Fans, athletes call Winter Dew Tour a success

HUNTSVILLE — The opinions of fans and athletes was unanimous — bring the Winter Dew Tour back to Utah.

The four-day event was a huge success with 30,000 fans over four days. The crowd on Saturday night for the superpipe competition set a Winter Dew Tour record of 14,000 fans.

"This mountain is beautiful," said Chaz Gueldemon, who won the snowboard slopestyle competition on Sunday. "I'd be stoked (to come back)."

Steve Fisher, who competed in the superpipe and finished second, echoed those sentiments.

"I would love to see it come back here," he said. "I am very pleasantly surprised as to how it turned out here. It's always tough when you come to a new resort, especially one that has never had an action sports. ... You never know how it's going to go. This has been incredible."

Snowbasin wasn't a resort most of the athletes had heard of before this weekend, let alone skied there.

The resort hosted the Alpine events during the 2002 Winter Games, but this was the first major winter event the resort had hosted since the games.

Officials from Utah, the resort and the Dew Tour are meeting in the coming weeks to discuss the event and whether or not the tour will return to Utah or Snowbasin. And while they'll be analyzing costs and logistics more than fan satisfaction, those who watched the weekend's competitions are clear about whether or not they want the Dew Tour to return to Snowbasin.

"Out of all the venues, this is by far the best venue," said Brad Lilley, who is a sports announcer and event announcer for Dew Tour and many other Olympic and major action sports events, including the 2002 Winter Games and X Games.

When asked if he thought the event would return next year, he smiled, "Why wouldn't it?"

e-mail: adonaldson@desnews.com