Snowboarding is both a recreational pastime and a competitive winter sport, in which an individual rides down snow-covered slopes or terrain while standing on a specially designed board called a snowboard. This board is securely fastened to the rider’s feet using bindings, ensuring that the snowboard remains attached throughout the ride.
The origins of snowboarding can be traced back to the United States, where it was developed as a unique blend of influences from other board sports and winter activities. Skateboarding, surfing, sledding, and skiing all played a role in shaping the early versions of the sport. As it evolved, snowboarding attracted a dedicated following and gradually spread across the globe.
Early Innovations and Pioneers
The first snowboards were developed in 1965 when Sherm Poppen, an engineer in Muskegon, Michigan, invented a toy for his daughters by fastening two skis together and attaching a rope to one end so he would have some control as they stood on the board and glided downhill.
In February 1968, Poppen organized the first snurfing competition at a Michigan ski resort that attracted enthusiasts from all over the country. One of those early pioneers was Tom Sims, a devotee of skateboarding (a sport born in the 1950s when kids attached roller skate wheels to small boards that they steered by shifting their weight).
Modern snowboarding was pioneered by Tom Sims and Jake Burton Carpenter, who both contributed significant innovations and started influential companies. Also during this same period, in 1977, Jake Burton Carpenter, a Vermont native who had enjoyed snurfing since the age of 14, impressed the crowd at a Michigan snurfing competition with bindings he had designed to secure his feet to the board. That same year, he founded Burton Snowboards in Londonderry, Vermont. The "snowboards" were made of wooden planks that were flexible and had water ski foot traps.
Read also: Choosing the Right Salomon Snowboard
The Rise of Competitive Snowboarding
The first competitions to offer prize money were the National Snurfing Championship, held at Muskegon State Park in Muskegon, Michigan. In 1979, Jake Burton Carpenter came from Vermont to compete with a snowboard of his own design. There were protests about Jake entering with a non-snurfer board. Paul Graves, and others, advocated that Jake be allowed to race. A "modified" "Open" division was created and won by Jake as the sole entrant.
Всё о сноубординге | история и основные дисциплины | Сноубординг
That race was considered the first competition for snowboarding and is the start of what became competitive snowboarding. In 1982, the first USA National Snowboard race was held near Woodstock, Vermont, at Suicide Six. In 1983, the first World Championship halfpipe competition was held at Soda Springs, California. Today, high-profile snowboarding events like the Winter X Games, Air & Style, US Open, Olympic Games and other events are broadcast worldwide.
Acceptance and Growth
Initially, ski areas adopted the sport at a much slower pace than the winter sports public. Indeed, for many years, there was animosity between skiers and snowboarders, which led to an ongoing skier vs snowboarder feud. Early snowboards were banned from the slopes by park officials. For several years snowboarders would have to take a small skills assessment prior to being allowed to ride the chairlifts.
It was thought that an unskilled snowboarder would wipe the snow off the mountain. As equipment and skills improved, gradually snowboarding became more accepted. In 1990, most major ski areas had separate slopes for snowboarders. There were 8.2 million snowboarders in the US and Canada for the 2009-2010 season.
Snowboarding Styles
Since snowboarding's inception as an established winter sport, it has developed various styles, each with its own specialized equipment and technique. The most common styles today are: freeride, freestyle, and freecarve/race. These styles are used for both recreational and professional snowboarding.
Read also: Innovation in Skateboarding: Toy Machine
- Freeriding: A style without a set of governing rules or set course, typically on natural, un-groomed terrain. The basic allows for various snowboarding styles in a fluid motion and spontaneity through naturally rugged terrain. It can be like freestyle with the exception that no man-made features are utilized.
- Freestyle snowboarding is any riding that includes performing tricks. In freestyle, the rider utilizes natural and man-made features such as rails, jumps, boxes, and innumerable others to perform tricks.
- Alpine snowboarding is a discipline within the sport of snowboarding. It is practiced on groomed pistes. Sometimes called freecarving or hardbooting (due to the equipment used), this discipline usually takes place on hard packed snow or groomed runs (although it can be practiced in any and all conditions) and focuses on carving linked turns, much like surfing or longboarding. Little or no jumping takes place in this discipline.
