Coincidentally, our German ed was on the same trip Weaver mentions in his post. Does this look like the rock'n'roll life? Kevin Backström, Jamie Nicholls and Gjermund Braaten in Halifax.

A New Generation – A New Way of Thinking

Following on from my last column about snowboard schools, I spent the next couple of weeks on the road along with riders who have been through the school’s process, and are now living the life they have been waiting for. Travelling the world, winning big contests, and enjoying everything that goes with it.

However, this generation seems a little different…

Now, back in my days as a very average snowboarder, preseason to me would mean working hard, saving money, and maybe going to the gym once in a while. Even to pros in the upper echelons, only a few years ago, early season would mean a good few nights out on a movie tour, and a good few late mornings trying to shake off the alcohol or ladies from the night before. Whichever was nastiest.

On our tour through the UK last week, visiting Halifax dryslope with the British wonderkid Jamie Nicholls, whenever we got some downtime, the riders were stretching, going to the gym, squeezing a quick run in (admittedly to the Apple store), but throughout they were all very conscious of the toll that travelling can take on your body.

Jamie's house he said? Here you go. 100% ghetto, innit?

When you think about snowboarding, every year the standard gets higher and the level just to get noticed gets notched up a bit. Jamie Nicholls is now getting recognition around Europe for his consistent riding and amazing attitude, but if he’d had those tricks on lock just two years ago, he would have been heralded as the new King of the Free World. It all means that now the bar has been raised so high, you’re having to put your body through the mill day in day out and then to make it even harder you have to travel the world to actually show everyone what you’ve got.

I imagine you all know one local guy at your resort, or your local park, who rips and everyone says, “That guy should be pro, he’s amazing!” Just before you join in the chorus, ask yourself would he ride that well if he travelled 200 days a year, and rode a different park every day all season? Probably not.

So how can riders now put up with this constant abuse their bodies receive? By being a lot more professional about everything is the short answer. The days of riding hungover or drunk, as many of us will have tried at least once, are behind us. Today many riders have gym routines, plans for how to get over sitting in aeroplanes, how to get ready for events and how to recover faster after riding. Many riders also have physios and coaches behind the scene as well. You might never see them at an event – in fact, that’s the point: Keep up the image of being the rock star who rolls in and wins the event, but more and more riders are looking after that stuff, too.

When you look at our friends from the surf world, its not uncommon for them to have physios, chefs, and everything else they might need when on certain trips or at contests on-hand, and in that respect it seems the surf world is perhaps a couple of years ahead of us. Maybe it’s because we don’t see the dark side of surfing and also that the physical build of a surfer is more impressive to the naked eye, but when you see some of them they do look like they could leap mountains in a single bound. We aren’t there yet, but we are mighty close.

Gjermund Braaten's idea of pre-season antics.

Whilst some might scream that having these kind of outside forces involved in our sport takes away from how we all see snowboarding in a perfect world, if we want to continue to see the sport evolve, and provide us with new superstars and tricks every season, then their off snow exploits have to make sure they are 100% ready to drop the hammer when the time comes.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the fact that snowboarding remains one of the sports on the edge of the term ‘sport’ and laugh every time I see the things which make snowboarding true to its roots. I have found riders in fields asleep, I had riders missing planes, disappearing into dodgy parts of Spanish cities, with equally as dodgy looking women, and just generally overdoing it more often than not. That is still commonplace.

In fact only this weekend, I had a rider miss a plane, but he did a great job of using planes, trains and automobiles to get to where he had to go, which is where the rider back in the day might have said: “You know what, fix me a new ticket.” I just get the feeling the new generation is slightly different. A little more grown up, a little earlier, and ready to work for it.

Check back in two weeks time for more of Jon’s thoughts on snowboarding. In the meantime, check out his blog www.the-goodlife.co.uk!

Ethan Morgan flying into the future.

The future’s bright, the future’s at school

A few years back, it was always the way that anyone who wanted to “make it” had to choose between doing seasons, and getting good at riding and all that comes with it – or going to university or other further education.

It seems after my last trip, that in order to get good at snowboarding nowadays, the best thing you can do is to go to school. That is if your lucky enough to be able to speak Norwegian or Swedish to get into one of the snowboard schools in Geilo or Malun, or alternatively have some Swiss German in your back pocket and even more cash in your other pocket and being able to afford to go to the school in Davos.

I visited the NTG school from Geilo last week. They were on their second two week stint of the autumn down in Saas-Fee and it was here that my eyes were really opened to the way these guys operate such a successful set up.

Great visionary leaders

Think of any of the guys you have been watching in various movies and contest wins recently. Chances are high these schools have a good deal to do with it. Torstein Horgmo’s part in the standard movie is unreal, with that triple cork at the end it’s insane, but mark my words it wouldn’t haven happened without his time spent putting in the hours up in Geilo under the watchful eye of his school coach Per Iver Grimsrud. You heard that name before? Yeah me too, and you know why? He enters contests alongside the riders he is coaching, and he invariably makes finals at least. You ever remember your school sports teacher being that cool? Our teachers were cool if they could even kick a ball in football let alone give you a run for your money in a 22-foot super pipe.

