Kerstin Joensson / AP
Editor’s note: Readers nominated their all-time favorite Summit County athletes for Peak Performers: The Mount Rushmore of Summit County athletes. Voting begins Feb. 23 at SummitDaily.com/peakperformers.
Nominee: Justin Reiter
Sport: snowboarding
The Summit High School 1999 graduate raced to a storied snowboarding career before transitioning to a coaching role that yielded Olympic gold in 2018. But his passion for racing began long before, when he learned to ski before age 2 in the mountains of Summit County.
After he made the switch to standing sideways, Reiter became one of the country’s most successful parallel snowboarding athletes, with 100 World Cup starts and four World Cup podiums for the 10-time national champion before he announced his retirement in 2017.
In terms of grand stages, competing at the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics was a highlight for Reiter, who was the only American male at the games to compete in parallel slalom and giant slalom. Reiter also won a silver medal in parallel slalom at the 2013 World Championships.
Two years later, in 2015, Reiter won a World Cup parallel event in Moscow, the first for an American in a decade. He eventually finished third in the seasonlong World Cup.
After retirement, Reiter’s passion led him to file suit against the International Olympic Committee in 2016 to save parallel slalom, which had been dropped from the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic program. In Pyeongchang, Reiter coached Czech snowboarder Ester Ledecka to a gold medal in parallel giant slalom.