Ed Andrews: Snoreboarding
For an industry designed around fun, there’s a lot of tedium about.
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So, I’ve just spent the past week face first into the snowboarding industry with an excursion that included a few days riding in Mayrhofen, attending the Billabong Air & Style in Innsbruck and the ISPO trade show in Munich. While this is a great antidote to being stuck behind a desk in East London, I couldn’t help but feel slightly bored with it at times.
First up, the Air & Style. This mega-stadium filling contest is testament to just how far snowboarding has come as a sport (you can read my assessment of it here). Impressive it may be but after watching some of the world’s best competitive snowboarders try and out cab, cork and 12 each other for a few hours, I did find myself getting a little restless.
Yeah, the tricks are impressive and the atmosphere is great but, when you are bombarded by identikit riders throwing out the same tricks with infinitesimal variations, it’s hard to keep your pulse racing. I appreciate that they are being judged under certain criteria that encourages a convergence of style and tricks, but a great spectator sport it doesn’t make. I mean, how many times can you watch double corks before you eat your own hand out of sheer boredom?!
A few days previously, I saw a random snowboarder in the Vans Penken Park in Mayrhofen doing some stupidly-tweaked Japan back flip. It was amazing simply because you rarely see that sort of thing done outside of a video game. Yeah, it was kind of gawky but, fuck, it was fresh and totally contrary to any prevalent notions of style. If there were more riders like this, then I reckon comps like the Air & Style would go up several notches in the entertainment stakes.
After this came ISPO. This massive tradeshow is a staple of the industry with countless aircraft hanger-sized halls filled by brands hawking all sorts of sports-based product and generally trying to show just how damn cool they are. The products are pretty similar – most sourced from the Chinese manufacturers in the adjacent hall – only the marketing approach differs. This seems to be either with banal slogans and powder face shots or trying to be slightly more controversial with soft core pornography or revelations that snowboarding is, apparently, about having fun!
Well, I can’t disagree with that. Mute grabs, 360 nosebutters and powder turns: they contain near hospitalisation levels of fun. Standing in a giant exhibition centre, being slapping in the face with advertising messages and manufactured parties is perhaps not as enjoyable.
Don’t get me wrong. There’s some great brands out there knocking out quality snowboard graphics, tidy footwear and solid outerwear – the likes of Forum and Zimtstern immediately spring to mind – but there’s a hell of a lot of piggy backing going on too. It’s a similar situation to the riders at the Air & Style where the level of competition doesn’t bring about innovation, just convergence as most revert to the same old tried-and-tested tricks to succeed. As a result, something truly different goes out of the window.
But, ultimately, different is awesome! Different is Rodney Mullen’s über-technical freestyle flip geekery; it’s John Cardiel’s fearless all-terrain charging; it’s Devun Walsh’s old school backside 180 cliff drops. It’s Richey Jackson, Michael Sieben, Pirate Movie Production, The Eddie Wall Ride Contest, Heel Toe Magic and Phil Zwijsen. I could go on but I think you get the point. It’s those sort of things that break from the mould that make the world a better, more interesting place.
We need more of them. Otherwise our beloved industry may just turn into an antidote for insomnia, and no amount of marketing hype and energy drinks will be able to wake it up…
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Snoreboarding (text) by Ed Andrews is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.Comments (4)
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Yeah, Helgason is a great rider and the double backside rodeo japan was perhaps something refreshing. However he is still competing under a contest structure that requires the 'spin-to-win'-esque approach. Obviously, such a structure has most likely developed from the high level of riding but I feel it is in danger of becoming repetitive and dare I say it, 'nerdy'.
What the solution is, I'm not too sure...