STEAMBOAT SPRINGS — When the FIS Para Snowboard World Cup returns to the U.S. for the first time in eight years with snowboard cross taking the stage in Steamboat Springs February 25-27, two racers with long Colorado ties will be hoping to make their Centennial State roots shine.
Hosted on U.S. slopes for the first time since 2017, the event will feature two World Cup snowboard cross races in Steamboat’s Bashor Bowl, as well as three NorAm Cup races and the U.S. Para Snowboard NorAm Championships. Due to World Cup cancelations earlier this season in Europe, an extra stop was needed to fill the snowboard cross schedule. The result: the first chance for many of the U.S. team’s athletes to ever race a World Cup in their home country, the opportunity for Colorado to shine a spotlight on the sport and inspire future generations of Para snowboarders, and the chance for athletes Zach Miller and Noah Elliot to represent the state they live and train in.
“This is an event that our athletes have been waiting for for years,” said U.S. Ski and Snowboard Para sport director Erik Leirfallom. “Some of our top athletes have never been able to race at this level on home snow with their family, friends, and communities there to cheer them on. It’s a great opportunity to promote the sport and show what this team and Para sport is all about.”
Right now, it’s all about winning. The Toyota U.S. Para Snowboard Team is currently the top in the world, winning both Nations Cups last season along with six individual crystal globes. The 2024-25 season has been a success so far as well, recording four World Cup podiums at the first stop in Landgraaf, Netherlands. The Steamboat event precedes the Para Snowboard World Championships March 4-10 in Big White, Canada.
Steamboat, for its part, is rolling out the welcome mat.
“Our community rallies around athletes, so the competitors should feel how magical it is to compete here,” resort CEO Dave Hunter said. “We can’t wait to celebrate all the athletes, especially the U.S. competitors and Noah Elliott who has long ties with Steamboat.”
Here are two U.S. Para Snowboard Team athletes with Colorado ties to watch:
Noah Elliott
When the FIS Para Snowboard World Cup lands in Steamboat, it will be a homecoming of sorts for Noah Elliot, 27. Fresh back from Austria where he cemented this year’s crystal globe for banked slalom, he first visited the mountain town in 2015 from his home state of Missouri with a camp for kids with cancer called Sunshine Kids.
“I grew up skateboarding in Missouri, but that was my first time ever snowboarding,” he said. “Steamboat was the first place I ever visited in Colorado, my first time laying eyes on mountains, and my first time ever on a snowboard. I fell in love with it.”
So much so that he moved to Steamboat in 2019 and spent three years working for Steamboat Adaptive Recreational Sports, sharing his love for it with other adaptive athletes. He’s since focused more on competing, and will be the racer everyone else is gunning for on his former home turf. Win and he’ll add both the crystal globe for cross to his dossier, as well as the overall.
Including this year’s banked slalom globe, he’s a five-time World Champion with seven World Championship medals to his name. Last year, he earned six World Cup wins and two additional podiums en route to winning the banked slalom and overall crystal globes.
“I didn’t even realize it, but I haven’t lost a banked slalom race in two seasons,” he said.
Still, even though he just returned from winning a World Cup cross event in Switzerland, he professes he’s better at banked slalom than cross.
“Banked slalom is more my thing,” said Elliot, who’s sponsored by the likes of the Ikon Pass, WinterStick and Celsius Energy Drinks. “You get to ride cleaner. Hopefully there will be enough separation features on the Steamboat course that I can maintain my speed.”
As a lower limb amputee from his cancer, Elliot has a different style than many other racers on the World Cup circuit. He rides regular, with his left foot forward, with the prosthetic in front, not the back.
“The majority of racers have it in the back,” he said. “But it works better up front for me, especially when I’m freeriding.”
While this summer he hopes to have time to pursue such other pastimes as skateboarding, fishing, camping, and playing guitar (Hendrix, Clapton, and the Talking Heads, if you must know). He’ll also still be training hard for next year’s Milano Cortina 2026 Paralympic Winter Games, spending at least a month in Hood River, Oregon.
