The sunshine continued to heat up the Mount Bachelor superpipe all afternoon as Gretchen Bleiler (Snowmass Village, CA) and Andy Finch (Fresno, CA) added fuel to the fire, dominating the third stop of the Chevy Truck U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix Sunday.

Bleiler opened her third run with a huge crippler 540 and closed with a crippler 720 racking up a score of 48.6 points of a possible 50 for the highest score ever recorded in women’s superpipe competition. The win was also her fourth straight in a string of victories that includes gold in the X Games one week ago. Taking invert notes, Finch, who is still recovering from a dislocated left shoulder showed little pain as he threw four straight inverts in a row in his second run sealing the victory with 43.0 points over ’02 Olympic gold medalist Ross Powers (South Londonderry, VT).

It’s beginning to be a family Grand Prix podium tradition for the Teter family as Elijah (Belmont, VT) put together a 41.0 point run stocked with switch tricks and his monster mctwist to round out the men’s podium, while younger sister Hannah (Belmont, VT) spun clean 900’s in each run to finish second for the women, 3.8 points behind Bleiler. Olympic veteran Tricia Byrnes (New Canaan, CT) rounded out the women’s event with 42.2 points and some of her biggest airs of the season.

“It was a great day for me,” said Bleiler. “It’s just all about momentum – Kelly Clark (’02 Olympic gold medalist) was on this run last year and you just get the confidence that puts you in the zone and it all comes together.” The win comes after missing most of the training week due to a nasty flu, but a clearly fatigued Bleiler came out Saturday to qualify first. She then took the rest of the afternoon off to rest up for the final. “I was thinking that I wouldn’t even be competing this weekend because I felt so awful a few days ago, but yesterday I somehow pulled it together and even today I wasn’t feeling 100 percent. But it’s hard not to come out and ride when the weather was so beautiful and the pipe was so great,” said Bleiler.

On his first run, Finch boosted two huge inverts and was going for a third when he sunk an edge in the soft pipe, sending him to the snow on his face and leaving him with a raspberry on his left cheek.

“I was seeing some stars, but I shook my head and it went away – there’s a reason I put a pit bull sticker here,” said Finch, pointing to his board. ”It’s my nickname, you’ve got to take hits and get back in there. I want to be the best, that's all it is and sometimes it takes a few knocks to improve - it's all part of progression.”

Powers had nothing but respect for the field saying that it’s great to see the Finch, Bleiler and the Teter family riding so well. But it was his thoughts on the young field that showed why Powers is such a respected leader within the snowboarding community.

“It’s amazing to see all these young riders out here doing such amazing tricks for their age,” said Powers. “You’ve got 12-year-old Luke Mitrani out there doing airs three times his size and young girls like Hannah Teter and Lindsey Jacobellis pushing women’s riding to a whole new level. We’re going to be seeing those names for a long time to come.”

— Courtesy, U.S. Snowboard Team