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Monday, July 12, 2010
Gretchen Bleiler (born April 10, 1981 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American professional halfpipe snowboarder. She currently resides in Aspen, Colorado and is married to Chris Hotell.
Bleiler aspired to compete in the Winter X Games from a very young age, and found her passion in snowboarding at age 11 (1992). She has been riding ever since and became professional in 1996. Among her accomplishments, she jump-started the invert revolution for female riders as the first to land a Crippler 540 in competition, and won more halfpipe competitions in 2003, 2005 and 2006 than any other female snowboarder.
In the pre-Olympic season she won four of the five US Olympic halfpipe qualifiers and is also a four-time X Games gold medalist, most recently winning the superpipe at Winter X Games XIV.
She posed for the February 2004 issue of FHM, along with fellow snowboarder Tara Dakides and sportscaster Jamie Little.
When she is not competing, Bleiler enjoys surfing, mountain biking, interior design and fashion. She is also active in several environmental organizations, including the Aspen Snomass Save Snow campaign, and stopglobalwarming.org.
For more information Visit Wikipedia.org