The Canadian Snowboard Federation (CSF) has announced that Christelle Doyon of Quebec and Michael Lambert of Toronto are the winners of the 2008 Neil Daffern Award for Excellence. This annual award of $7,500 CAN provides financial assistance to two CSF high-performance program athletes who have demonstrated an exemplary level of performance or commitment to the sport of snowboarding.

The memorial award honours one of the pioneers in the sport of snowboarding, Canadian Neil Daffern. Daffern was a competitor, a snowboarding advocate, and snowboard designer. He led the way in the late 80s when he and a few boarding friends were the first Canadians to compete in the World Cup competitions in Europe. Daffern died in a helicopter accident while taking part in a heliboarding competition in 1990.

Christelle Doyon is in her second year on the national snowboard team in both alpine and snowboardcross. Doyon has claimed several top-10 finishes on the 2007 World Cup circuit and won the 2006 Junior World Snowboardcross Championship that took place in South Korea. Doyon has put aside her goal of becoming a doctor – she was admitted to both the Université de Sherbrooke and McGill – to devote her time to snowboarding.

Michael Lambert as also been on the Canadian national snowboard team in alpine for two years with a silver Junior World Championship medal from 2006 as well as a gold in the Austrian National Championships that year.

The Neil Daffern Award Committee is comprised of the CSF high-performance director, Tony and Gillean Daffern and a CODA (Calgary Olympic Development Association) representative. The presentation of the award will take place at the 2008 Canadian Championships on April 4 and 5 at Cypress Mountain in British Columbia.