By Vicki Michaelis, USA TODAY"Louie just needs 2 more feet."
"Louie just needs 2 more feet."
It wasn't a comment on how much bigger he needed to grow (now 20, he stands 5-5). It was an assessment of how much bigger he needed to go — off the lip of a snowboard halfpipe.
The Ohio native had all the flips, turns and style to be one of the best at negotiating the slick troughs that serve as snowboarders' playing fields. He just needed more height on his tricks — amplitude, in snowboarder-speak — to win the judges' highest marks.
After finishing second in two events in U.S. Snowboarding's Grand Prix series in 2007, he asked his coaches for help. They set him to practicing on a no-holding-back start for optimum speed and on landing lighter and tighter on the edge of his board after each trick. The goal was to begin with more momentum and build it throughout his ride, because the faster he went into each trick, the higher he would fly.
"It's scary at first, but you get used to it," Vito says of the faster start. "It was stepping out of my comfort zone and then making the new amplitude my comfort zone."
Vito landed comfortably last year at the top of the Grand Prix standings. He enters this weekend's season-opening Grand Prix competition in Copper Mountain, Colo., as the defending overall men's halfpipe champion.
"He's very focused and able athletically to make those technical and tactical improvements in his edging and his landings and his speed," says Mike Jankowski, head halfpipe coach for the U.S. snowboard team.
Vito's results last season, which included two victories in Grand Prix events, have him in position to make the 2010 Winter Olympic team.
"You've got to count him in as a player as the Grand Prix champ, because the Grand Prix is the qualifying series. He's definitely got what it takes," Jankowski says.
Jankowski estimates Vito has added 3 to 6 feet to his amplitude.
"Louie went from about 6 to 10 feet to going more like 15-feet plus consistently," Jankowski says.
A unique Buckeye view
It's not the first surprising rise of his career, as Ohio is not the usual breeding ground for professional snowboarders.
Vito's hometown of Bellefontaine is a short drive from Mad River Mountain, where he and his dad, Lou, discovered they shared a passion for shredding back when Louis Vito III was no taller than his snowboard.
The younger Vito followed his older sister, Lindsay, into gymnastics and credits it for teaching him discipline and developing many of the attributes he needs to be an aerial specialist on snow.
"With snowboarding, you're constantly falling, you're constantly getting thrown around," Vito says. "I think gymnastics helped me with that."
He competed in gymnastics through middle school, then gave it up to follow his snowboarding passion.
Vito showed enough promise that by 13 he enrolled at the Stratton Mountain School, a boarding school in Vermont where the academic schedule accommodates daily ski or snowboard sessions and travel for competitions. Stratton Mountain counts 28 Winter Olympians among its alumni.
Vito turned pro at 16 but stayed at Stratton Mountain through high school. He now lives in Utah.
He went to the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, where U.S. men swept the halfpipe.
"When I went there and saw it live and saw the atmosphere and how it really worked, it really made me stoked on it," he says.
He didn't qualify for the 2006 Olympics but had a breakthrough that year, finishing fifth in the Winter X Games.
Now he's not only going bigger but thinking bigger.
"It's kind of a relief, knowing that if I just keep the pace I'm going, keep progressing, I could potentially be on the (Olympic) team," Vito says.
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