Going for the Gold: Tyler Jewell

The "Going for the Gold" series kicked off our one-year countdown to the Vancouver 2010 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games. We will feature a different 2010 U.S. Olympic or Paralympic hopeful each week with a vodcast on the first and second Friday of every month.

Shaun White helped popularized the sport of half-pipe snowboarding, but there's another athlete competing in a different side of the sport who is hoping to break through onto the public's radar. The sport is parallel giant slalom (PGS) snowboarding, and Tyler Jewell is trying to emerge as the face of his sport in Vancouver.

When Jewell made his Olympic debut in 2006, he was the only man to represent Team USA in the PGS. Snowboarding was added to the Winter Games in 1998, so it's a relatively new Olympic sport. When Jewell placed 11th at the Torino Games, he had one corporate sponsor.

For a snowboarder, the total cost of competitions, training and traveling for one year is approximately $30,000. In order to save money for competition season, Jewell, who grew up outside of Boston, sacrificed everyday pleasures.

While training in Oregon in 2001, Jewell lived in a tent and catered on the weekends to make extra cash. Leading up to the 2006 Games, he lived in a tent yet again and ate meals at a local hospital cafeteria for $2.50.

As a child, Jewell started as a skier, but he picked up snowboarding at 10. He never took lessons nor had a coach, yet he had two top-20 finishes at the Junior World Championships while still in high school. Despite spending much of his youth battling a learning disability, he still got accepted into college.

During his time at Boston College, Jewell put snowboarding aside. He played varsity lacrosse for four years and graduated with a degree in education in 1999. After college, he returned to snowboarding and set his sights on the Winter Games, hoping to qualify in 2002. He didn't make it, but he kept on training and readjusted his sights for the Games in Torino.

In the 2007-2008 season, Jewell had 13 top-10 finishes. He made his first trip to a World Cup podium in La Molina, Spain, and followed that up with a second-place finish at the 2008 Visa U.S. Snowboarding Cup in Lake Placid.

In the 2008-2009 season, Jewell had seven top-10 finishes through January. He finished fourth in the PGS last November in a Nor-Am Cup race in Copper, Colo. He was the top-ranked PGS snowboarder on Team USA, but his season was cut short because of a torn MCL in his left knee.

Jewell flipped head over heels -- or head over snowboard, rather -- over an unopened gate at the start of his race at the World Snowboard Championships in Gangwon, South Korea. Yet he still managed to place 10th at the event.

Although he was injured this season, the PGS snowboarder is recovering almost as fast as he speeds down the mountains in his event. If he continues, Jewell could make history as the first member of Team USA to win gold in PGS at the 2010 Games.