Eric Andersson just won his second heat at the Swiss Army Skiercross in Crested Butte, CO., and now hes skiing over to see his two kids. He removes his helmet to free a tousled mop of hair, high-fives his three year-old son Jacob, and checks in on the infant, Ellen, sleeping under a baby canopy. He begins to get settled as Magdalena Jonsson, his girlfriend and mother of the two kids, skis off towards the lift. Its her turn to race, his turn to watch the kids.

Eric and Magdalena are part of a posse of Swedish ski racers that hits the U.S. every winter like card sharks, wandering mountain towns of North America looking for a game. Originally, that game was ski racing on the pro slalom and GS circuits, but lately, with the US race tours floundering, the Swedes have turned their attention to the flourishing new sport of skiercross.

Which is why Eric and Magda decided to pile the kids into a limping, hand-painted, cop-magnet of a 70s van with former teammates from the Swedish national team Peter Lind and Anders Wiggerud, and drive from Tahoe--the undisputed capital of the skiercross nation--to Crested Butte, which helped spread the skiercross gospel with the Cycocross back in 1997.

Despite a stomach virus thats sidelined Lind, the 64 brick house who dominated the Winter X Games Ultracross, the Crested Butte trip is proving to be worth the trouble. Andersson and Wiggerud watch from the bottom as Magda crushes a field that includes local legend Kim Reichhelm and X Gamers Asia Jenkins and Dawn McShinsky. (Magda herself earned an invite to Winter X, but never got an inspection run and failed to make it out of qualifying. We didnt have a baby sitter [for the practice sessions], so we flipped a coin, and Eric won, she says).

After claiming her title, Magda trades places with Eric, and Andersson chases Wiggerud to a one-two finish in the mens final. For the second time in the two-year history of this event, Swedish skiers have swept the top two spots. Last year it was the younger Andersson brother, Tomas, coming in ahead of Kaj Zachrisson.

An even bigger driving force than Swedish pride, however, is American green. Wiggerud and Jonsson walk with $1,200 each, and Andersson takes another $600. With no sponsors to pay their way from event to event, the Swedes roll the dice every time they hit the road, and a long trip like this one could easily be a bust. Its all about the prize money, says Wiggerud, who left the Swedish National Team in 1996.

After clearing their $3,000 pot from the proverbial table, the Swedes climb back in the van and return to Tahoe for the next event, the Skiercross World Championships. The van, with its mural-like paint job featuring skiers, flowers, and other bohemian symbols, has become an icon for the Swedish crusade. On any given day, it acts as home-away-from-home to a number of Swedish ski stars. In addition to these four, Tomas Andersson is a frequent passenger, and Kaj Zachrisson and Sverre Liliequist have also been known to hitch the occasional lift.

Life on the American road in a 25 year-old van isnt always easy going. The Scooby Doos Mystery Van paint job draws frequent scrutiny from state troopers. We always leave it in L.A. at a friends house, and one summer they decided to have a paint party on the van. says Lind. It looks like a hippie van now. We get pulled over pretty often. After half a decade of shuttling skiers through the mountains, the van has also started to stagger a bit. We broke down outside Las Vegas, Lind said shortly after arriving in Crested Butte. They wanted $1,500 to tow it and fix it. But we got it going.

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While the van, like the pro slalom tour, may be on its way to the scrap heap, the Swedes have found their niche in skiings new school. A combination of size, flawless technique, and a fierce competitive nature has made the transition from chasing gates, to chasing other skiers, seamless.

Tomas Andersson found himself on the podium after all five skiercrosses he competed in during the 1999 season, winning three. Jonsson won the first two she competed in, and showed up at the Winter X Games ready to race only a month after giving birth. After being disqualified in the finals of his first skiercross, Eric Andersson finished fifth at the 1999 World Championships, and followed that up with a second at the Homewood Lord of the Boards in February. The emerging star of the posse is Lind, who passed people to win in three consecutive heats at the Winter X Games Ultracross, earning his snowboarder teammate Travis McLain and himself the gold medal.

Only days after driving the van out of Colorados Elk Mountains, Lind will kick his stomach flu and cruise to victory at the 2000 Skiercross World Championships, beating the defending champion, American World Cup sensation Daron Rhalves. Wiggerud will finish third, just behind Rhalves, and Eric will take fifth for the second straight year. It will stand as a message to the skiercross world that the Swedes are here, and theyre not backing down from anyone.

Thats a message people in Crested Butte already know all to well.