Alex is an experienced back country
skier and rider whose main haunt is the Dolomites. -ed
January
'97: Snowboarding is a young sport. Only in the last ten seasons has it become
known to the general public. But by looking at the origins of our beloved sport
we can see that it has come a very long way.
Snowboarding
is based on the surfing spirit and an artist's passion for the custom product.
So it's hard to write a good history of the development of this sport and its
tools. If you have more information or find inaccuracies in this text, contact
me at alecss@mbox.vol.it.
I
suppose there was someone somewhere who tried putting a piece of wood under his
feet to slide on snow before the people I cover here. But it's impossible to
define a real start based on individual experiments and prototypes, so I prefer
to fix the birth of snowboarding with the first commercial product. This was
the Snurfer, made by Shervin Popper in the second half of the
60's.
He
was a surfer who wanted to provide a tool to allow surfers to continue the
sport during the winter on snow, so he started production of this funny board.
It was wide, without any kind of binding and true to the surf approach. To
provide sufficient stability it had a string at the tip. Shervin Popper was
good at promoting his product, and he was able to sell about 100,000 Snurfers.
The price was US $15.
A
second snowboard pioneer was Dimitrije Milovich, a surfer on the east coast. He
started limited production of custom boards with iron edges at the beginning of
70's. In 1972, Bob Webber received a patent for his Skiboard,
another board directly from the surf philosophy, without edges.
In
1975 Dimitrije Milovich developed the Winterstick, the historic
brand so famous for the first videos in powder (see below). He started
production of a swallowtail board for deep powder, often using iron edges as on
his earlier boards. During the following two years Dimitrije Milovich also
reached an important agreement with Petit Morey and Kendall, the two main
insurance companies of American ski resorts, to cover liability for
snowboarding.
In
1977, the main snowboard factory of today started production: Jack Burton made
and sold his prototypes, with handmade bindings, but with some elements more
similar to the modern design. Tom Sims also started production of some boards
based on the Snurfer. In 1979 Tom Sims and Chuck Barfoot created the first
board made of fiberglass.
At
the end of 70's and the beginning of 80's, the snowboard began to appear in
some sports magazines (especially skateboard magazines). On American and
Canadian TV, a beer commercial showed Paul Graves riding a snowboard. So the
snowboard was introduced to a larger public -- although it was still seen as a
strange sport.
The
three main factories -- Burton, Sims and Winterstick -- started introducing
P-tex bases on their boards in 1980-81. The same year, the Struck brothers
began production of a snowboard with two little skis under the base, making the
board easier to use on packed snow and turns easier to carve. This one was
named Swingbo and had good success during the 80's.
In
fact, one of the big problems with the early snowboards was driving them on
trails/pistes on packed snow, because they were originally designed for use in
soft or powder snow. For this reason Jeff Grell built the first binding with a
back spoiler to hold the legs in the backside turns on hard snow. In my opinion
this was one of the major innovations that allowed snowboards to take off with
the general public.
In
1983 the Hooger Booger started production: it was the first board
produced in a European factory. Hooger Booger introduced the asymetrical
concept in snowboard shapes.
Snowboarding
took off in 1984 with the release of Apocalypse Now, the first real
snowboard video. The video featured the magic Regis Roland surfing on his
Winterstick followed by a troupe of bad skiers and monoskiers on Rossignol skis and Salomon boots. The video was a
great success and two sequels followed. Also, James Bond 007 wanted a snowboard
scene in his movie and Tom Sims played Bond in some of the most spectacular
scenes.
If
1984 was the year of snowboard in the movies, then 1985 was the year of the
snowboard in races: there was the first Mt. Baker slalom (for a long
time the main event of the competition season), the first North American
Snowboard Championship in Calgary
and the first European Championship in Schnalstal.
1985
also saw an important change of direction in the design of boards, with greater
use of iron edges for packed snow and different shapes for different
uses: freeride and freestyle. And the first issue of the International
Snowboarding Magazine was published in March. Named Absolutely Radical,
it was the first "all snowboard" magazine.
Year
after year, some of the greatest names in the short history of snowboarding
were coming up: Craig Kelly, Jose Fernandez, Jean Nerva, Terry Kidwell, Bert
Lamar, Peter Bauer. Snowboarding was on its way to becoming a professional
sport. New factories were being built and the number of the boards on the
market was increasing every season.
So
here we are. It's the end of the pioneering era and the start of the modern
snowboard age.