Monday, January 31, 2011

Gretchen Bleiler U.S. snowboard Grand Prix champion

Gretchen Bleiler (born April 10, 1981 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American professional halfpipe snowboarder. She currently resides in Aspen, Colorado and is married to Chris Hotell.
Bleiler aspired to compete in the Winter X Games from a very young age, and found her passion in snowboarding at age 11 (1992). She has been riding ever since and became professional in 1996. Among her accomplishments, she jump-started the invert revolution for female riders as the first to land a Crippler 540 in competition, and won more halfpipe competitions in 2003, 2005 and 2006 than any other female snowboarder. In the pre-Olympic season she won four of the five US Olympic halfpipe qualifiers and is also a four-time X Games gold medalist, most recently winning the superpipe at Winter X Games XIV.

Gretchen Bleiler Sportster
Gretchen Bleiler Photo
Gretchen Bleiler Image
Gretchen Bleiler
Gretchen Bleiler

In 2003, she was a U.S. snowboard Grand Prix champion, a U.S. Open of snowboarding champion, and a Triple Crown of Snowboarding champion.

She posed for the February 2004 issue of FHM, along with fellow snowboarder Tara Dakides and sportscaster Jamie Little.

Bleiler, who missed qualifying for the 2002 Winter Olympics due to a tiebreaker, won a silver medal in the women's halfpipe at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, Italy.

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