Paralympic champion Evan Strong and Mike Schultz led the field to take wins in their respective classifications.

Strong, who won the first ever Para-snowboard gold medal at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, led a US one, two, three in men's SB-LL2 to create an exact replica of the podium at Sochi 2014.

His time of 58.88 seconds was enough to edge Mike Shea in second and Keith Gabel in third.

After finishing the opening race in third, Gabel was keen to express his delight at the progress of the sport, which has this season separated the lower-limb impairment classifications, changed the format of snowboard-cross to feature head-to-head and added the banked slalom discipline.

"Four years ago, this was infantile," said Gabel.

"Now we're moving up in the ranks.

"We've gotten more classifications than we ever thought we were going to have, we've got more disciplines than we ever planned on having.

"So to see that growth and be a part of it, I'm just really proud and humbled to be a part of the whole thing.

"To see how many athletes we have now, it's amazing, it's history in the making in a lot of ways."

US snowboarders dominated the IPC Alpine Skiing Para-Snowboard World Cup after picking up seven podium places in Colorado ©Joe Kusumoto



Schultz doubled the US gold medal count as he recorded 1:09.89 in the men's SB-LL1 to add a second win of the season, following victory at very first banked slalom at the World Cup in Landgraaf in November.

He led Dutch 16-year-old Chris Vos and Italy's Giuseppe Comunale, who finished in 1:11.45 and 1:30.61 respectively.

Dutch Paralympic champion Bibian Mentel-Spee continued her domination of the sport as she powered to victory in the women's SB-LL2 in a time of 1:09.26.

Her time gave her a comfortable 14 seconds lead over second-placed American Heidi Jo Duce and fellow Dutch rider Lisa Bunschoten in third, and increased her confidence ahead of the head-to-head formats debut tomorrow.

"The course is really, really nice, I really liked it; it was a diverse course and capable for everyone and that made it really, really nice," she said.

"I'm really, really looking forward to tomorrow as well, where we're going to race for the first time ever in head-to-head.

"I always like racing head-to-head because as soon as I get out of the gate, I just want to be up front, so that's going to be my strategy - to pull up out front as a mad woman and try to get up front as soon as possible and hopefully stay on my feet."

France's Sochi silver medallist Cecile Hernandez thwarted the US' attempt at a third gold medal as she overcame both Brenna Huckaby and team mate Nicole Roundy in women's SB-LL1 with a time of 1:24.07.

Austrian Patrick Mayrhofer continued his run of World Cup successes after topping the podium in the men's upper-limb race, in what proved the only race not to feature a US medallist.

A time of 1:03.55 was enough for the Austrian to beat Italy's Manuel Pozzerle and Great Britain's Ben Moore.

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