Looking for U.S. snowboarding sensation Tricia Byrnes? Odds are she's out training, soaring skyward at 25 mph and mastering moves most snowboarders can only hope to pull off on PlayStation 2. "She'll make run after run after run," says U.S. Olympic coach Heath Van Aken. "She'll stay out there an hour after everyone else. The other girls call her 'Hardcore.'"

In recent years Byrnes could just as well have answered to "Hard Luck." A favorite to earn a medal in Salt Lake City in the snowboarding halfpipe—a U-shaped channel familiar to skateboarders—Byrnes, 27, was heartbroken when she narrowly missed making the Olympic team in 1998. The next year she suffered a devastating setback when her brother Doug, who introduced her to snowboarding, died at 27 of an asthma attack after an evening out with Byrnes. "He was a mentor in every way," says their mother, Ann Byrnes. "Since he died, Tricia says she dedicates every race to him."

This year Byrnes finally made the Games, but even that victory took an emotional toll. To get on the team, she had to edge out her good friend Gretchen Bleiler. "I was disappointed because we both deserved to go," says Byrnes, who broke down in tears after she won. "You can't feel that good when you take something away from someone else."

In general Byrnes is anything but downbeat, resembling in her cheerfulness a gen-X Pippi Longstocking. Her charm, however, can't hide a killer competitive streak: She won 14 World Cup titles over six years. "Consistency gets her on the podium every time," says Jennifer Sherowski, an editor of Trans World SNOW-boarding. "She's been doing this so long she makes it looks effortless."

Byrnes was all of 6 years old when she first announced, "I think I can go to the Olympics." The youngest of five children born to Dick Byrnes, 68, owner of a video production firm, and Ann, 68, a nature educator, she played lots of golf and tennis growing up in leafy Greenwich, Conn. But when her folks bought a winter home near Stratton Mountain, Vt., the then-8-year-old took up skiing. As a teen, she followed brother Doug into snowboarding because, says Ann, "she decided she'd have more fun with him and his friends."

With Doug's help she was soon "as good as all the guys," Byrnes recalls. As a senior at Greenwich High she won the women's halfpipe at the 1992 U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships. By taking winters off to compete and studying during the summer, she managed to graduate from St. Michael's College in Colchester, Vt., with majors in psychology and English literature.

Missing the 1998 Olympics by just one spot "made me want to be a part of it that much more," she says. But that resolve was tested in the late summer of 1999. After a night out in Manhattan, Doug stayed with a friend while Byrnes returned to Connecticut. The next day, "I got a call from police," she says. "My brother had asthma, but he didn't take all that good care of himself. He died in bed sometime in the night."

Doug's death "was ground-shaking," says Byrnes, who calls her brother "someone who did everything a little bigger and better and faster." More determined than ever, Byrnes beat out her pal Gretchen Bleiler at the Olympic trials in Colorado on Jan. 13, in a tiebreaker after five nerve-racking qualifying contests. "It was a really tough battle," says Bleiler, 20. "I'm just glad [I lost] to her and not someone else."

When she's not training, the single Byrnes plays guitar and drums to relax. Free time, though, is hard to come by because she's also an editor at EasternEdge, a snowboarding magazine her brother purchased with friends in 1999.

Helping out with the project is a way to honor the man who remains her inspiration. "After Doug died, I felt he was around me all the time," she says. "There are still moments when I feel that." And just before hitting the halfpipe in Utah? "I'm expecting to see a big thunderbolt," she says, "coming out of nowhere."

Alex Tresniowski
Johnny Dodd in Las Vegas and Marianne V. Stochmal in Connecticut

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