LONDON

January THING OF THE MONTH
Text by ILZE VĪTOLA
Illustration by
AGNESE TAURIŅA
Snowboard
Rebellious younger
brother of the ski
Some say that the origins of the
snowboard date back to 1965,
when engineer Sherman Poppen
created a wide monoski in the
state of Michigan for the amusement of
his children. He patented his invention and
named it the Snurfer. Others claim that the
first snowboard goes back to the year 1939,
when 13-year-old Vern Wicklund made a
modified sled, which he used on the snowy
hills of his native Minnesota. Still others say
that the roots of the snowboard go back
150 years to Turkey, where locals used long
wooden boards to travel across the snow.
Early commercial snowboards, which
looked somewhat like surfboards, began
to be retailed during the 1970s. Fierce
competition ensued between the two
largest snowboard manufacturers in the
USA, Burton Board and Sims. The most
expensive snowboard ever was a 1977 Burton
Board model, which sold on eBay in 2014 for
more than three million US dollars.
Up until the late 1980s, snowboarders
were a rare sight at mountain ski resorts.
They were even banned from some
places, mainly because snowboarding was
considered to be a dangerous sport practiced
mostly by rebellious teenagers. Even today,
snowboarding is not permitted at some
resorts. In 2014, a group of snowboarders
filed a discrimination suit against the Alta
winter resort in Utah. However, a federal
appeals court ruled last April that the
resort was entitled to ban the activity on
its premises. Snowboarding is one of the
newest Olympic sports, first featuring at the
1998 winter games in Nagano, Japan.
Nowadays, snowboarders make up
about 30% of trail users at winter resorts
worldwide, and videos in which they
Nowadays, snowboarders make
up about 30% of trail users at
winter resorts worldwide
show off their skills are widely viewed on
the Internet. Since last year, more than
1.5 million viewers have seen a video in
which snowboarder Steve Klassen and his
three-year-old daughter Kinsley ride down
a mountain on a tandem board. The first
tandem board team came into being in 1999,
when Friedrich Gerlmaier of the Bavarian
Blind and Visually Impaired Association
teamed up with another snowboarder to
promote the sport as a pastime for those
with physical disabilities. BO
30 | AIRBALTIC.COM