Justin Reiter is training for the Olympics by sleeping in a Toyota Tundra.
“In the back is the bedroom and lounge, all inclusive,” he told KSL-5TV in Salt Lake City as he gave a tour of his truck. “A lot of people would probably go nuts over this, but I think the longer that you live with less you realize the less that you actually need.
“For the first two weeks, I stayed in the Walmart parking lot, but it was not quiet.”
Reiter, 32, has been the best U.S. Alpine snowboarder the last two World Cup seasons after being the top-ranked man not to make the 2010 U.S. Olympic team. He said reconstructive surgery for a degenerative patella ended his 2010 Olympic hopes.
He competes in a snowboard discipline that’s not as well known as halfpipe, but it’s been a part of the Olympic program just as long (since 1998).
Photos: Shaun White’s custom-built snowboard training site across the world
The only American man to win an Olympic medal in Alpine snowboarding was Chris Klug, who took bronze in 2002 after receiving a liver transplant two years earlier.
Alpine snowboarding is probably best remembered for what happened at the 1998 Olympics, where Ross Rebagliati of Canada won gold, tested positive for marijuana, briefly lost his gold then got it back on appeal.
If Reiter makes the Olympics, he’ll have a chance at multiple medals. A second Alpine snowboarding discipline has been added for the Sochi Olympics — parallel slalom to join parallel giant slalom.
“Is it a big deal? Hell yeah,” he said of making it to Sochi. “Yeah, it is a very big deal. Any Olympics is a big deal.”
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