Seth Wescott

Highlights

He won the first ever Gold Medal in Snowboard Cross at the 2006 Winter Olympics

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Wescott rose to the top of the international snowboard cross (SBX) ranks in 2004-05 when he won gold at the 2005 World Championships. He became the first snowboard cross Olympic champion in history. In the final at the Torino Games, Wescott trailed Slovakia's Radoslav Zidek halfway down the course. But the Maine resident made a sly move, passing Zidek on a banked turn, and held onto the lead over the last few jumps. At the bottom, Wescott celebrated by wrapping himself in the American flag used in the funeral ceremony for his grandfather, a veteran of World War II.

To the daring Wescott, the best way to train for SBX, he says, is by "big-mountain riding" in Alaska, which involves being dropped from a helicopter onto a mountain that he believes no one has ever ridden before. He's been making these descents since 2003, and says during the ride he contends with steep faces -- one of which, in the Chugach Range in Alaska, was 4,000 feet long with a decline of up to 60 degrees -- that demand his focus the entire ride, as to not be engulfed by the snow falling around him. Wescott survived a close call in 2003 when an avalanche carried him about 750 feet (watch video). Despite the danger of the trips, Wescott continues to thrive on the adventures. "That's the kind of stuff that feeds my soul. It gets me through crappy snowboard cross races when there's no snow in Austria and I question what I'm doing there," Wescott said.

Wescott was raised amid athletic success. His father, a track and field coach at NC State, coached future U.S. Olympic runner Joan Benoit, who won the first women's marathon at the 1984 Los Angeles Games. Wescott's father bought the family's first color TV to watch Benoit compete at the Games, which left a lasting impression on the then-8-year-old boy. "It was one of my first experiences seeing television," Wescott recalls. "Someone that my family knew winning the gold medal just resonated with me that the Olympics is an amazing accomplishment."

In May 2001, Wescott became a landowner when he purchased 21 acres in the Carrabassett Valley in Maine, near Sugarloaf Mountain. The land was all forest when he bought it, but Wescott has since cleared most of it, and even landscaped about 2.5 acres. He plans to build a house in the summer of 2006, with the help of friends who are carpenters. And during the summer of 2005, Wescott became a business owner when he bought a restaurant at the base of Sugarloaf Mountain (formerly the Sugarloaf Brewing Company) with some friends.

When Wescott isn't riding or working on his land, he enjoys surfing and skateboarding. He's also a music aficionado with more than 7,000 songs on his iPod. Particular favorites include the Beastie Boys, Rage Against the Machine, Pink Floyd and the White Stripes. He drives a 1994 Toyota pickup truck that he says is always filled with debris from his land in Maine. Wescott's girlfriend is Tanja Frieden, the women's Snowboard Cross gold medalist at the 2006 Winter Olympics.

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