History of Snowboard Race Technique?

[tex1230]

It also seems safe to say that the many of the riders and coaches involved in Snowboard Race Technique, ever evolving as it is, had there roots firmly planted in the influences of a ski racer technique and heritage.

I think it is cool how different riders can look at a mountain and see a 1/4 pipe, a race track or a big glassy wave. It is also cool to see how they all grow organically via a series of circumstances .... that we can visit about years later.

Jerry Masterpool never put on a snowboard while I was there. He was an old school ski racing coach who understood that the mountain and the course didn't care what was on your feet. Ski or snowboard it was about going fast.

[www.oldsnowboards.com]

Jerry Masterpool never put on a snowboard while I was there. He was an old school ski racing coach who understood that the mountain and the course didn't care what was on your feet. Ski or snowboard it was about going fast.

 

It is cool Matt that you were are part of Cross M.   Very cool! 

 

One of the best coaches in the PNW ,  also a skier,  we met years ago while he was training a young foreign racer at Mt Bachelor.   He was all about fitness , lines and mental preparedness.    

[kipstar]

From what I can recall of that era, Masterpool was somehow linked up to Burton's raceteam, they then ditched him for some reason, and so heset up his own race team under the cross M brand, and Mike Jacoby and Tara who were with Burton both went with him (Jacoby originally had been a freestyle guy, then turned himself into a racing machine and switched to Hot since it wasn't possible for him to stay with Burton and keep training with Cross M).  That was kind of I guess when Burton were looking to Europe for their racing with PJ and I want to say Frenadamitz or some name like that who came in the mid 90s.

 

It used to be on TV, and in the 93/94 season the sym boards were coming on strong, back then they did race some dual and some against the clock stuff; the only asyms by this time was in slalom and the ocassional one in the GS.   A lot of the Europeans were still very quick, Thedo Remmelink was pushing the sym board style for nitro along with various others, and the very weird looking Aggression Stealth was from the (guessing) 1991/92 or at the latest 92/93 season, Dave Dowd was still racing on that in 93/94 from memory.  There was a very very quick guy from Mammoth who was an amateur, Tom Tuttle I think, who raced like he stole it, back then the whole grass roots of racing was pretty strong in USA...so it was a big surprise to leave in 94, then return in 1996 and suddenly racing was a tiny part of the sport and hardbooting seemed to have fallen away.

 

Back in the early/mid 90s, a few of the USA racers were using the specific race boots from their sponsors, but many were on ski boots, heavily modified, particularly the Americans, some of the Europeans and the Japanese were still happy to ride softer hardboot set ups.  There was some concern as to how narrow a snowboard could be and still be raced successfully, people played all around the place with odd foot angles, I recall vaguely a  few Americans riding the rear foot steeper than the front foot (a recipe for bad biomechanics and torn ACL) but I guess in hero snow you could get away with it. The board Tara Eberhard rode would have been a MOSS which yes, is a very narrow Japanese board, probably good for her as she was quite a small person.

 

Some of the Europeans still riding the asyms tended to rotate quite a bit when they rode, that really disappeared once the modern style similar to how ppl race now started to emerge as the quicker way to ride.

What was a surprise to me back then was how successful the racers could be on very rutted courses in those stiff boot set ups with narrow stances; they would sometimes lose control, but often were able to stay in control surprisingly well given the way they rode.  In some cases like Jacoby they were very big powerful guys.
 

The early hots were also horizontal laminated, so tended to not hold their shape particularly well, mine ended up like a boat from side to side with a big convex base.  Lots and lots of boards back then, including most of the USA brands who were making race boards OEM out of Europe.

 

It was leading into about 96 when the whole FIS ISF thing happened, and so a lot of the racers who hung on in ISF were then replaced by the people who went to FIS, I don't quite recall how it all unfolded but was tied up with who would run snowboarding  in the Olympics.

[pegtal]

Back in the 90's, according to French medias, there were something like two big families.

First family, European racers, with very lively and dynamic technic and style, a lot of vertical work (pardon my vocabulary, I'm not a racer nor a former racer), always racing close to the limits.

Second Family, North American racers, static style, "egg" position, the less time possible on edge, the less moves on the board, with Mike Jacoby as the best example.

