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Delerue, Warner Have Winning Smiles Championships Conclude Under Snowy Skies Whistler B.C., Canada — April 23, 2000 Just about everyone involved in the Sims World Snowboarding Championships was over it (done, ready to strip off that Gore-Tex and sit down) before Sunday's boardercross even got into its final rounds. But France's Xavier Delerue and local rider Jamie Warner kept charging through each elimination round and eventually ruled the very tough course.
It's been a long stint of contests and most athletes are nursing abused bodies, or hangovers, or both. The trick to winning today's race was a good attitude. Canadian Marni Yamada, who took 2nd in Thursday's Kokanee Boardercross, took 2nd again today. She led the final round until the very last hit, where Warner took a bigger line and passed her just a few feet before the finish.
"I had a really strong year and this is only my second year of competing," said Warner, who also took 2nd overall in the Kokanee Boardercross series this season. She said that even though most people were down about the contest, she was just stoked to be in it. She had to apply to get onto the stand-by list, and only received a bib after a European rider didn't show. "I just turned 19, I'm legal drinking age and I'm going out tonight." Lucky Canuks. But Delerue really has something to smile about, this is his second boardercross win in just four days. Add today's $20,000 purse to the $5,000 he won at Thursday's race, and you've got one happy Frenchman. "I was going easy until the final. And then in the final, I gave everything. It was really tough," he said. Canadian Drew Neilson took 2nd, adding another podium to his impressive racing resume. This season he won the Kokanee Boardercross at Mount Seymour, B.C., and the boardercross races at the Gravity Games, X Games, one in Laax, Switzerland, the Mountain High Boardercross, and a banked slalom near Kelowna, B.C. "It's been an amazing season," he said after the race. These are certainly all riders to watch, but the race could have gone to anyone who took the right line through the tight, highly technical course. That's the nature of boardercross - sometimes the most determined riders get pushed out of the running. "Twenty thousand is a nice piece of cake," Whistler local Omar Lundie said, before taking a nasty spill during his first round. "You have to earn it - it's not the lottery."
"I always wear all this gear, even in the practice runs," said local Sherry Newstead, "that's when you can really get hurt because you don't know the course yet." Right now, that course is getting filled in with snow. That's one of the reasons Whistler/Blackcomb rules. It's dumping, the racing is over and tomorrow it'll be time to freeride.
— Mary Catherine O'Connor, Scoping Her Next Line for MountainZone.com
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