Shaun Palmer trains only once every couple of weeks. And forget about heart-rate monitors, professional coaches, and calculated diets. His diet comes not from a sports nutritionist but a 12-ounce can: "I like drinking a lot of beer," he said. "I gotta stop using Budweiser as a training tool--it's killing me."

Shaun Palmer trading snow for dirt in the downhill at Nevegal, Italy. (Photo: Matt Lanning/Fat Tire Fotos

A pro snowboarder since the age of 15, Palmer joined the pro mountain bike circuit earlier this season and is demonstrating that without even a flake of snow on the mountain, he can still rip as hard as he does in the pipe and the powder. In the National Off Road Bicycle Association National Championship Series, the 26-year-old is currently ranked second overall in dual slalom and eighth in downhill.

With only a handful of amateur races under his belt and less than one year of mountain biking experience overall, Palmer turned pro at the World Cup event in Panticosa, Spain, where he flatted in the downhill and didn't qualify for the final. At the next stop on the tour, in Nevegal, Italy, he finished eighth in the downhill.

Three races later, at the NORBA National in Traverse City, Michigan, he won the dual slalom event, triumphing in head-to-head battles with noted speed freaks Mike King (Team GT) and Pistol Pete Loncarevich (ParkPre). His biggest performance came the following week at the Snow Summit, California NORBA race, where he smoked the rest of the downhill field by over 3 seconds and almost won the dual slalom as well, finishing second.

Palmer first tried mountain biking last summer when he and some friends hauled bikes up on a chairlift at Snow Summit. The former Nevada BMX champion and hardcore motocross racer immediately dug the sensation of bombing downhill on a bicycle, and was soon winning races in the 'sport' and 'expert' categories, while beating the winning times posted in the pro classes.

"You gotta give the guy credit," said Loncarevich, "He's so talented, he'd probably be good at anything, even golf." And what Palmer lacks in technical skills, he makes up for with brute force. "He doesn't have the pedaling skills or cadence like the guys with road racing backgrounds," observed Jeff Steber, president of Intense Cycles, one of Palmer's sponsors. "He's just total aggression, and he takes some insane lines."

He also doesn't have the sponsorship dollars of his fellow racers. Intense Cycles supplies Palmer's bike, and Fox, Rock Shox, Troy Lee Designs, and Vans outfit him with the rest of his gear, but provide zero financial support. That means he pays for everything--airfare, hotels, entry fees, meals--to cover himself and his personal mechanic on the road. "I'm rich," says The Palm. "I pay it all out of my own pocket, but I've made most of it back in prize money." He received $3000 from his first- and second-place finishes at Snow Summit, plus $1800 for the Michigan win.

Given Palmer Snowboards' brand-new manufacturing facility in Austria, Shaun could probably afford to keep paying for his new career. With a goal of becoming world champion in both downhill and dual slalom, and the kamikaze racing skills to back it up, the huge bike manufacturers may start knocking on his door with lucrative contract offers any day. Still, Palmer's heart is in the halfpipe.

With snowboarding's Olympic debut in the 1998 winter games in Nagano, Japan, Palmer's concentrating his efforts on qualifying for the U.S. team this winter. But he's still got time to kick ass on the mountain for the rest of the summer.