First Career Podium for Winters

Hydro Flask U.S. Snowboard Team's Cody Winters raced to his first snowboard cross World Cup podium, taking third at the much anticipated World Cup night final in Cortina d'Ampezzo, Italy.

The Hydro Flask U.S. Snowboard Team saw four men through from the morning rounds of qualifications, led by 2022 Olympian Jake Vedder with the fourth fastest time in the field of 67 competitors. Vedder, who took second place on this same track last season, was joined by teammates Nick Baumgartner, Cody Winters and Nathan Pare in the highly anticipated final under the lights. Vedder was unable to repeat last year's podium performance and was knocked out in the round of eight finals alongside Pare in a dramatic photo finish, while Baumgartner and Winters punched their ticket to the quarterfinal round.

In a stacked field, Winters earned a spot in the semi finals with a clutch quarterfinal performance, taking the runner up spot behind current snowboard cross World Cup leader Eliot Grondin from Canada. An early mistake took Baumgartner out of contention for the top two spots in his heat, but the four-time Olympian showed why he's one of the best to ever do it and battled his way back up to the lead pack, just missing out on a third place quarterfinal finish.

It was all eyes on Winters heading into the semifinals and the dual discipline athlete found himself in a familiar position, having podiumed at the FIS Snowboard World Cup parallel slalom in Bad Gastein last month. With heavy hitters and podium regulars Leon Ulbricht from Germany, Austria's Jacob Dusek and Canada's Eliot Grondin all crashing out, the field was wide open for a new racer to claim the World Cup win and Winters had his eye on the prize. After securing a spot in the big final, Winters took to the start gate one last time to battle it out for a spot on the podium. With his teammates cheering at the bottom, Winters raced to a photo finish with Canada's Liam Moffatt, who just barely edged out the American for the second place spot.

Winters' third place finish in Cortina marks the first World Cup snowboard cross podium of his career. He is the only athlete on the World Cup circuit to be competing in two different disciplines and takes the title as the first American snowboarder to podium back-to-back in those two different disciplines.

"It feels amazing to be able to get both podiums in both events," said Winters. "It’s something I had written down on my bucket list and I finally did it. I'm super happy."

Brianna Schnorrbusch and Virginia Boyd represented the Hydro Flask U.S. Snowboard Team on the women's side of competition, but neither were able to make it through the morning round of heats. This was true rookie Boyd's first World Cup start.

The snowboard cross crew heads to Erzerum, Turkey for the next round of World Cup competition that includes the first team event of the season.

RESULTS
Women
Men