Skiing & Snowboarding World Professional Championships

With the Jeep® King of the Mountain (www.jeepsports.com) 2006-2007 Skiing & Snowboarding World Professional Championships rapidly approaching on Dec. 2, the story lines surrounding the race have grown as rapidly as the powder dumping down on the event’s host site, Snowbird Ski & Summer Resort in Utah.

A stacked field of challengers has arrived from across the globe to battle for the title of World Professional Champion and a share of the richest cash payout in the sport, topping $450,000 plus $20,000 in bonus cash from John Paul Mitchell Systems and the keys to a new 2007 Jeep Patriot. This incentive, plus the opportunity to received prime exposure via CBS Sports and iNHD, will no doubt result in some inspired racing down the series’ Y-Cross racecourse.

Following are some of the most pressing questions that will be answered this weekend:

Men’s Snowboarding – Can Graham Watanabe defend crown among all-Olympic field?

Graham Watanabe of Park City, Utah, a 2006 Winter Olympian and the defending Jeep King of the Mountain World Professional Champion, must have done a double take when viewing the roster for men’s snowboarding at this year’s Skiing & Snowboarding World Professional Championships. Among the contenders looking to dethrone him include fellow Winter Olympic teammates Seth Wescott of Farmington, Maine, a World Champion who became the first snowboard-cross gold medalist in history last spring in Torino, Italy, and Nate Holland of Squaw Valley, Calif., who has a New Zealand National Championship under his belt. He’ll also have to fight off Winter Olympians Mario Fuchs of Austria, an Austrian National Champion, and Canada’s Drew Neilson, who has six World Cup titles, a Continental Cup Championship, a gold medal at the Gravity Games, and a slew of gold, silver and bronze medals from the Winter X Games to his name. Rounding out the group will be one of the most acclaimed extreme athletes in history, Shaun Palmer, but we’ll get to him a bit later.

The last time we saw Switzerland’s Tanja Frieden, Stowe, Vt.’s, Lindsey Jacobellis and Canada’s Dominique Maltais, the triumvirate was accepting the gold, silver and bronze medals, respectively, at the 2006 Winter Olympics. The Olympians will now face off on the Jeep King of the Mountain’s innovative Y-Cross racecourse, which will provide a test of instincts, patience and nerves unlike any other. They will square off against one another, as well as Seattle, Wash.’s Marni Yamada, a member of the U.S. Snowboard Team, and Julie Pomagalski of France, a Jeep King of the Mountain title winner last year who has amassed two French National Championships, a World Championship and nine World Cup titles in her career. No one will overlook two-time defending World Professional Champion, Doresia Krings of Austria., herself a 2006 Winter Olympian who has amassed three World Cup titles.

Men’s & Women’s Skiing – With ski-cross in for 2010 Winter Olympics, who will shine?

Just days ago, the International Olympic Committee added ski-cross, the rough and tumble sister event to snowboard-cross, as an official event at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver. The decision was no doubt based on the tremendous success of the debut of snowboard-cross at the Winter Olympics earlier this year. Race fans will get a sneak peek at some of the sport’s most likely future Olympians in Snowbird, including Austria’s Tomas Kraus, who has earned a World Championship and two World Cup Championships in the past two years, Enak Gavaggio of France, a six-time World Cup titlist and four-time International Free Skiers Association World Champion, and Lars Lewen of Sweden, a U.S. Free Skiing Champion and two-time gold medalist at the Winter X Games. Two of the favorites may be four-time Winter Olympian Casey Puckett of Aspen, Colo., who will be defending his World Professional Championship, and fellow Winter Olympian Jake Fiala of Frisco, Colo., a former U.S. National Champion who spent over a decade on the U.S. Ski Team. On the women’s side, Ophelie David of France, the defending World Professional Champion returns to face a tough group of challengers, including Anik Demers of Canada, Brett Buckles of Steamboat Springs, Colo., Karin Huttary of Austria, Jenny Owens of Australia and Magdalena Iljans of Sweden.

The Extreme Challenge – Should anyone bet against Shaun Palmer for dual titles?

The most widely anticipated debut will be that of cross-over athlete Shaun Palmer of South Lake Tahoe, Calif., who has won world championships in snowboarding and mountain biking, gold medals at the Winter X Games and Gravity Games, and has achieved super-cross status in motocross racing. He will be the first competitor in Jeep King of the Mountain history to compete in both the ski and snowboard competitions, a grueling feat that only a veteran of his status could attempt. Though Palmer has never participated in the Summer or Winter Olympics, this will be his chance to show he ranks among the world’s best on any stage.