Olympic Snowboarder Breaks Leg Adam Hostetter Injured During Film Shoot in Alaska Tuesday, May 12, 1998 American Olympic giant slalom racer Adam Hostetter broke his femur during a film shoot in Valdez, Alaska and is recovering at his home in Truckee, California. Hostetter underwent surgery at Lake Tahoe's Tahoe Forest Hospital. Adam was filming with TGR and had had near perfect conditions during the week. The stellar weather, combined with the ability to scope out their lines from the helicopter before their runs, had everyone comfortable with the lines of descent they had chosen. "I lost it and wrapped my leg around a piece of ice.." — Adam Hostetter Hostetter dropped in first and soon discovered the textured snow he had seen from above was avalanche debris. "After 70 meters of crusty snow I aired a cliff band and cart wheeled, bailed and radioed up to tell everyone the snow was horrible. So they stopped filming and I found a couple hundred meters of good powder until I aired the bergstrom. "I landed and speed checked on my heel side and tried to point it through some TV-to-refrigerator sized avalanche debris. I lost it and wrapped my leg around a piece of ice. I don't remember all of it so it's mostly guess work. I remember sitting down, grabbing my leg and radioing up saying I had a broken femur and a possible torn ACL," he recounted. Because his femur was broken in two places, doctors decided to dislocate his hip, drill out his femur and insert a titanium rod and eight screws to help hold the thigh bone in place during the healing. The good news is that he doesn't require a cast and will be active again in six to eight weeks. Luckily, this came at the end of Adam's biggest season. At Mammoth Mountain,California, he made the last cut for the American Snowboard Team. And in the Nagano Winter Games, at the end of an excellent run, he missed his last gate which took him out of the running. In March, Hostetter went snowboarding in India for the first time and, he said, "experienced a trippy, expensive Third World, with amazing terrain." Hostetter is spending his days catching up on the business side of things with his company, Red Eye Productions, an ad agency focused on the board sports industry and as team manager of Fila. He's hoping to head south to New Zealand to go surfing in September and begin his training with Cross M Team in October. — Hans Prosl, Mountain Zone Information Excavator

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