If you haven’t seen this then you’re living under a rock on another planet in the wrong century.

It’s not like this schools just popped up from nowhere near good resorts. No, they had great visionary leaders within their governments who saw the benefits this would bring to a country by having great national heroes in winter sports. Too many countries feel that the only role model people need is an over-hyped footballer who ends up sleeping with someone he probably shouldn’t have. Take a look at Norway, in 1998 Stine Brun Kjeldaas was on the podium at the Olympics, and since has been on every TV show under the sun and become a national hero. Kids look up to her, and a very young Silje Norendal even knocked at her house in Kongsberg to ask for an autograph. So these countries have great athletes to follow, but it does take very forward thinking governments to invest in this kind of programs. Damn in Finland they even built an indoor half pipe to hopefully one day have a Finnish guy on the podium. Oh wait, they already did, with Peetu Piiroinen, who was incidentally the most successful Finnish athlete at this year’s Olympics.

Cooperation with national teams

So is it just these schools out on their own, crusading and fighting the good fight for snowboarders everywhere? Well in a word no. Up in Norway, the government also has set up one of the best national teams in the world, with Thomas Harstad being one of the main coaches there, and so all of the guys at the school have their term time under the watchful eye of Per Iver and then when they are with the national team Thomas Harstad. Not a bad combo. Both of them work closely together along with their organizations, to ensure athletes are in perfect shape when they need to be.

So how can they go to school whilst they are in Saas-Fee I hear you ask? Well how would you do it? Close the school of course and move the whole lot to Saas-Fee. So you have slalom and downhill skiers and snowboarders all down there but all with their own sports divided up. They get up at 7am, have a good breakfast, take as much brown bread as possible up the hill (of course that’s the healthy choice) and then ride with half a dozen or so other equally talented riders until about 2pm. Then down the hill for some stretching, some facebook time, and the 4pm school starts until 6pm. Then repeat that everyday for two weeks. It’s like there is a production line for riders coming from the schools, and it’s a shining light of how national teams, and governments should think. Watch the video of Tor Lundstrom, that’s pretty much how he gets down everyday. If you haven’t heard of him before either, he shreds, and he loves it. He is going to be on fire this season.

Tor Lundstrom being awesome and Jon being bad at holding his iPhone.

Meanwhile down in Austria and Germany the riders are stuck with regular school, and having to ride at weekends and Fridays when they finish early. But there is no weeks off to attend contests, no understanding teachers to help out balancing your studies and snowboarding.

Take Ethan Morgan for example. He started doing his further education at the age of 16 in in Garmisch/Germany, but had to leave after a couple of months and begin the tough task of self-motivating himself to learn online. Why was that? Because the German school didn’t ever understand his need to travel to ride or attend contests, and if he was to attend an event with the German national team – would the school help him by sending him school work to keep up to date? Of course not… They only were interested in helping out the “ski springers”, which they felt was an Olympic sport, because of course snowboarding doesn’t compare to that much vaunted sport of giant lemmings flinging themselves off jumps and giving it their best erection poses to go the furthest…

Did he say Ethan Morgan?

So if the schools in central Europe aren’t set up to help future stars, what about the national teams? Well, in Germany, they are certainly motivated, but still under FIS rule, and so the TTR takes a secondary status. Whilst our friends from over the border in Austria – well along with not realizing smoking should be banned in bars yet – still haven’t really realized the need for a good national team to help the nation’s hopes. There is a school, but it’s not churning out riders at the rate that Geilo or Davos is, if any at all.

So is this a dig at central European governments, national bodies, and school systems? No, I mean without a role model to say “look that rider podiumed at the Olympics” it will be tough for the countries to realize the significance the grass roots play in the whole thing. It’s just a shame though that for a country to really sit up and get its house in order, it will take a rider to do it on their own, fund their own schooling, pay for their complete career just to make the Olympics, for these people to take notice. By that point they will all be jumping on the bandwagon claiming it was all them.

Anyways, tale from this week? Heads up and hats off to everyone from NTG, the schools in Davos, Norwegian and Swiss national teams, you guys are keeping Europe one step ahead of the rest.

In two weeks time: Why my pre-season used to mean stopping drinking and now means gym routines and strength training.

Jon asked us to add that most of this was written while he was on a plane and without any fact-checking opportunities. If you find anything wrong (or particularly right) with this post let us know in the comments. More from Jon Weaver on his blog www.the-goodlife.co.uk!

Internet killed the video star?

Halldor Helgason plays a major role in this post. Photo: Peter Lundstrom

Each year the coming of autumn brings with it more and more premiers which you just “have to be at”, with every crew going to increasing lengths in their efforts to bring their video to the people. Pirates are midway through a tour stretching the length and breadth of Europe, whilst Isenseven seem hell bent on making sure that every snowboarder from Munich to Milan spends an evening enjoying the finer things in life in the company of their finest snowboarding heroes. Forum and Absinthe embarked upon a European tour bus idea, with varying degrees of carnage being caused throughout, with Forum having stories about bars being wrecked, team riders being lost/missing planes, and then of course the associated stories of life on the road which you can check on my blog.

