiber for year-round use.

“Wool not only supports our ‘life energy’ in a way no other fiber does, it makes the best suiting fabric in the world,” she said.

U.S.-made Merino wool

The Ralph Lauren company has been an official outfitter of Team USA nine times, and all apparel worn by U.S. athletes during official Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies is made in the United States.

This year, Team USA members will wear a single-breasted navy blazer with red-and-white tipping along with a blue-and-white striped Oxford shirt, blue jeans and cream-colored suede buck lace-up shoes for the opening ceremony.

The company contacted Carver 16 months ago about its tailored blazers with these specific requirements:

• The wool needed to be certified as meeting the Responsible Wool Standard granted to producers that prioritize animal welfare, land health and worker health and safety. When the third-party audited global sheep and wool standard officially launched in 2016, Carver’s Imperial Stock Ranch became the first ranch to be certified.
• The diameter of the individual fiber was to be 18 micron.
• The wool had to be finely spun to yarn and then woven to a lightweight fabric. It also had to have a very soft feel (“hand”) as well as be durable with long and strong fibers.
• Because the blazer uses white fabric as well as dyed navy fabric, the wool had to be white, not yellow.

“We had exactly what they needed,” said Carver, whose family has been raising sheep, cattle, grains and hay on the Imperial Stock Ranch for 153 years. “The ranchers of Shaniko Wool Company have been working on genetic improvements in their sheep for a very long time. As a group, we are raising some of the finest Merino wool produced in North America.”

In 1999, when U.S. sheep producers felt pressure from imports, Carver found a new way to market: Convert the greasy wool into wool yarns.

Fifteen years later, Oregon wool helped dress Olympic athletes. “It was Ralph Lauren’s first Made in America Team USA uniform effort,” said Carver. “And they told our story, naming us for the first time.”

Carver said she will be watching as Team USA competes at the Paris Olympic Games July 26-Aug. 11. “It’s a powerful emotional experience” for the athletes, she said, “and it’s the highest honor to have our fiber worn by these sport legends as they embark on their Olympic journey.”

— Janet Eastman | 503-294-4072

jeastman@oregonian.com | @janeteastman