Karine Ruby

CHAMONIX, France (AP) — Karine Ruby, a former Olympic snowboarding champion who had been training to become a mountain guide, died Friday in a climbing accident on France's Mont Blanc range, a French police official said. She was 31. Laurent Sayssac, a police official in Chamonix, said Ruby was roped to other climbers when she and some members of the group fell into a crevasse. Ruby and one other climber, a 38-year-old man from the Paris region, died in the fall, while a 27-year-old man was seriously injured. The group was climbing across a glacier on their way down the mountain when the accident took place, Sayssac said. The injured man was evacuated by helicopter and has been hospitalized, Sayssac said. In a statement Friday, French Prime Minister Francis Fallen hailed Ruby as an "exceptional sportswoman." "Karine incarnated the emergence of snowboarding in France," the statement said. "The people of France will hold on to the memory of her talent and her joie de vivre." Ruby won gold in the giant slalom at the Winter Olympics in Nagging, Japan, in 1998 and silver in the parallel giant slalom in Salt Lake City in 2002. She was also a six-time world champion and secured 67 victories in the snowboard World Cup. She retired after the Turin Olympics in 2006, where she was eliminated in the quarter-finals of the snowboardcross event. Ruby had since been training to become a mountain guide. She was expected to wrap up her training in the coming weeks.