Rick Leeks

Pritchard the Dane-Slayer, off Maui

5. Kevin Pritchard
WINDSURFER
Age: 24 Specs: 6-foot-2, 200 pounds
Home: Maui, Hawaii

THE CASE: So how could we snub Denmark's seemingly indomitable Björn Dunkerbeck, who's collected 12 world titles? Well, Kevin Pritchard is going to take him down this year. (That, and the Dane is dull.) They're currently battling for first in the World Cup, but Pritchard, a two-time U.S. national champion, skunked Dunkerbeck in the Canary Islands in July and has since won every event in the series (Pritchard's older brother Matt was ranked third last year, but he's out with a broken ankle). The overall title combines race and wave competitions, the latter of which is Pritchard's speciality—he launches off 20-footers like a snowboarder in the half-pipe. Says Pritchard, "I can't imagine ever wanting to do anything else."

SECOND OPINION: "Gotta hand it to him," says Matt Pritchard. "He's spent a lifetime in my shadow, and now he's jumped out and created his own. It's going to be a long one, too."

MOST HARROWING MOMENT: Falling mug-first from the top of a 25-foot wave onto his mast in 1994, breaking his nose and several bones in his face.

WHAT'S NEXT: The last World Cup stop of the season, off Hookipa, Maui. We're betting that by the time you read this, Dunkerbeck will be history. —Karen Karbo

Rich Cruse

Bowden at the 1997 Hawaii Ironman

6. Lori Bowden
TRIATHLETE
Age: 33 Specs: 5-foot-6, 115 pounds
Home: Victoria, British Columbia

THE CASE: When the Canadian swapped her bike for her running shoes to start the final leg of her Hawaii Ironman professional debut in 1996, she was in 30th place. "When I finished eighth," she says, "I knew I'd eventually have a shot at winning it." Indeed. Owing to her running prowess, these days Bowden routinely gobbles up seemingly unbeatable competitors' leads. Take her first Hawaii Ironman win, in 1999: Entering the run three minutes down, Bowden recorded the event's first sub-three-hour marathon by a woman, winning by seven minutes. In 2000 she sealed her arrival with two major triathlon victories, in Australia and Canada. Now just imagine how good she'll be when she improves her shabby swimming ability. (In her Hawaii win she finished the swim in an abysmal 89th place.)

SECOND OPINION: Karen Smyers, who finished second in Hawaii in 1999, says: "The biggest thing she's got going for her is that she really has no idea how good she is."

MOST HARROWING MOMENT: Nearly drowning in the pounding surf during the swim leg at a sprint triathlon in Chile last January.

WHAT'S NEXT: Erasing the 4 minutes and 45 seconds standing between her Ironman best and Paula Newby-Fraser's world-record time (8:50:23), set in 1994. —Nick Heil

7. Tomaz Humar
ALPINIST
Age: 31 Specs: 5-foot-10, 157 pounds
Home: Kamnik, Slovenia

THE CASE: To get a sense of the audacity of Tomaz Humar's November 1999 solo ascent of the 4,000-foot wall of ice and rotten rock on the south face of Nepal's Dhaulagiri, consider this: Upon returning home, he found that climbing's greatest living legend, Reinhold Messner, had flown in and was waiting to congratulate him. An epic in 1997 on the west face of Nuptse, Everest's 25,921-foot neighbor, and a 1996 first ascent of the northwest face of Nepal's Ama Dablam also rank as two of the boldest climbs of the 1990s. A fiercely self-reliant mountaineer who typically goes solo, Humar prides himself on his mental strength: "When I start a climb, I become some kind of animal," he says. "I turn off everything—hunger, pain, freezing—in order to survive."

SECOND OPINION: "Humar is willing to take on dangerous climbs with the understanding that if he moves fast enough, he'll get through without getting killed," says Christian Beckwith, editor of the American Alpine Journal.

MOST HARROWING MOMENT: "Saying good-bye to my children before each expedition."

WHAT'S NEXT: "I'm cooking it in my head right now," he says. "When it is the right time, the mountain will tell me so." —Bruce Barcott