Shaun White, other Olympic snowboarders and top freeskiers commit to Winter Dew Tour
The Winter Dew Tour will launch next month at Breckenridge Ski Resort with a star-studded lineup that includes 2006 Olympic gold medal-winning snowboarders Shaun White and Hannah Teter.
To be sure, one glimpse at the list of confirmed athletes, which will be released today, has organizers relieved because there'd been concern that top snowboarders, who have so many events from which to choose, may not fully embrace a new circuit.
But the three-stop snowboarding and freeskiing series has drawn like the X Games draws.
Other top snowboarders include Gretchen Bleiler, winner of the silver medal at the 2006 Olympics; Kelly Clark, who struck Olympic gold in 2002; and Danny Kass, who has two Olympic silver medals.
Mason Aguirre, Kevin Pearce, Travis Rice, Finland's Antti Autti, Norway's Andreas Wiig and Australia's Torah Bright, winner of X Games superpipe gold last January, also are on the list.
Top freeskiers jumped all over this new opportunity to showcase their remarkable talents. Tanner Hall, Simon Dumont, who finished 1-2 in the superpipe at last winter's X Games, will bring their rivalry to the Winter Dew Tour.
And it won't hurt to have Sarah Burke or Kristi Leskinen on the roster. Both are worth watching on the snow, and both have popped eyes by appearing in men's magazines and on Internet sites not so bundled up.
The Winter Dew Tour, which features competition in superpipe and slopestyle, will open at Breckenridge Dec. 18-21. The other stops are Mount Snow in Vermont Jan. 8-11, and Northstar-at-Tahoe Feb. 19-22.
Somewhere in between -- Jan. 22-25 -- are the X Games.
-- Pete Thomas
Photos: Simon Dumont (top right), who with Tanner Hall rules the superpipe as freeskiers, will share the Winter Dew Tour spotlight with snowboarders such as Hanah Teter (above), who won a gold medal at the 2006 Olympics. Credit: Courtesy of AST
