Bob Colburn - Sports equipment executive

Bob Colburn, of Old Lyme, Connecticut, passed away following a brief illness on December 22, 2023. He was 83.

Colburn grew up outside of Boston. At 10 years-old, Colburn was stricken with polio and told he would never walk again. He overcame those predictions by the time he was a teenager and went on to become a successful college athlete and a lifetime sportsman, involved with hockey, tennis, cycling and skiing.

After he attended Brown University, he taught briefly before he ended up at Sports Illustrated in the mid-60s as a special-events and public relations director. That began a lifetime career in sports. Starting in the early 1970s, Colburn was an executive and then president of the Olin Ski Company for many years. He remained in sports management after he left Olin, with long stints in the hockey and lacrosse industries with Nike, Bauer, and Combat. He worked as a sports management consultant until his retirement.