He’s already a two-time Paralympian with two medals, winning the banked slalom gold and snowboard cross bronze in 2018. And for now, his sights are on Steamboat.
“This will be my first time competing in a World Cup on home snow, and I’m super psyched,” he says. “My family will be there and they’ve never had the chance to see me compete.”
“Steamboat truly holds a special place in my heart,” he said. “It’s going to be awesome to come back and show the Colorado lifestyle to all the other racers. And we’ll have a strong showing from our own racers with Colorado roots. A bunch of racers from other countries are already saying, ‘I gotta’ get a cowboy hat.’”
Zach Miller
To put it into his, or Maverick and Goose’s words in “Top Gun,” Zach Miller feels “the need for speed.” It doesn’t matter whether he’s on a snowboard, motorcycle, sports car or even an esports console. He just likes to go fast.
“I love all things racing,” said Miller, 25. “It’s objective, not judged. The only thing that matters is if you cross the finish line first. It doesn’t matter what your setbacks or challenges are.”
Born with cerebral palsy, he’s had plenty. But snowboarding has been his savior. Originally from Littleton, he discovered the sport through the sports program at Denver’s Children’s Hospital, crediting his coaches Daniel Gale and snowboarding-legend Amy Purdy from Copper Mountain’s Adaptive Action Sports for his progress as an athlete.
“I met them at an adaptive event in Breckenridge called the Ski Spectacular,” he said. “They said they had an adaptive program at Copper and wanted me to join their development team to compete for the USA. They got me to the elite level.”
So he moved up from Denver and spent 10 years living in Silverthorne working with Gale and Purdy, a three-time Paralympic medalist, quickly moving through the international rankings and earning a spot on the U.S. Para Snowboard team in 2018.
He’s since become a two-time World Champion (2022 banked slalom, and in 2023 with teammate Mike Minor in dual banked slalom), five-time World Championship medalist, and Paralympian. In 2023, he also won the Best Athlete with a Disability ESPY Award.
“That was an incredible feeling,” he said of winning the award in LA. “I was out there in the same room as some of the world’s most influential athletes.”
While he admits snowboarding is his calling — his favorite thing about it is how fast he can go — he carries his affinity for all things fast over to gaming and racing motorcycles.
“It carries over, whether it’s a snowboard, motorcycle or car. It’s the same principle,” he said.
The book that happens to be on his desk: “Ultimate Speed Secrets” by Ross Bentley. He loves esports racing also. During COVID, after returning from a competition in Norway and in quarantine for three weeks, he got an esports program going at the Adaptive Action Sports office, building an adaptive team up from scratch by calling companies and getting them to build adaptive consoles, joysticks and more.
A year later, AAS hosted the first official adaptive esports tournament. “I’m super proud of founding an adaptive esports league,” he said, adding that they now have a few hundred people who are part of that community. “I didn’t see it coming and wasn’t thinking it would be that successful.”
Now working as a coach at Adaptive Action Sports in Park City, he also set up new PCs in the office to build a local adaptive esports program. And he loves passing it forward.
“I’m always looking for ways to give back. I’ve benefited from a lot of people who have invested in me so I’m always looking to give back. I enjoy teaching and coaching and am always looking for the next great up and coming rider.”
He found one, he added, in Colby Fields, 16, who has cerebral palsy as well. He saw him just like Gale noticed him in the Frisco skatepark all those years ago. “That was definitely me before,” he said of Colby, adding he’s helped him improve as an athlete so he’s now a full-time athlete in the program.
While he’s better at banked slalom than cross events, he’s planning for a solid showing in Steamboat and to have a home race in Colorado that his family can attend from Florida.
“I definitely do better at slalom,” said the Toyota and Think Analytics-sponsored rider. “The tighter courses fit my riding style. But cross is way more exciting and fun.”
Just as long as he gets to go fast.
“There’s just a certain freedom and feeling in going fast. When I was young, I had this reputation of being this disabled kid. But when you’re snowboarding or driving or on a motorcycle, you’re covered in all this gear and people can only see how fast you’re going and how much fun you’re having. All barriers go away. You’re just a guy out there on a motorcycle or snowboard.”