Top adaptive athletes pick Crested Butte for training

X Games on the horizon

Brandon Robins was a sponsored freeskier and snowboarder from Washington State honing his skills at Crystal Mountain. In 2009 he suffered an injury that left him in a coma for three weeks, with a broken pelvis and the amputation of his right leg just below his knee.
“And I lost a pinky,” he jokes.
Now, thanks to Adaptive Action Sports (AAS), the Adaptive Sports Center and Crested Butte Mountain Resort, Robins is about to jump back into the highest level of competition for adaptive athletes this winter.
Co-founder and executive director for AAS Daniel Gale and partner Amy Purdy founded AAS in 2005 in California after meeting right here in Crested Butte. Gale attended Western State College and has always had an affinity for the valley.
“I always think of Crested Butte as my second home,” says Gale.
Both Gale and Purdy have spent the past six years on the road with the AAS program and decided to set some roots down here in Crested Butte. Chris Koepe, who works as both an instructor for the Adaptive Sports Center and with AAS as Winter Program director and instructor, put the two organizations together last spring after working for AAS at the Winter X Games.
The idea of settling in Crested Butte is to offer a boardercross training facility for adaptive athletes, specifically adaptive snowboarders, to use throughout the winter as they prepare for the upcoming adaptive boardercross at the X Games, a variety of United States of America Snowboard Association (USASA) events, World Cup races and quite possibly the Paralympic Games.
“What we really wanted to add to the program is an opportunity to have a full-time boardercross course for training,” explains Gale. “What really sparked coming here was the willingness of the Adaptive Sports Center to have us here. Our door is open and we’ve got athletes that are in and out for winter training.”
The partnership with the Adaptive Sports Center is symbiotic. While the Adaptive Sports Center provides a facility to store AAS gear and vehicles to transport athletes, AAS athletes will turn around and help out the Adaptive Sports Center. All of the AAS  athletes received training from the Adaptive Sports Center to become certified Level I Adaptive snowboard instructors.
“The benefit is that they’re a part of the adaptive community outside the competitive world,” explains program director for the Adaptive Sports Center Chris Read.
According to Read, the Adaptive Sports Center gets hit with waves of groups seeking snowboard instruction intermittently throughout the winter. It is during those times that the AAS  athletes can step in and help out.
“They’re going to be a really big relief valve,” says Read. “It’s a good trade-off. And if people want to try the competitive aspect of snowboarding, they’re a great resource.”
AAS collaborated with CBMR to create the boardercross course under the Paradise Lift. AAS provided the safety netting for the course that CBMR built. It’s open to the public so it’s not an X Games-level venue but it works great just as it is for now.
“It’s great to have that to get some training in,” says Gale. “Hopefully, if we get some snow we can bump it up a bit.”
AAS has the top adaptive athletes in the world walking through their door this year with Adaptive X Games gold medalist Mike Schultz training in Crested Butte a couple of weeks ago; Purdy is the top-ranked woman adaptive snowboarder in the world. Last year X Games gold medalist in the adaptive boardercross and the top-ranked male adaptive snowboard athlete in the world Evan Strong will spend the days leading up to this year’s X Games at the end of January training here. Robins is in Crested Butte right now.
Following his injury, Robins started working with AAS as a wakeboard instructor and caught the X Games bug last year.
When there was no competition for adaptive athletes on two skis, Robins decided to return to snowboarding and made the move this winter, due in large part to the AAS program here in Crested Butte.
“It’s awesome,” says Robins. “It’s a great opportunity to get as good as I can get, as fast as I can.”
Robins arrived in Crested Butte on December 12 and has been hitting it hard ever since.
“I’ve only taken four days off since I got here,” says Robins. “You’re kind of out here and there’s no distractions, my cell phone barely works, and the goal is training and practice. From when I got here first to how I’m riding now is night and day. I’m really happy to have the opportunity to do this.”
Koepe concurs. Koepe has seen the best riders in the world at the adaptive events in the X Games as well as the World Championships. After working with Robins the past three weeks, he sees him as a natural talent who should take the Adaptive Boardercross world by storm.
“He’s probably one of the top in the world for below-the-knee amputees,” says Koepe. “His athletic ability, speed and determination have bumped him up into that top level.”
Robins is currently slated as the first alternate for the X Games adaptive boardercross this year.
“He’ll quickly move up in the rankings,” says Gale. “Once he gets in a few World Cup and USASA events, he’ll be close to the top.”
In addition to setting up a home training facility in Crested Butte, Gale and Purdy created a competition series of events dubbed Adaptive Snowboarder X (ASX), complete with cash prizes. Two of the four events will be held at Crested Butte Mountain Resort. The first one was December 17-18, with two days of slalom and giant slalom races.
“The first event was to give people a taste of competition and then see if they want to come back to our next event,” explains Gale. “It went swimmingly.”
The next three events are boardercross races, with one in Lake Tahoe, one here in Crested Butte March 10 and the final one, double-billed as the USASA nationals, at Copper in April.
All three events open with three days of training and practice for adaptive athletes, concluding with the Adaptive Snowboarder X on the final day.
“We’ve designed a pipeline to the Paralympics through this series,” says Gale.
Gale realizes getting boardercross into the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia is close to impossible. So he and the athletes are setting their sights on the Paralympic Winter Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea in 2018.
“Sounds like it’s not going to happen,” says Gale about Sochi. “There’s a small hope, two-percent chance. So our goal is to focus on Korea.”
“That’s the goal,” adds Koepe, “to have an adaptive academy here and have athletes training here for the Paralympics.”