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Height: 5-9 Halfpipe specialist Listle Stokstad, healthy again after a frustrating couple of injuries a year ago, is anxious to be back in action this winter. Stokstad, who was born in Oslo, Norway and moved to the USA when she was four years old, has battled an almost bizarre series of injuries which have sidelined her off and on since the spring of 1995. She competed in the last two events of the 1995 season, showing enough to make last year's Snowboard Team. That March, she broke her left foot hitchhiking across Mexico and couldn't compete at nationals.
Comment: "When I started riding, there were hardly any women, so there was only one class. I rode against the pros. Whoa! But I did it and did nationals every year. On the World Cup [in '95], I was a little tentative. I knew the girls but wasn't used to all the people...but you have to put that out of your head." Start-up: A skier when she was younger, Stokstad left alpine racing for snowboarding as a high school freshman at Loveland Basin. She doubled-up, racing alpine and riding the 'pipe for several years. However, burned out "chasing gates," she switched to freestyle fulltime during Winter '94. Blue Cross details: This past summer, Stokstad injured a shoulder, further reducing her preseason training. A year earlier...: "I was going down this slide at a [Mexican] beach park and it was torn up at the bottom, so I jumped off the slide but I landed wrong; it healed in about a month..." Offseason fun: Stokstad likes to hike and climb mountains (she climbed a dozen of Colorado's Fourteeners (14,000-foot peaks) during the Summer of '95.
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