Olympic snowboard halfpipe silver medalist Gretchen Bleiler of Aspen joins her 2006 gold-medal counterpart, Hannah Teter of Belmont, Vt., as nominees for Fox’s 2007 Teen Choice Awards in the category of Choice Action Sports Female. Fans can vote at , with results announced during a live broadcast Aug. 26.
Bleiler earned female snowboarder of the year honors at the inaugural Action Sports Awards in December, while the U.S. Olympic Committee named Teter the 2006 sportswoman of the year. Bleiler kept the competitive momentum rolling throughout the winter with second- place finishes at the Winter X Games and the U.S. Open along with two podium finishes in the U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix and third place at the Legendary Mount Baker Banked Slalom. This season, she won the Abominable Snow Jam halfpipe in July at Mount Hood, Ore.
Shaun White of Carlsbad, Calif., the Olympic halfpipe gold medalist and recent X Games skateboarding vert gold medalist, is among the nominees in the Choice Action Sports Male category.
ADVENTURE
Magazines salute Gunnison, Denver
Nestled in the valley floor between Monarch Pass, Crested Butte and the Black Canyon, Gunnison joins 49 other towns in the U.S. named to National Geographic Adventure’s “50 Top Adventure Towns.” Choosing one town per state for the September cover story hitting newsstands today, the magazine selected towns where people can “live the adventure dream daily” based on five categories: wilderness, small town, mountain, waterfront and city. Gunnison was among the 10 towns representing the mountain category, along with Bishop, Calif.; Missoula, Mont.; Hanover, N.H.; Wenatchee, Wash.; Hood River, Ore.; Boone, N.C.; Jim Thorpe, Pa.; Montpelier, Vt.; and New Paltz, N.Y.
Not to be outdone, Denver is featured in Outside magazine’s “Urban Survival Guide,” also hitting newsstands today. The September issue profiles accessible outside adventures near Denver and nine other cities – New York, Chicago, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Minneapolis and Washington.
CLIMBING
Falling rock kills leadership director
A man who died in a climbing accident this past weekend has been identified as Pete Absolon, the Rocky Mountain director of the National Outdoor Leadership School in Lander, Wyo. Bruce Palmer, acting executive director of the leadership school, said Monday that Absolon, 47, had been the Rocky Mountain director of the school since May.
“Pete was the director of NOLS Rocky Mountain branch, which is the largest branch of NOLS, which operates from 14 locations worldwide,” Palmer said. He said Absolon started working at the school as an instructor in 1990.
Fremont County authorities say the fatal accident occurred Saturday in the Leg Lake area of the Wind River Range west of Lander. A rock fell and struck Absolon while he was making a 700-foot rock climb.
“This is a great tragedy,” Palmer said. “Pete was a wonderful guy. He was passionate about teaching students, a super hard worker, and all-around a great guy.”
KAYAKING
Fourney drowns in Idaho river
Hailed as a hero in November for rescuing an Idaho kayaker in trouble on the Main Payette River north of Boise, renowned kayaker Conrad Fourney drowned Sunday on the North Fork of the Payette after his boat was pinned in the Class V Nutcracker Rapid.
According to reports in the Idaho Statesman, Fourney, 48, was kayaking with three friends on the upper 5 miles of the famously challenging 15-mile run when he was forced to exit his boat after running into trouble in the rapid’s crux section. Rescuers believe his foot became trapped in the rocky riverbed during his swim.
With 25 years of experience on some of the world’s toughest rivers, Fourney was considered one of the top kayakers in Idaho and was among an elite club of kayakers to successfully paddle the Grand Canyon of the Stikine in Canada’s Northwest Territories. The West Virginia native owned a guide business on the banks of the Payette throughout most of the 1990s and guided on rivers around the world.
Fourney made national news in November when his rescue of Sarah Cox was captured on video. The footage of Fourney manning an inflatable kayak to free Cox after she was pinned by the current against a rock for nearly an hour was shown on NBC and CBS, where Fourney also appeared on “The Early Show” to speak about the rescue.
FREE DIVING
German sets another world record
Eat your heart out, David Blaine. Better yet, make that your lungs.
German free diver Tom Sietas recently broke his world record for holding his breath underwater when he managed to stay submerged for 15 minutes and two seconds.
The 30-year-old engineering student from Hamburg topped his Guinness world-record time for holding his breath underwater by 37 seconds at the world free diving championships in New York.
Sietas began free diving more than a decade ago when a scuba instructor he met in Jamaica recognized his extraordinary ability to hold his breath.
Sietas has since held 12 world records. He prepared for his record-breaking stunt with a five-hour fast, which helps to slow his metabolism.
Speak
It seems Merriam-Webster has finally caught up with the action sports lexicon, introducing the formerly slang term used to describe the unthinkably huge aerial stunts of the X Games generation to its most recent edition of the dictionary.
gi * nor * mous (GI-nor-muss)
adj: bigger than gigantic and bigger than enormous; a colossal combination of the two. e.g., “Dude, have you seen the new booter in the park? It’s ginormous!”