 

I remember an article saying that Jacoby's style was the best in US races but wouldn't be that efficient on European icy and steep slopes.

Don't know where's the truth in that.

 

I bought in 1993 the probably one and only Aggression Stealth in France at a shop importing "exotic" boards for fun. The tail broke the day I sold it.

[nils]

Nico Mathey picture is 1988 in Sölden.

Luc Faye was the team coach..

THere is a lot of pics ( from serge or other famous pioneers) on the facebook page History of Snowboarding..not race only oriented, but here and there we see pre 90 pics where racing and freestyling were not far from each other....( Jean Nerva was equally good in freestyle and racing for example)

 

N

[Beckmann AG]

Can you elaborate? I'm struggling to see how having two racers going down two (somewhat) parallel courses would have an effect on technique. If you're faster, you'd tend to win.

Dual format more or less requires setting two fairly equivalent courses on the same pitch, which favors slopes of a more ‘neutral’ character.  This greatly restricts the creativity of the course setter to make best use of a mountain’s contour, or to set courses with variability, in terms of offsets, delays, overs, unders, hairpins, etc.

 

Dual competitors develop their skills to chase the rhythm, rather than finding or losing speed along the natural twists and turns of a given trail on a path determined by the whims of the setter. Skill development is thus constrained by the limits imposed by the dual format itself, rather than by the greater demands of the mountain environment.

 

Consider NASCAR as opposed to WRC. Both require high levels of skill development and have their own unique challenges.   NASCAR, however, is a widely acknowledged contrivance, a dinosaur stuck on the tar.  WRC on the other hand, tends to exploit technology and innovation. It’s not too much of a stretch to suggest that the top WRC drivers are both 'more versatile', and closer to reaching the potential of man and machine; a characteristic directly related to the courses on which they compete.

 

[Corey]

Ahh, I see your point now!  On that topic, I remember watching a World Cup Super G (maybe GS?) ski race where there was a wicked off-camber turn on very hard snow.  The skiers were touching hips on the slope, and some could maintain a tight line to set up for the next corner but many couldn't.  It was awesome to watch.  

 

In contrast - I fast-forwarded through most of the Olympic snowboard racing.  

 

You're fooling yourself if you think that the top NASCAR drivers aren't great drivers.  Same goes for the machines, they're fantastically optimized within the ruleset.  I'm not a fan of the racing (nor most of the fans!) but I really appreciate what the drivers and engineers do.  

[Beckmann AG]

 

You're fooling yourself if you think that the top NASCAR drivers aren't great drivers.  

Where'd that come from?

 

Within their milieu, NASCAR drivers are at the top of the field, which takes both aptitude and dedication to the craft. The same can be said for snowboard racers. Within their narrow subset,they are very good at what they do. The key difference is that NASCAR is probably fairly close to it's full potential within its constraints, whereas snowboard racing is nowhere near as mature on account of its constraints.

 

 

 

 

NB: artistic license taken.

[Corey]

Where'd that come from?

Poor reading comprehension played a big factor. ;)

[Beckmann AG]

^

Have heard tell of such things.

[John Gilmour]

The need for double width identical course restricts hills and shortens distance across the hill to half.

 

The only benefit is both riders face possibly similar  wind and possibly similar snow conditions, but typically the courses are never truly identical as one side of the hill may be in shade or more wind protects wind strong stripped... etc. 

...even in skateboard slalom on unchanging pavement the surface is rarely identical and one course is typically faster.

 

IMHO in general 2. Courses proves to be of little advantage on days with no wind or steady wind. Only on irregular gusty days does it become useful 

 

just had to answer that old thread.

 

also worth noting Agression stealth asymmetric  had tighter sidecut on the toeside.

 

[lowrider]

 I'm paying attention just don't have much of an attention span. John nice to see you post on a nearly dead thread. Are you actively trying to stimulate conversation and wake us from our summer sleep ? To further discussion. Is it not the intent to make it as fair as possibly once riders switch course each gets to  experience to variance in each of the courses ?

[noschoolrider]

On 11/25/2015 at 6:43 PM, Beckmann AG said:

Skiing events, despite periodic regulatory changes on gate offset and relative distance, have always been single format, and the competitors alter their approach based on those changes and also contemporary ski development.  Snowboarding, on the other hand, adapted the dual format, which, for all intents and purposes, has restricted/inhibited technique, despite the apparent 'gains' in hardgoods.

