By Steve Sherlock,Sports Editor
The Bethel skier overcomes injury again to take third at X Games.

BETHEL – After cheating death on the slopes less than a year ago, Simon Dumont wasn’t about to let a mere back spasm prevent him from defending his gold medal in the Winter-X games.

Dumont hurt his back on Tuesday during the preliminaries of the superpipe competition in Aspen, Colo. With pain shooting through his body whenever he landed a jump, the 19-year-old Bethel native overcame the pain and twisted and flipped his way to the bronze medal.

“I’m super-excited with third place,” Dumont said Thursday night. “I felt I was only skiing at 40 percent. It gives people a pretty good idea that I can ski halfpipe.”

One of the premier halfpipe skiers in the world, Dumont was back in Maine this week with plans to get his back checked out by a doctor and a physical therapist.

At age 17, he burst onto the world stage by winning the superpipe at the 2004 Winter-X Games. He successfully defended that title last year.

Confident he could three-peat at this year’s event, the Telstar High School graduate said he felt great before the competition. But on his first run in the preliminaries, he landed wrong on one of his jumps.

“My back just started to spasm,” Dumont said. “I didn’t fall or anything.”

Dumont persevered and qualified for the finals. With his back getting worse, he went for broke on the second of his three runs in the final. Grimacing on every landing, Dumont completed a series of maneuvers, including a 540 (1 rotations) while grabbing the front of his skis, and jumps of 900 (2 rotations) and 1,080 (3 rotations).

He fell to the ground after completing the run, saying he couldn’t even stand because of the pain, but Dumont was temporarily in first place.

“I always go to win, or at least do well,” Dumont said. “I figured if I put one right down, I could win. But the injury came at the wrong time.”

His brush with death came while training on a specially-made jump last March in Park City, Utah. Using a snowmobile toe-in to gather speed to clear an 85-foot gap, Dumont badly miscalculated the velocity of the sled and the early-morning conditions.

Dumont hit the jump at an estimated speed of 60-miles-per-hour. With way too much velocity, Dumont kept soaring and badly overshot the 100-foot landing area. He landed on a hard flat section, breaking his pelvis in three places and rupturing his spleen.

According to published reports, witnesses estimated that he traveled more than 200 feet and dropped to the ground from at least 100 feet up.

“I should be dead,” Dumont said.

Not needing surgery, Dumont was out of the hospital within five days and back on his skis in less than eight weeks. The experience shook him and has made Dumont a little more cautious.

“I still have the same charging mentality,” he said. “I just need to be a little smarter going about it.”

Recognizing his appeal to fans, sponsors have flocked to sign up the teenager. Oakley, Red Bull, Gyro and Dakine are on board. Salomon has even named one of its skis for him. With the addition of Target, it only seems appropriate that Dumont wear the company’s bull’s-eye logo.

Spending most of his time now in California, Dumont will soon head for Japan and China to film another ski movie. Acknowledging his youth, he still plans to keep competing for a few more years, but the movies are a nice change of pace.

In the meantime, Dumont is helping with the fight to include his event in the Winter Olympics.

“They don’t want all the X-Games sports in the Olympics,” Dumont said. “Hopefully by 2010, they’ll have the halfpipe at the Olympics.”