Gigi Rüf signs up for Nike Snowboarding
The limber legend that is Mr Gigi Rüf has added another super power sponsor to his roster: Nike Snowboarding.
Known for his insanely creative style on a snow stick - on Alaskan spines to inner city ledges - Gigi parted ways, somewhat controversially, with Burton Snowboards in October '08, with the finger pointing firmly at the dumping of the big B's Un Inc program.
But with numerous 'Rider of the Year' accolades, and consistently stunning sections in Absinthe's annual films, the Austrian phenomenon got picked up quicker than Lindsay Lohan speed dating by his existing streetwear sponsor Volcom to rock their outerwear - and develop their first ever range of snowboards.
In January another hardware hook up followed, with the rather fine Union bindings snapping up the 27 year old - adding his Euro eccentricity to the existing team of Danny Kass, Dustin Craven, Hampus Mosesson, Joe Sexton, TJ Schneider, Jon Kooley, Stian Solberg and Dan Brisse.
Now, the final piece of the puzzle's been confirmed: after chatting to existing team riders, researching and testing the product himself, the Gigimeister's uber trio has been confirmed with Nike providing his boots. Sell out? With his honest and heartfelt approach to sideways sliding perhaps not, but with a new son and wife to take care of, we can bet 'the Swoosh' paid handsomely to welcome him to the team.
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Gigi Rüf signs up for Nike Snowboarding (text) by Gemma Freeman is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 2.0 UK License.
Comments (6)
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Nike should stay the hell out of snowboarding. They don't care about it, they aren't passionate about it, they are just tryin to make some bucks!
Perhaps they do see it as another cog in their well oiled corporate machine, but if it gives a kick up the arse to companies who are getting stale - as how Holden did when they first came out - that's no bad thing. It's all about pushing progress and creativity....
I actually met one of the chief designers involed in Nike snowboarding and I can honestly say their attitude was far from money grabbing. They had been a snowboarder for well over a decade and were really excited about making snowboard boots.
All companies are out to make money - that's one of the prerequistes for survival. What is one brand compared to another anyway? Surely it comes down to quality, functionality, etc?
And have you actually seen the boots? They look awesome!
Would Slazenger, Wilson, etc be right to start saying you don't belong in the tennis world?