Dutch snowboarder Lisa Bunschoten claimed her second Dew Tour Toyota Adaptive Banked Slalom win on Friday, following up on her 2017 win. British rider Owen Pick’s gold medal was his first career win in any major contest. Both riders wear below-the-knee prosthetics on their right legs.
Race scores were based on a best-of-two timed runs format. Bunschoten’s time of 1:14.11 from Run 1 gave her a commanding 3.74 second lead in the women’s class over 2nd place finisher Brittani Coury, the American who won the Gerhard Gross Memorial Banked Slalom on the same course the day before. Peggy Martin, also a member of the U.S. Paralympic Snowboard team, finished 3rd.
“It was a different week with all the snow,” Bunschoten said. Copper Mountain reported 17 inches of new snow in the official 5:00 am report, and it continued snowing heavily all day before the race, which started at noon. The race was the only Dew Tour event on Friday not postponed due to the weather, but Bunschoten said the conditions were better than she’d been expecting. “I’m happy that the race didn’t get canceled!”
Bunschoten, a two-time Paralympian who took silver in Snowboard Cross and bronze in Banked Slalom at the 2018 PyeongChang Paralympics, has been dominating the Para Snowboard World Cup circuit’s LL2 (lower limb) impairment classification over the last year. In fact, she’s working towards a perfect season: in November she won double gold in Banked Slalom on consecutive days in front of a home-country crowd at Landgraaf, Netherlands, then did the same at Pyha, Finland in December. She also won both Banked Slalom and Snowboard Cross at the 2019 World Para Snowboard Championships in Pyha, Finland in March.
The Dew Tour Adaptive Banked Slalom isn’t divided into impairment classifications, and Bunschoten said she appreciates getting to race against competitors with different impairment classifications.
“Another thing I love about Dew Tour is it’s an event that feels like it’s made by snowboarders for snowboarders,” Bunschoten said. “The vibe is good and it’s super fun to compete here.”
Owen Pick’s time of 1:06.02 put him 1.56 seconds ahead of 2nd place finisher Matti Suur-Hamari (Finland) in the men’s class, with 3rd place finisher Keith Gabel (USA) in 3rd.
Dew Tour, Toyota, and Adaptive Action Sports (based at Copper Mountain) have now partnered to bring the Adaptive Banked Slalom race to Dew Tour four times, beginning in 2016. Pick has competed each year, but Friday was his first podium finish.
“I’m stoked to come away with any medal,” Pick said. “That it’s a gold medal is just blowing my mind.”
Pick is from Cambridge, England. He rides with a below-the-knee prosthetic on his right leg, following a 2010 injury from an improvised explosive device (IED) while serving with the British Army in Afghanistan. Like Bunschoten, he had praise for the Dew Tour course despite the challenging snow conditions.
“We obviously had a ton of snow overnight, but the crew got up super early this morning, shaped and slipped the course, and actually made it really good, considering what they had to deal with, so it was quite nice and hats off to those guys,” he said. “All I was thinking the whole way down was ‘be gentle, be gentle,’ because as soon as you over edge, you’ve just lost all your speed. As soon as hit a spot of deep powder, you’ve lost everything. I had a really good line through my first run and it paid off in the end.”
Pick said it was also the most progressive course yet featured at Dew Tour or any other adaptive banked slalom event.
“We had a quarterpipe turn in there, and then you went into a same-way turn, and then you had the hip at the bottom… it was just really cool to ride something so different. The guys on the build team did an incredible job.”
Pick said he believes the Dew Tour’s calendar move from early December to February made for a more robust race.
“In the past, Dew Tour has been so much earlier, right at the beginning of our season. This time around we’ve been on snow a lot, and it makes a big difference.”
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