Seth Wescott cuts the ribbon on the new Sidewinder Snowboardcross Courseat Sugarloaf on Satruday. (Ethan Austin photo) CARRABASSETT VALLEY - - Sugarloaf's Seth Wescott, Olympic Gold medalist from the 2006 winter games in Turino, is still on a roll and is now in the prime of his brilliant career. With a goal of regaining the title of world cup champion after shattering his arm in 2007, Wescott got a fresh start this season starting off with a world cup win in Arosa, Switzerland.

Local spectators will have the ability to see their local favorite compete for a world cup title when the global tour comes to the United States. Wescott, as a mentor to the U.S. course design team, continues to influence the national and international snowboardcross sport; this time at Sunday River where the best riders in the world will compete for the globe's top title. The U.S. Snowboarding World Cup comes to Sunday River on Feb. 26 through Mar. 1.

Those who are not among the seven who make up the quota of USSA's A team will be competing at Sugarloaf's Revolution Tour this March. Wescott noted that some amazing talent should be coming to Carrabassett Valley such as names as familiar as Ross Powers and perhaps even Jason Smith. Powers made his fame in the half pipe and Smith was fifth in Torino, second on the U.S. team Olympic standings.

Returning from Europe to his residence at the base of Sugarloaf for the holidays, the most decorated snowboarder in the world spent the week in a Sugarloaf snowcat putting the final touches on Sugarloaf's newest snowboardcross course now dubbed Sidewinder.

Wescott explained that he's been pushing for Sugarloaf to create snowboarding venues like the continued development of half pipes, changes to Haywire for a slopestyle park and now finally the snowboardcross course. "I can go out to all the world ski areas and see what people are doing for competition venues and bring that knowledge back to these guys and push them to try to move things along."

"I think it's now great to have world-class facilities for not only the CVA kids, but for the public to be able to use. I think it was hard during the end of the ASC years because there was just no money to do it. The mountain is very reinvigorated now with Boyne here and they're giving us the capitol to do these projects. It's exciting to see that they see the value in it and want to help create those venues.

"We hosted the very first ever US Grand Prix and then we hosted the first ever US Olympic qualifier here in '96 and '97 and had a great relationship with USSA at that time … for me, what I think is the Rev Tour is going to allow us to re-establish that relationship on the snowboard side."

Wescott pointed out that the alpine community sees a strong relationship between people like Jim McCormick of Sugarloaf and USSA's event director Calum Clark.

"What we are hoping to do is establish Sugarloaf as the home of some of the highest level competitions. While the Rev Tour is just a step below that, it's the perfect event for the CVA community for the riders that are there and for the younger generation.

"It allows us to establish that great competitive event for them while at the same time re-creating that relationship with USSA and hopefully getting grand prix venues back here and ultimately hosting world cups."

Wescott said the course right now is pretty user-friendly at first and for the majority of the ski and riding season will remain that way, but it will be ratcheted up as the Rev Tour nears. "I'm sure it will be pretty challenging at that time."

"It takes kind of a kinesthetic knowledge of how you ride the courses to go out and put stuff together in the

cats," Wescott explained. The 2006 Gold medalist explained that he has designed a couple of courses for the US national championships. He said that course development is always work in progress and changes will be made and improvements will happen as time passes. He mentioned that over the next summer, they'll use dirt to develop jumps and tabletops instead of relying on snowmaking.

Wescott mentioned that the courses vary in length. The one world cup event for him in Austria next week will take about 45 seconds to run and in Argentina last fall the course was over two minutes. Wescott said he prefers a longer course. "When you work harder during the offseason than your competitors, it's to your advantage. When you have to go two time trial rounds and then four race rounds to get to a final, if you're in better shape, you're going to be riding stronger… When you have to ride six times plus warm-ups the fitness aspect really sets in," Wescott explained.

Wescott said he's been working with the CVA kids this past fall and referred to specifically working with Stratton's Alex Tuttle. "I've been giving him wax to take to his events." He also spoke of Juliette Bisson as one to watch as another finalist last year in their age division.

"It's been neat for me and I've really got more involved in the CVA program again in riding with those kids on a daily basis.

"It's so refreshing to see their energy and how excited they are to be doing it and it's actually been a great remotivator for me to kind of reconnect with that program again," Wescott said.

"Barry Tripp, who you know is running that program, is so motivating. It's been fun to see his reinvigoration of the whole thing and how it comes off on the kids."

Wescott mentioned that many of the riders on the US Snowboarding team grew up ski racing. "I was actually on the state champion Mt. Blue Middle School team in my seventh grade year," he remarked.

The competition gets better and better every year in snowboardcross where the 32-year-old Farmington native won the inaugural Olympic event.

"Everyone steps it up every year," Wescott noted. "I can watch footage of myself when I won the world championships in '05. And just in four years I can say, I was riding terribly and," laughing said, "I was the best in the world."

Wescott said like the game of football, his team studies video on each night of the tour. "When you finally get in that gate you have the most comprehensive plan on how you are going to attack that course. We have two of the best coaches in the world on the U.S. team right now. It's amazing to see the choices that we make as a team and seeing our team success. Having five of our guys winning international events last year is amazing and I think the closest country I think only had two (wins). We have a lot of something going right there and many countries that just don't."

Wescott said that the programs like USASA's Maine Snowboard Series were exactly what he did to get ready for his prolific career. He encouraged kids to stay motivated and mentioned the amount of success that's currently at the world cup class comes from the east and from programs like what's available in Maine.

"That was my learning experience and a lot of my Olympic teammates that I've had with me have come out of New England.

Wescott and company made two runs on the new Sidewinder snowboard course before conducting an autograph session last Saturday. He later made himself available for the press for questions and answers where he, as he's also exhibited, gave much of his time answering questions.

On the way out, Wescott said he felt quit confident that newspapers interested in him would have a lot to talk about in coming years. The 32-year-old is on his way to compete and retake his world cup title. He will be competing in the upcoming televised Xgames and we'll hopefully see him in the 2010 winter Olympics in Vancouver, British Columbia.