By Bill Oram

| The Salt Lake Tribune

It’s been a good year for Tom Wallisch.

The Park City slopestyle skier has won two stops on the Winter Dew Tour, and won his first X Games gold medal last month in Aspen, Colo.

Photos

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At a glance

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Winter Dew Tour Championships

At Snowbasin

Friday

10 a.m. » Women’s snowboard slopestyle semis

11 a.m. » Women’s freeski superpipe semis

11:30 a.m. » Men’s snowboard slopestyle semis

Noon » Men’s freeski superpipe semi-final

4:30 p.m. » Women’s snowboard superpipe semi-final

5:30 p.m. » Men’s snowboard superpipe semis

» For more of the schedule, see Scoreboard. > D4

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Wallisch, 24, leads a local contingent of winter sports stars in the Toyota Championships at Snowbasin, the final stop of the Winter Dew Tour, which begins Friday. For Wallisch, this year has marked a resurgence after a shoulder injury kept him out of competition for much of last season.

"It’s definitely hard," Wallisch said, "but I was hoping to and just knew as long as I got more time on snow I could do it."

Wallisch has the Dew Cup title all but locked up after winning stops in Breckenridge, Colo., and Killington, Vt.

The Winter Dew Tour is made up of sports including freeski events in superpipe and slopestyle, as well as snowboard superpipe. It is one of two elite winter sports events in the Salt Lake area this weekend.

The other is the Sprint U.S. Snowboarding & Freeskiing Grand Prix at Canyons Resort, which will draw athletes such as former X Games gold medalist Nate Holland and defending Olympic snowboardcross gold medalist Maelle Ricker.

At the Dew Tour, Wallisch, a Pennsylvania native, has the chance to further entrench himself as the world’s elite skier in a discipline that doesn’t traditionally allow for long winning streaks. In Aspen, Wallisch became the eighth competitor in eight years to win the X Games gold medal in slopestyle.

"What Tom’s doing right now is pretty unheard of," said Park City skier Alex Schlopy, who won the event at Snowbasin last year. "He’s on top of his game. He’s always been so fluid and had so much style. This is his season right now, for sure."

Freeski will make its Olympic debut in 2014 in Sochi, Russia. Winning the event at X Games was the peak up to this point in his career, he said.

"Until Sochi in 2014," he said, "X Games is as big as it gets."

The Toyota Championships also draw athletes such as defending Dew Cup superpipe champion Louis Vito. The Sandy resident is in second place in the tour standings behind Swiss snowboarder Iouri Podladchikov.

The Dew Tour will also mark the first professional women’s freeski event in Utah since the death of Canadian skier Sarah Burke last month.

Tribune reporter Michael C. Lewis contributed to this report.