"Jibbing" is the term for technical riding on non-standard surfaces. The word "jib" is both a noun and a verb, depending on the usage of the word. As a noun: a jib includes metal rails, boxes, benches, concrete ledges, walls, vehicles, rocks and logs. As a verb: to jib is referring to the action of jumping, sliding, or riding on top of objects other than snow. It is directly influenced by grinding a skateboard. Jibbing is a freestyle snowboarding technique of riding.
Alpine Snowboarding
Alpine Snowboarding consists of a small portion of the general snowboard population, that has a well connected social community and its own specific board manufacturers, most situated in Europe. Alpine Snowboard equipment includes a ski-like hardshell boot and plate binding system with a true directional snowboard that is stiffer and narrower to manage linking turns with greater forces and speed. Shaped skis can thank these "freecarve" snowboards for the cutting-edge technology leading to their creation.
A skilled alpine snowboarder can link numerous turns into a run placing their body very close to the ground each turn, similar to a motocross turn or waterski carve. Depending on factors including stiffness, turning radius and personality this can be done slowly or fast. Carvers make perfect half-circles out of each turn, changing edges when the snowboard is perpendicular to the fall line and starting every turn on the downhill edge.
Competitions
Competitors perform tricks while descending a course, moving around, over, across, up, or down terrain features. The course is full of obstacles including boxes, rails, jumps, jibs, or anything else the board or rider can slide across. Slopestyle is a judged event and winning a Slopestyle contest usually comes from successfully executing the most difficult line in the terrain park while having a smooth flowing line of difficult, mistake-free tricks performed on the obstacles.
Big air competitions are contests where riders perform tricks after launching off a man-made jump built specifically for the event. Competitors perform tricks in the air, aiming to attain sizable height and distance, all while securing a clean landing. Many competitions also require the rider to do a complex trick. Not all competitions call for a trick to win the gold; some intermittent competitions are based solely on height and distance of the launch of the snowboarder.
Read also: Is Lib Tech Right For You?
The half-pipe is a semi-circular ditch dug into the mountain or purpose-built ramp made up of snow, with walls between 8 and 23 feet (7.0 m). Snowboard cross, also known as "boardercross", "boarder X", or "snowboard X", and commonly abbreviated as "SBX", or just "BX", is a snowboarding discipline consisting of several (typically 4 to 6) riders racing head-to-head down a course with jumps, berms and other obstacles constructed out of snow. Snowboard cross began in the 1980s, earning its place as an official Winter Olympic event in the 2006 Turin games.
In snowboard racing, riders must complete a downhill course constructed of a series of turning color indicators (gates) placed in the snow at prescribed distances apart. A gate consists of a tall pole and a short pole, connected by a triangular panel. The racer must pass around the short side of the gate, passing the long side of the gate doesn't count. Snowboarding has been a Winter Olympic sport since 1998 Winter Olympics in Japan. Since its inauguration, Olympic snowboarding has seen many additions and removals of events. Snowboarder Magazine's Superpark event was created in 1996.
The Snowboarding Culture
Part of the snowboarding approach is to ensure maximum fun, friendship and event quality. The snowboarding way of life came about as a natural response to the culture from which it emerged. Early on, there was a rebellion against skiing culture and the view that snowboarders were inferior. Skiers did not easily accept this new culture on their slopes. The two cultures contrasted each other in several ways including how they spoke, acted, and their entire style of clothing.
Snowboarders first embraced the punk and later the hip-hop look into their style. Words such as "dude", "gnarly", and "Shred the Gnar" are some examples of words used in the snowboarding culture. The early stereotypes of snowboarding included "lazy", "grungy", "punk", "stoners", "troublemakers", and numerous others, many of which are associated with skateboarding and surfing as well. However, these stereotypes may be considered out of style.
Snowboarding has become a sport that encompasses a very diverse international based crowd and fanbase of many millions, so much so that it is no longer possible to stereotype such a large community. Reasons for these dying stereotypes include how mainstream and popular the sport has become, with the shock factor of snowboarding's quick take off on the slopes wearing off. Skiers and snowboarders are becoming used to each other, showing more respect to each other on the mountain. "The typical stereotype of the sport is changing as the demographics change". While these two subcultures are now becoming accustomed to each other, there are still three resorts, in the United States, which do not allow snowboarding.
