Things didn't go quite the way Palmer had planned, however, as he finished 14th in Biker X on Thursday and sixth in Skier X on Friday morning.

But then came the event he has made all his own over the past few years -- Boarder X.

	Shaun Palmer celebrates his third consecutive Boarder X gold medal.

The two-time defending champion, perhaps feeling a little left out after his disappointing finishes in the earlier events, dominated the big hill in the day's final event. He was The Man throughout preliminaries and the heat races, playing to the crowd and even talking a little trash with snowboarding legend Terje Haakonsen.

And when it came to the final event -- the six riders who had survived the day's heats in one mad dash down the mountain with a gold medal on the line -- he was simply The Palm.

"I was pretty bummed out that I didn't win skier-cross," Palmer said afterward, "so I had to come out here for some redemption."

After beating Haakonsen twice -- once in the first round and once in the semifinals -- Palmer cruised through the bottom part of the course to take his third consecutive gold medal. Drew Neilson charged hard off the last jump to make it a bang-bang finish, but he couldn't catch Palmer. Scott Gaffney, who had won his first-round and semifinal heats, finished third.

	Palmer comes off the last hill with the lead in the final.

Haakonsen, who was second to Palmer in the first round, finished fourth in the semifinals and dropped to fifth in the consolation race, won by 26-year-old Ben Wainright of Canada.

For the 30-year-old Palmer, the win capped a perfect day on the snowboard hill. He was the fastest qualifer in the morning preliminaries, and he won three consecutive races to take the gold.

The women's competition featured an equally perfect champion, as 20-year-old Canadian Maelle Ricker matched Palmer's feat -- fastest qualifier, heat winner, semifinal winner and gold medalist.

Ricker, who placed fifth in the halfpipe at the Nagano Olympics, led the entire race and narrowly beat Leslee Olson when the two came flying off the final jump in almost a dead heat.

"I had a pretty good lead, but then I opted to go up the step-up, and she opted to go around," Ricker said. "I think she picked up some speed and made up some ground there."

Olson, who was second to Ricker in qualifying, too, took silver ahead of Candice Drouin of Canada.

"It was close," Olson said of her photo finish with Maelle, "maybe about the tip of the board."