Dual (head-to-head) ski racing dates back to the 1940's.

There's a good read about the history of dual ski racing at https://racerex.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/03/24-29-JF17-DUALRACING-KJ.pdf

and info about the World Pro Ski Tour is at https://worldproskitour.com

https://worldproskitour.com/testimonials

 

3 hours ago, lowrider said:

 Are you actively trying to stimulate conversation and wake us from our summer sleep ?

Maybe both, however right now it's winter in the southern hemisphere.

Edited July 17, 2019 by noschoolrider

[Jack M]

On 11/24/2015 at 8:03 AM, philw said:

The "new race method" was a more forward facing stance and *importantly* symmetrical boards. It did not come, in Europe at least, from Burton, who never really seemed to get the whole race thing. My first symmetrical board was the Nitro Scorpion, which I suppose was an SL board although I wasn't using it to race with, it was a side-effect of the fashions of the time.

 

I remember Burton hanging on with those old weird PJ things for a while, then the "stat" and the "FP" business, but those seemed lame to me as a consumer (I was not a racer). I dare say Burton invested in racing, and perhaps the stats will show that people used boards which looked like those in their catalog, and maybe they even won things, but their consumer race gear never had a chance because it never had a heart, in my opinion.

Late to the party but Burton deserves way more credit than this.  Burton supported racing and alpine more than any other manufacturer, right up until they stopped in about 2003.  They had full selections of race, freecarve, and all-mtn freecarve gear prominently displayed in their catalogs, starting with their first race board, the Express in 86 or 87.  For many years they had as many as 3 different models of hardboots running concurrently, and 3 or 4 different models of plate bindings including step-ins.  They invented 2 different kinds of step-ins, one which worked with any standard boot.  For several years they offered symmetrical and asymmetrical race boards at the same time.  Talk about commitment!  And in the catalog, they made it look cool.  In the early days, Jake Burton Carpenter was into Snurfer racing, and he thought organized racing was the future of the sport.  Burton started the US Open with this intent.  It wasn't until Sims became a big enough market force that Burton finally put a kick tail on a board in 1988.  Their consumer race gear was as good as any production race boards could be.  To say it never had a heart is way off the mark.

[philw]

<shrug> To me there seemed to be a shift around the time of the "new race method", in consumer race gear.

The PJ had seemed cool, but once things moved to symmetrical, I never felt Burton cared, as above.
I'm well aware of the history, but that's still how it felt to me at least.

[Jack M]

On 7/18/2019 at 5:51 PM, philw said:

<shrug> To me there seemed to be a shift around the time of the "new race method", in consumer race gear.

The PJ had seemed cool, but once things moved to symmetrical, I never felt Burton cared, as above.
I'm well aware of the history, but that's still how it felt to me at least.

The only thing that changed was that the racing careers and public images of P and J as the torch-bearers of alpine were basically over, by their own natural progression.  P&J were special, a tough act to follow that Burton could not reproduce.  For the time, the gear was still awesome.  Then along came Prior and the rest and they elevated the state of the art.

After the PJ Burton made big efforts in alpine, like making boards AND boots for race (Factory Prime, Fire), freecarve (Ultra Prime, Alp boards, Wind boot), and all-mtn alpine (Amp, E-deck, Wire, Coil boards, Earth boot).  They were even ahead of their time with softboot carvers, the Asym Air and Fusion.

Market forces pushed Burton out of Alpine, and when they finally realized they had to, they divorced the Burton brand from Alpine pretty hard.  That hurt, but then they STILL tried to keep it going under a new brand, R17 Addicted.

These are not the actions of a company that didn't care.

[workshop7]

3 hours ago, Jack M said:

 

After the PJ Burton made big efforts in alpine, like making boards AND boots for race (Factory Prime, Fire), freecarve (Ultra Prime, Alp boards, Wind boot), and all-mtn alpine (Amp, E-deck, Wire, Coil boards, Earth boot).  They were even ahead of their time with softboot carvers, the Asym Air and Fusion.

Don’t forget about the Stat...I loved my Stat 6.

[Jack M]

9 hours ago, workshop7 said:

Don’t forget about the Stat...I loved my Stat 6.

Right!!