Snowboard
Snowboard is a specially designed board used for the winter sport, snowboarding, where the rider places both feet on a single board, typically secured with bindings. Unlike skis, which are used in pairs, a snowboard is a single, wider piece of equipment that allows the user to glide smoothly over snow-covered surfaces. The width and shape of the board provide stability and control, enabling riders to perform various maneuvers, turns, and tricks on different types of terrain, including groomed slopes, powder, and terrain parks. Snowboards widths are between 6 and 12 inches or 15 to 30 centimeters. Snowboards are differentiated from monoskis by the stance of the user. In monoskiing, the user stands with feet inline with direction of travel , whereas in snowboarding, users stand with feet transverse to the longitude of the board. Users of such equipment may be referred to as snowboarders. Commercial snowboards generally require extra equipment, such as bindings and special boots which help secure both feet of a snowboarder, who generally ride in an upright position. These types of boards are commonly used by people at ski hills, mountains, backcountry, or resorts for leisure, entertainment, and competitive purposes in the activity called snowboarding.
History
Riding a sliding plank of wood while standing was a skill demonstrated on the Turkish lazboard or toboggan in winters before 1900.In 1917, 13 year old Vern Wicklund crafted a homemade board used for sliding on snow in Cloquet, Minnesota. This modified sled was dubbed a “bunker,” and patented twenty two years later in 1939.
Sherm Poppen from Muskegon, Michigan came up with what most consider the direct predecessor of the snowboard in 1965 called the Snurfer. Commercially available Snurfers in the late 1960s and early 1970s had no bindings. The rider held onto a looped nylon lanyard attached to the front of the Snurfer, and stood upon several rows of square U-shaped staples that were partially driven into the board but protruded about 1 cm above the board's surface to provide traction even when packed with snow. Later Snurfer models replaced the staples with ridged rubber grips running longitudinally along the length of the board or, subsequently, as rectangular footpads. Dimitrije Milovich led the Winterstick company from 1972–1982 and 1985–1987, and obtained a 1974 patent. It is widely accepted that Jake Burton Carpenter and/or Tom Sims invented modern snowboarding by introducing bindings and steel edges to snowboards in the late 1970s. Sims was an avid skateboarder in 1963 when he built a crude “ski board” in his seventh-grade wood shop class in Haddonfield, N.J., so he could continue to ride during the winter. Barfoot Snoboards was founded by Chuck Barfoot in 1981.
Snowboarding began to spread internationally. In 1981, a couple of Winterstick team riders went to France at the invitation of Alain Gaimard, marketing director at Les Arcs. After seeing an early film of this event, French skiers/surfers Augustin Coppey, Olivier Lehaneur, Olivier Roland and Antoine Yarmola made their first successful attempts during the winter of 1983 in France, using primitive, home-made clones of the Winterstick. Starting with pure powder, skateboard-shaped wooden-boards equipped with aluminium fins, foot-straps and leashes, their technology evolved within a few years to pressed wood/fiber composite boards fitted with polyethylene soles, steel edges and modified ski boot shells. These were more suitable for the mixed conditions encountered while snowboarding mainly off-piste, but having to get back to ski lifts on packed snow. In 1985, James Bond popularized snowboarding in the movie A View to a Kill. In the scene, he escapes Soviet agents who are on skis with a makeshift snowboard made from the debris of a snowmobile that exploded. The actual snowboard used for the stunt was a Sims snowboard ridden by founder Tom Sims. By 1986, although still very much a minority sport, commercial snowboards had started appearing in French ski resorts.