“Hey I was busy all day, I have been kevinbackstrom.com’ing”

But it got me thinking, though. We are all living in the age of the Internet, so much so that now when my team riders get off the hill, their first priority is to check Facebook, rather than the other normal requirements of eating or washing. One of them says that he needs to do this to take care of business, in his words: “Hey, I was busy all day. I have been kevinbackstrom.com’ing” so it seems that we have to tell everyone our every movement just to justify our existence. Now snowboarders seem to be fairly quick to catch on technology and so nowadays every man and his dog seems to live his life through a blog. I do it, you do it, this magazine does it, and if your parents don’t do it yet, mark my words they will soon. My mum recently set up hollingbournewi.blogspot.com and so she is all up online now commenting on posts, and getting involved.

So the online world has definitely changed for the upwardly mobile snowboarder, and the question is just how far can it change the game for a rider? In skateboarding we have the best example in the form of theberrics.com which has really shaken everyone up. A non-branded website, dedicated to creating content, with quality stuff of the world’s best and the finest up-and-comers, has set the cat amongst the pigeons. The snowboard industry has been quick to try and catch on, but everyone seems intent on making something brand related – after all how else can you get those all important click throughs to your product? And pretty quickly I guess the savvy snowboarders out there get bored of this and see straight through it. So the best example of this working right now would be helgasons.com, which is a monster of a site, with videos, pictures, more videos of non-snowboarding and just the general life and times of two of snowboarding’s rising stars.

So could it be that pretty soon, we will see a rider who never wins a contest, never has a video part and is on a pro team, purely on the strength of his online presence?

Both Travis Rice and the X-Games get mentioned, too. Photo: Christian Van Hanja

I imagine we have the chicken and the egg situation. If a rider doesn’t have the backing from sponsors to hire a filmer and or a web mastermind then he can’t do it, yet if he is good enough why could it not work? We could have our first Truman-style superstar in snowboarding. In surfing, a website set up by Stirling Spencer called pinchmysalt.tv (a pro surfer who has built himself an alter ego as a “centaur” and made some amazing movies) basically calls out his fellow surfers, which in an industry seemingly going with the flow of Jack Johnson is pretty out there. He is as close as you could get, but again Billabong are backing him big time so this time the chicken has paid for the egg to get himself online. Want an example? Watch this video – funny shit!

The thing it boils down to is that times have changed, and that unless you’re Travis Rice and doing shit which is just on a whole other level and coming out with stuff every two years, then you have to be up in amongst the internets. Even Eiki and Halldor, whilst their blog is the cornerstone of the Icelandic operations for them, without the insane video parts with Pirates for kids to be able to have something in their hands of value from these two, maybe the site wouldn’t have the same credibility. Why else do you think Halldor was rocking the hand-drawn mustache with the web address seconds after winning the X-Games big air?

The nights draw in and you know that you can go riding soon enough and throw some shapes of the jumps to try and get somewhere near the new tricks laid out by the pros.

So the middle-of-the-road pro snowboarder who now makes a video part once a year, well what connection does he have to the kids? Do they know his personality? Is he a nice guy? How does he shred his home mountain? There is, of course, the other school of thought that says we shouldn’t know too much about these guys and leave some mystery surrounding them. This is all very well, but that 45-second video part you’re putting out better make kids go wild, as otherwise it’s another twelve months till they see you if you’re not gonna be riding near them, or on tv anytime soon.

It’s probably like the local hero playing for your football team. Why were Everton fans so happy when Wayne Rooney first scored for them, and went on a tear through the season? Because they feel like they know him, and so feel a deep connection. That’s the part the Internet can play in connecting kids to their stars.

The helgasons.com website - best practice in shred blogging.

So has Internet killed the video star? Probably not, as kids still want a good video early September to ring in the new season. It’s a kind of right of passage-type deal: as the nights draw in you know that you can go riding soon enough, you watch them religiously knowing it won’t be long till you can throw some shapes off the jumps to try and get somewhere near the new tricks laid out by the pros in the movies this year. Magazines, too, will still remain relevant, as kids want something to read whilst taking a dump. And has the Internet meant riders don’t need to do contests yet? Again, probably not, but it just means that now the riders can talk shit on that event in the relative safety of their own blog, which is of course something that any young shred wants to hear so he can tell his friends the news that “so-and-so hated riding this slopestyle as the jumps were too small”. It just seems that nowadays snowboarding has become more than a a one-trick pony, and so the guys destined to slay it are going to be winning the X-Games, iPhone in hand blogging the whole thing whilst doing a triple cork before riding off into the sunset to go and film pow with his crew… and then, of course, posting up the behind-the-scenes pictures from their day.

Jon will return in (roughly) two weeks time with more thoughts on European riding. In the meantime head over to his blog under www.the-goodlife.co.uk!