This Year in Snowboarding – February 2010

Our English editor kicked off our big retrospect yesterday with the month January. He left the burdensome task of summing up one of the most eventful months of snowboarding’s history to me. Thanks, Tom. The good news is that this post is full of some gobsmacking shred action that will help you get through that longest night of the year. Here we go…

FEBRUARY

When the Think Thank crew released their first Right Brain, Left Brain teaser we were very excited. Little did we know at the time that dozens of them were to follow. At around the same time the annual Winter X Games went down in Aspen. Ettala, Jones, White, Helgason and Bleiler take the honours with snowboarding getting out of hand again. If you need any proof here’s Halldor’s big air performance again in all its lethargic glory:

A little later and after an election process more confusing than an algebra exam the national ski federations announced their Olympic snowboard teams. Many a hopes were crushed right there as most people had figured out that some metal at the Olympics equals a lot of moolah in the long run. But before it was all about corporate sponsors and weird memorabilia some other events went down, like the Red Bull Nanshan Open in China, where Juuso Laivisto came in first.

Also, more and more video parts were released online, such as Eiki Helgason’s from No Correct Way, or Nicolas Müller’s banging Japan edit from Tracking Eero. The latter is still a standout clip by today’s standards, and man, I want this much snow for Christmas! The Homies crew went shredding in Les Diablerets, and in other webisodes news the Ästhetiker launched into their all-new ‘Lätest Shit’ season. And of course we dropped Tyler Chorlton’s hugely successful Day in the Life, up to this day totalling way over 100,000 views…

Then we went and spent a couple of quality days at the annual ISPO tradeshow in Munich. If you’ve never made it to this industry hop you should go and join us in making use of the complimentary drinks and our snappy cameras. Speaking of which, to this day our four haphazardly put together product previews (here, here, here and here) remain among the most sought after things on the internet (next to the keyboard cat and celebrity porn).

Then the Burton Canadian Open took place, but everyhing Olympics was already outshining the event – well, mostly the scantily clad snowboarders Hannah Teter and Claire Bidez in their Sports Illustrated shoot.

In other Olympics news Torah Bright worked on her double cork in the pipe, Kazuhiro Kokubo causes a ‘scandal’ by not looking like a geek, and Terje Haakonsen talks shop regarding the upcoming Games. Other than that, the Völkl squad hit Poland, and Juuso Laivisto and Gjermund Braaten were featured in our first ever The Knowledge. However, on the day of the men’s Olympic pipe finals the TTR released a short clip with all serious contenders, and we posted this edit of some of the top European pipe riders talk about the upcoming event…

And what came next we sometimes get really nostalgic about: We sat down at our photo ed’s crib and reported live from the Olympics all night long. As everyone aged 4 to 88 knows that night Shaun White claimed his second gold medal. The next day, Torah Bright won the women’s gold medal. For fear of the IOC sending us some of their infamous media manhunters the only video we posted of the event was Shaun’s run filmed of a TV screen…

On his return from Vancouver our ed in chief wrapped the event up on our site. What else happened in February? Jeremy Jones answered your questions in a video crossfire. The Baker Banked Slalom is everything the Olympics isn’t, and Rome proofed it with this short clip. The shred superbrains Danny Kass and Nicolas Müller meet in our second instalment of The Knowledge. Rail wizard Jed Anderson sat down with us for a chat on his snowboarding.

The cork craze was in full swing as Jamie Nicholls demonstrated when he stomped his first back 10 late cork. But the dangers of our sport are still apparent when Kevin Pearce’s family appeared on TV. Also, Coin Coin dropped his online video part, the Jib-Vid teams were announced (foreshadowing an epic Onboard victory), and Eric Willett wins the River Jump slopestyle title.

So this was everything worth remembering from February. Let’s open another bottle of wine and enjoy the longest night of the year. Tomorrow it’s all about a slight headache and the awesome month that is called March.