Contemporaneously, the Snurfer was being turned into a snowboard on the other side of the iron curtain. In 1980, Aleksey Ostatnigrosh and Alexei Melnikov - two members of the only Snurfer club in the Soviet Union started changing the Snurfer design to allow jumping and to improve control on hard packed snow. Apparently unaware of developments in the Snurfer/snowboard world, they attached a bungee cord to the Snurfer tail which the rider could grab before jumping. Later, in 1982, they attached a foot binding to the Snurfer. The binding was only for the back foot, and had a release capability. In 1985, after several iterations of the Snurfer binding system, Aleksey Ostatnigrosh made the first Russian snowboard. The board was cut out of a single vinyl plastic sheet and had no metal edges. The bindings were attached by a central bolt and could rotate while on the move or be fixed at any angle. In 1988, OstatniGROsh and MELnikov started the first Russian snowboard manufacturing company, GROMEL
The first fibreglass snowboard with binding was made by Santa Cruz inventor Gary Tracy of GARSKI with the assistance of Bill Bourke in their factory in Santa Cruz in 1982. One of these original boards is still on display at Santa Cruz Skateboards in Capitola, CA. By the mid-80s, snowboarding had considerable commercial success with multiple competing companies. Burton had established a European Division by the mid-1980s. In Canada in 1983, a teenager named David Kemper began building his first snowboards in his garage in Ontario, Canada. By 1987, was launched and became one of the top snowboard brands among Burton, Sims, and Barfoot.
The International Ski Federation recognized snowboarding as a discipline in 1994. Snowboarding made its Olympic debut at the 1998 Nagano Winter Games. Men's and Women's halfpipe and giant slalom competitions were an instant success due to their overwhelming popularity with spectators. However, FIS was responsible for the scoring system and course design which were riddled with issues. FIS did not consult snowboarding pioneers and experts, and instead deciding to leave the contest rules and governing up to inexperienced FIS professionals. The giant slalom course was not properly maintained and the snowboarding events were scheduled right after the skiing events, which posed dangers to contestants due to ice and chop. At the 2002 winter games held in Salt Lake City, UT, FIS decided to consult US snowboard industry experts and together they made the competition safer for the athletes and added a viable scoring system. The 2006 Winter Games in Turin saw the addition of snowboard cross. Slopestyle events were added in 2014, and Big Air in 2018.
By 2008 snowboarding was a $487 million industry with average equipment costs running to around $540 for board, boots, and bindings.
Board types
The bottom or 'base' of the snowboard is generally made of UHMW and is surrounded by a thin strip of steel, known as the 'edge'. Artwork was primarily printed on PBT using a sublimation process in the 1990s, but poor color retention and fade after moderate use moved high-end producers to longer-lasting materials.Snowboards come in several different styles, depending on the type of riding intended
- Freestyle: Generally shorter with moderate to soft flex. Freestyle snowboards have a mirror shovel at each end of the board. Freestyle snowboards usually have low-backed bindings. Incorporates a deep sidecut for quick/tight turning. Used in the pipe and in the park on various jumps and terrain features including boxes, rails, and urban features.
- Park/Jib : Flexible and short to medium length, twin-tip shape with a twin flex and an outward stance to allow easy switch riding, and easy spinning, a wider stance, with the edges filed dull is used for skateboard-park like snowboard parks.
- Freeride: Longer than freestyle and park boards. Moderate to stiff in flex and typically directional. Used from all-mountain to off-piste and backcountry riding, to 'extreme' big-mountain descents - in various types of snow from groomed hard-packed snow to soft powdery snow.
- Powder: Highly directional boards that typically have a rockered nose and tapered shape.
- All-Mountain: Most common. A mix between freeride and freestyle boards. The 'jack of all trades, master of none.' Commonly directional or directional twin in shape
- Racing/Alpine: Long, narrow, rigid, and directional shape. Used for slalom and giant slalom races, these boards are designed to excel on groomed slopes. Most often ridden with a "hard" plastic snowboard boot, but also ridden recreationally with soft boots, particularly by riders in Europe.
- Splitboard: A snowboard which splits in half lengthwise, and allows the bindings to be quickly connected to hinges aligning them longitudinally on the board, allowing the halves of the boards to function as cross country skis. Used with removable skins on the base of the board, which easily slide forward on snow but not backwards, they allow a snowboard to easily travel into the backcountry. Once the rider is ready to descend, the board halves can simply be joined back together.