President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama hosted more than 200 U.S. Olympians and Paralympians at the White House on April 3, 2014. Both spoke and congratulated the athletes on their performance and thanked them for representing the U.S. during the Sochi 2014 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

Mentel and Strong win Snowboard Cross
The Netherlands' Bibian Mentel and USA's Evan Strong were victorious at the IPCAS Snowboard Cross Test Event in Sochi, Russia.

The Netherlands' Bibian Mentel and USA’s Evan Strong picked up gold at the IPCAS Snowboard Cross Test Event in Sochi, Russia on Wednesday (6 March).

With just one year and one day to go until the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games, 25 athletes from 11 nations competed in warm, sunny conditions on a technical and challenging course in Rosa Khutor, the Paralympic snow sports venue.

There were events for upper and lower limb impairment groups, although only the latter will be a Paralympic event next year.

Strong had the fastest times on the first two runs on the men’s side, allowing him to take gold.

The Hawaiian native did not go into the competition as confidently as he might have hoped, though, having battled illness over the past few days.

“After practice yesterday, I wasn't feeling super-confident, I was sliding down a lot of the turns,” Strong said. “I didn't really know how today was going to go.

“But as soon as I got out the start gate on my first run, it just felt super fluid, really good and I thought, 'I know this feeling, I know how to do this.’”

It was by no means an easy victory, as Strong finished 0.29 seconds ahead of his teammate Mike Shea (1:28.36), who had the fastest time on the third run and was consistently less than 0.2 seconds behind Strong on the other runs. New Zealand's Carl Murphy took bronze in 1:28.71.

“Mike Shea my teammate has been looking super aggressive and really fast all season, and he was definitely keeping it together better in the training,” Strong said. “Seeing that the first six guys were just half a second apart after the first two runs, I knew my work was cut out for me.” Read More:

Evan Strong grew up on Maui, where the only ice is shaved and served in cones or pina coladas, and winter sports are surfing, skateboarding and swimming.

Today, he’s still a bit surprised that the former Hawaiian kid is now a snowboarding demon, a guy who’s getting impatient for winter storms to start dumping fresh powder all over the Sierra Nevada and Rockies.

“When I go back home (to Maui) and see all my friends, it’s kind of hard for them to wrap their minds around it, because they really don’t know anything about it,” Strong said of his snowboarding career. “A lot of my friends haven’t even seen snow, but they’re all really stoked. … They don’t even know what I’m doing here or what it means, they just know it’s good.”

In Strong’s case, it’s all good.

The former kid skateboarding wiz in Hawaii, now 25, is a leading candidate for the U.S. Paralympic men’s snowboarding team at the 2014 Paralympic Winter Games in Sochi, where the sport will make its Games debut. Until then, he’s enjoying mountain life in the little town of Nevada City, Calif., about an hour’s drive west of Lake Tahoe.

It’s there that he and his wife, Mariah, are building their own home, operate their organic vegetarian restaurant, The Fix for Foodies, with their family, and Evan can feed his passion for snowboarding, skateboarding, mountain biking, rock climbing and any other outdoor activities that happen to catch his attention. Read More