Common Injuries in Snowboarding
Common injuries in snowboarding differ between professional and recreational groups. The most common type of injury for snowboarders is injury to the upper body. In recreational snowboarding, wrist injuries are more likely to occur. Among professional snowboarders, injuries to the lower half, specifically the knee joint, are more likely to occur. When injured, snowboarders are twice as likely to get a fracture as skiers. Other minor injuries that happen are "wrist injuries, shoulder soft tissue injuries, ankle injuries, concussions, and clavicle fractures, were seen injuries are very common when snowboarding". In recreational and inexperienced "most injuries to snowboarders occurred more often while they were traveling at reckless speed on moderate slopes".
Another way injuries happen is because they try sticking with someone that is a higher skill level, which they are not capable of handling because of the lack of skill they possess. Some major injuries that occur during snowboarding are head, and spinal injuries, "the main cause of spinal fractures in snowboarders was jump landing failure and compression type fractures occur in about 80% of snowboarders with vertebral fractures because they frequently fall backwards, and this can cause axial loading and anterior compression fractures". Injuries to the upper body are much less common among professional snowboarders.
The average snowboarder is a male in their early twenties, and there are three times as many men as there are women in the sport. Snowboarders have a 2.4 times greater risk of fractures than skiers, particularly in the upper extremities. Conversely, snowboarders have a lower risk of knee injuries than skiers. The injury rate for snowboarding is about four to six per thousand persons per day, which is around double the injury rate for alpine skiing.
Injuries are more likely amongst beginners, especially those who do not take lessons with professional instructors. A quarter of all injuries occur to first-time riders and half of all injuries occur to those with less than a year of experience. Two-thirds of injuries occur to the upper body and one-third to the lower body. This contrasts with alpine skiing, where two-thirds of injuries are to the lower body. The most common types of injuries are sprains, which account for around 40% of injuries. The most common point of injury is the wrists - 40% of all snowboard injuries are to the wrists and 24% of all snowboard injuries are wrist fractures. There are around 100,000 wrist fractures worldwide among snowboarders each year.
For this reason the use of wrist guards, either separate or built into gloves, is very strongly recommended. They are often compulsory in beginner's classes and their use reduces the likelihood of wrist injury by half. In addition it is important for snow boarders to learn how to fall without stopping the fall with their hand by trying to "push" the slope away, as landing a wrist which is bent at a 90-degree angle increase the chance of it breaking. Rather, landing with the arms stretched out (like a wing) and slapping the slope with the entire arm is an effective way to break a fall.
The risk of head injury is two to six times greater for snowboarders than for skiers and injuries follow the pattern of being rarer, but more severe, with experienced riders. Head injuries can occur both because of a collision and when failing to carry out a heel-side turn. The latter can result in the rider landing on their back and slamming the back of their head onto the ground, resulting in an occipital head injury. For this reason, helmets are widely recommended. Protective eyewear is also recommended as eye injury can be caused by impact and snow blindness can be a result of exposure to strong ultra-violet light in snow-covered areas.
Unlike ski bindings, snowboard bindings are not designed to release automatically in a fall. The mechanical support provided by the feet being locked to the board has the effect of reducing the likelihood of knee injury - 15% of snowboard injuries are to the knee, compared with 45% of all skiing injuries. Such injuries are typically to the knee ligaments, bone fractures are rare. Fractures to the lower leg are also rare but 20% of injuries are to the foot and ankle. Fractures of the talus bone are rare in other sports but account for 2% of snowboard injuries - a lateral process talus fracture is sometimes called "snowboarder's ankle" by medical staff. This injury results in persistent lateral pain in the affected ankle yet is difficult to spot in a plain X-ray image.
| Type of Injury | Snowboarding | Skiing |
|---|---|---|
| Upper Body Injuries | Most Common | Less Common |
| Wrist Injuries | Very Common (40% of all injuries) | Less Common |
| Knee Injuries | 15% of injuries | 45% of injuries |
| Head Injuries | 2-6 times greater risk | Lower risk |
| Fractures | 2.4 times greater risk | Lower risk |
tags: #surf #the #earth #snowboards