For Hailey's Graham Watanabe, 22, the past few weeks have been about as predictable as a BoarderX race.
Just one week after careening off a BoarderX course in Aspen, Colo., Watanabe surged back to the podium this past weekend in California.
He captured third place in an elite field at the Jeep King of the Mountain Skiing and Snowboarding World Championships at Lake Tahoe's Heavenly Mountain Resort Feb. 5.
Watanabe defeated U.S. Snowboard team member Pete Thorndike of Meredith, N.H., in consecutive races on Jeep's signature Y-Course for third place in men's snowboarding.
Canada's Jasey Jay Anderson won the single-event and overall season boarding title. Losing to former European champion Markus Wittner in the first round at Heavenly was fellow Open qualifier Zac Crist of Sun Valley.
The Jeep King of the Mountain Championships—featuring Watanabe's races—will be aired to a national audience on CBS Sports on Feb. 19-20.
Watanabe's Lake Tahoe performance came after a morning where "everything was going horribly wrong," for the former Sun Valley Snowboard Team racer. After crashing numerous times in warm-ups and having his binding rip completely off of his snowboard in a practice run, Watanabe decided to mentally refresh.
"I just that decided that this obviously wasn't my day and I just tried to have fun with it," he said of the hours leading to his eventual success.
From that place of relaxed resignation, Watanabe won his first run over German national champion Markus Ebner. After losing the second race against Ebner, Watanabe was knocked down to fighting for third.
"I was in competition for the podium and gunned it and beat Thorndike in both runs and took the third place spot...it was rad," said Watanabe.
"To make podium in the final Jeep event, especially after starting the day funky, was definitely a victory for the day," he continued.
In the coming weeks, Watanabe will be competing in some small local events "just to keep on the snow and have some fun" as he gears up for the Gravity Games at Colorado's Copper Mt. on March 4.
From there, Watanabe begins a classic World Cup travelogue with WC races in Lake Placid, N.Y. (March 5-6), Sierra Nevada, Spain (March 11-12), and Sweden for the World Cup Finals (March 17-18). He turns 23 on March 19.
