In 2021, Mike Beers and Graham Lonetto worked together to create base grinding parameters for snowboards at the request of Graham's friend and Head Coach for the U.S. Snowboardcross Team, Rob Fagan. Rob was looking for a structure to give his athletes a competitive advantage at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. He was specifically looking for a structure that would be fast in the cold, abrasive snow at the Olympic venue in China. Knowing Mike's comfort level with Wintersteiger tuning machines and programming and his innate ability to translate Graham's thoughts into tuning parameters to program the machine, Graham immediately contacted Mike, and they got to work. Together, they created and ran the programs on the WINTERSTEIGER Mercury at Bob Skinner’s Ski and Sport in Newbury, NH.
Good news from the Team
After the Olympics, Graham received exciting news via email from his friend, Rob. Not only did the base grinds that he and Mike created help to take home GOLD at the 2022 Winter Olympics, but THE FIRST US individual Gold medal won at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Lindsey Jacobellis ran Mike and Graham's structure for all days of the event, including her Individual SBX gold medal run AND the Mixed Team SBX Gold with Nick Baumgartner. Here's an excerpt from the email that U.S. Snowboardcross coach, Rob Fagan sent to Graham after the Olympics:
Good Evening Graham,
I meant to email you a while ago regarding some awesome results from out Snowboardcross team in Beijing. With the Snowboardcross Mixed Team Gold Medal from Lindsey Jacobellis and Nick Baumgartner, then Lindsey's individual gold, We were absolutely ecstatic as a team.
Lindsey ran the TR33 all days of the event. Nick was on a few different structures, then finals were also on the TR33 over in China.
Needless to say, Thank you for some great help in passing on some valuable insight.
~ email from Rob Fagan to Graham Lonetto, April 18, 2022.
