Reigning snowboard cross Olympic gold medallist Seth Wescott is defending his title with renewed vigour after a descent in standings following the 2006 Games awakened his drive to reclaim the top spot.

The 33-year-old Maine-native will next month begin his final push towards a second Olympic gold when he hits snow for the first time in Argentina to compete in the season's first World Cup event.

"I've typically been someone who needs some sort of emotional inspiration to pull out my best athletic performances," Wescott said in a recent interview with CTVOlympics.ca

"So, the Olympics is kind of a conduit for that. It allows you to have all this other stuff attached to it that gives you a sense of motivation and energy."

Wescott's Olympic victory augmented both his profile and that of snowboard cross attracting increased corporate sponsorship and requisite media appearances. Wescott was in Toronto on Saturday to judge Nestea's Chill on the Hill event where hundreds of snowboarders, many of them half his age, rushed the hill to turn tricks in a snowy terrain park set up on grass.

Wescott greeted fans and signed autographs - reveling in the responsibilities that can go along with being an elite athlete. With the Olympics finally within reach, Wescott says he is as driven as ever to mortar his legacy in the sport he has loved since childhood.

"Whatever legacy I have in snowboarding, I need to cement that. I've done it in certain ways, but there's a lot more that I want to do."

Wescott was well-known in snowboarding before its debut at the 2006 Turin Winter Games and - like many of the Canadians he will compete against beginning in Argentina - he has been riding since snowboarders were barred from ski resorts.

Wescott, alongside Canadian Drew Neilson, was a top competitor on the original World Tour circuit before it was folded into the FIS circuit. In 2005, he secured the World Championship title despite serious injury one week before the race.

"That was a moment of realizing a dream for me because when I started snowboarding I never thought we would have gained Olympic acceptance in the timeframe that we did," he said.

"To have persevered through that [injury] was undoubtedly one of the biggest things of my career."

In Turin, Wescott beat out Slovakian rider Radoslav Zidek by half a board length. France's Paul-Henri DeLeRue claimed the bronze medal. By the beginning of 2008-09 World Cup season, however, Wescott's motivation had waned. He needed a big push to return to the top.

"A lot of [the turn around] was my coaches just kicking me in the ass. We went down to Argentina and we had a long discussion the day we got there with our assistant coach, Jeff Archibald. He said, ‘It's really disappointing to watch you over these last few years,'"Wescott said.

"It was fun to flip that mental switch and to decide that I was going to do it."

Wescott finished the season having moved from 28th to 2nd place behind Austria's Markus Schairer, without ever finishing a time trial out of the top 10.

"[Archibald] drove home the point that I needed to be doing it for myself. I think I've slowly been coming around to that."

With an intense dryland training regimen - much of which is captured on his blog - about to conclude, Wescott says he wants in February to concentrate on enjoying individual moments within the Games.

"When you can strip yourself down to being 100% in the moment - that's an experience I've gotten to have a lot of times in life and in competition - in the moments I've been able to do that - that's when I've had the most success.

"It happened for me [at the 2006 Olympics,] it happened for me more so in the World Championships in '05 and there are other times when it's happened.

"The process of getting yourself into something where you're wholly focused just in the moment - on what you're doing - that's a really hard thing to find in life."