Snowboarder Palmer looks for another peak

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Snowboarder Palmer looks for another peak after some valleys

National Multi-Sports News

TELLURIDE - They call him "The Miserable Champion." At age 41, snowboarding pioneer Shaun Palmer has seen plenty of both - championships and misery. Now he's searching for a happy ending.

Shaun Palmer

It was supposed to arrive four years ago, when snowboardcross - the sport he helped invent alongside old-school skiing buddy Glen Plake - made its Olympic debut at Turin in 2006. That was the discipline Palmer virtually owned since its evolution into competition at the Winter X Games, the event in which he won three of his six Winter X Games gold medals dating to 1997. The others came in skicross, downhill mountain biking and a ski/snowboard hybrid race called "ultracross."

And after working his way back from an alcohol and drug-induced coma that nearly cost him his life on Memorial Day weekend in 2005, Palmer almost found his happily ever after.

Palmer bucked all odds when he earned his spot on the 2006 U.S. Olympic Snowboard Team with a World Cup podium finish in Bad Gastein, Austria, one month before opening ceremonies. At a race in Italy two weeks later, he ripped his Achilles tendon in half.

"It was pretty…depressing, especially after you know you're going to the Olympics," said the resident of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., who was named ESPN's action sports athlete of the year in 2001. "But, I mean, that's life. We have to take our punches, and that's why I'm here now. It's not a good thing, but it's definitely motivation for this time."

Shaun Palmer

Palmer is back this season for another shot at the Olympics, saying that the injury doesn't affect his snowboarding these days. And after qualifying second at the opening World Cup snowboardcross race of the season a month ago and 12th here in Telluride last weekend, it would seem that the speed is still there.

He could become the oldest man to qualify for the U.S. Olympic Team with a repeat of his 2006 performance, but he has only three chances left to do it — the next one in Bad Gastein in January. After two of five Olympic qualifying races, he has finished no better than 17th. Clearly time is running short for the man, who served for years as the face of action sports, to go out on top.

"For Palm, his speed is there, and he's having good days in training. But it's tough. Your reaction times have to be so quick in all this, and I'm sure that gets harder the older you get," U.S. snowboardcross coach Peter Foley said. "The pieces are in place, really, and from a technical standpoint, he's got all the skills, so it's really up to him."

It's a role Palmer is accustomed to. Despite professional success in an array of action sports ranging from skiing and snowboarding to motocross and mountain biking (in which he won the world championship in dual slalom and came 0.15 seconds short of a second title in downhill), the notorious partier who once fronted a punk rock band has never made things easy for himself as a competitor.

His legendary pre- and post competition binges culminated in a flight-for-life helicopter ride to a Reno, Nev., hospital after a falling-out with sponsors in 2005. But the event doubled as a catalyst for change, with the Olympic ideal serving as the model. "I definitely have an addictive personality. Everything I do is full throttle," Palmer said. "As far as winning, that's just a substitute for the addiction. I'm addicted to this too, but it's a healthy one. That's why I'm trying to stick it out."

After checking himself into a rehab program to gain a better understanding of his addiction last spring, Palmer is clearly focused on the challenge before him. But health and sobriety go only so far in an aggressive sport in which four riders line up at the top of a mountain and battle their way down an obstacle-riddled course to the finish line. "The young reflexes are tough to battle," Foley said. "And I think sometimes that the older you get, the harder it becomes to really, really punch it and really lay it on the line."

Shaun Palmer

Whether that was the case when Palmer was eliminated in the first round of head-to-head racing during the Olympic qualifier Saturday, only Palmer knows for sure. But in a tight heat in which all four riders were separated by no more than a board length at the finish, he was as much in the mix as anyone.

And after earning his reputation for more than a decade off an uncanny ability to grab the "hole shot" out of the start and hang onto a lead to the finish, no one is counting Palmer out as the race goes down to the wire.

"Shaun Palmer is one of the best boardercrossers ever, and to have him on this team and to get his knowledge and have someone like that as a teammate to pump you up and train with is awesome," said Ross Powers, whose third-place finish in Telluride put him in solid position to claim one of the four anticipated Olympic Team spots. "He's 41 and still one of the top guys out here. I'd love to do well and go on (to the Olympics) with him."

As for the one they call "miserable," Palmer obviously still believes there's a place for him in Vancouver. And he looks forward to it with the positive determination of a champion.

"You don't want to go back, don't dwell on the past. That's history. You gotta move forward, and that's getting to the Olympics. That's the goal," Palmer said. "I just want to win and walk away."

Shaun Palmer's career highlights

2008: Jeep King of the Mountain overall champion

2008 & 2006: World Cup snowboardcross silver medals, Bad Gastein

2002: Gravity Games skicross gold

2001: ESPY for Action Sports athlete of the year

2001: Winter X Games ultracross gold

2000: Winter X Games skier X gold

2000: Won Pike's Peak Hill Climb auto race

2000: NEA extreme athlete of the year

1999: Winter X Games boarder X gold

1999: NORBA national championship, dual slalom biking gold

1998: USA Today's Worlds greatest athlete