Southwest Series opens the season with snowboard races

Mountain Sports Team athletes dominate

As more terrain continues to open on Crested Butte Mountain, assistant Crested Butte Mountain Sports Team (CBMST) Director (and all things knuckle) Christian Robertson has been working his snowboard athletes through the gates. It’s a training regimen he believes pays off in the long run.
“It’s all a good foundation of skills for everything we do,” says Robertson. “It makes you a better pipe rider, slopestyle rider and better in the steeps.”
In addition, the work put in on gates paid off for the local team riders in the opening event of the Southwest Series, a series of ski and snowboard competitions hosted by Crested Butte Mountain Resort.
The 2009-2010 competition season kicked off with two Giant Slalom snowboard races on Saturday, December 19 and two Slalom races on Sunday, December 20 on Buckley/West Wall.
Fourteen CBMST athletes competed, with several hitting the podium.
“We had a good crew,” says Robertson. “Our young crew of eight to nine-year-olds were looking solid and it was a good start to the competitive season.”
With the Canaan Terrain Park slated to open this week and the halfpipe by January 2, Robertson’s riders as well as the skiers under coach Woody Lindenmyer will start preparing for a big month of competition.
“Now we’ll shift gears into freestyle mode,” says Robertson. “January and into early February is a big competition month.”