Chad McNeal
The FIRST ever snowboard is actually undefined because back when the sled was invented kids and or parents would stand up on a sled in the early 1900's. The first ever made was in 1929, Jack Burchette took a peace of plywood and secured his feet with clothesline string. Then he took horse reins and used them as handles. The snurfur was the first marketed snowboard in 1965. Sherman Poppen, who was a chemical gases engineer, was the creator of the snurfur. His daughter gave him the idea by standing on her old sled going down a hill, And his wife came up with the name by adding the two words surfer and snow. Sherman put two skis together and added a string to hold onto near the front and gave it to his daughter. He discovered it was popular when all his daughters friends thought that it was cool and wanted him to make one for them. He then made a prototype and sent it to Brunswick Corp. and they manufactured it. The whole country liked his idea, Sherman sold these from ten to thirty dollars and sold about a million over the course of ten years in 1966. This idea was so popular over the country that it went in to competition. But was still only seen as a children’s toy. Jake Burton took part in these competitions and he was still young and he loved to ski. Then Dimitrije Milovich started making snowboards in 1969. After getting the idea from sliding down a hill on a cafeteria plate down a hill in college. His idea of a snowboard was based on a surfboard based on the ways skiis work. In 1972 he started his own business called winterstick. He made more than a couple million boards and even got his name in 3 different magazines that had articles about him and the sport. This helped spread out the sport and make it more known. In 1980 he left the business but is still known of a grate pioneer of the revolution of the sport. This is a picture of the first manufactured snowboard called the Snurfur.
In 1977 Mike Olsen made his first snowboard in a high school wood shop class. He continued to make more styles of the snowboard and started his awn business and dropped out of collage and called it GNU. In 1979 Jake Burton Carpenter showed up to a competition and brought his own snurfur renamed a snowboard. This was a custom board with bindings attached to the board that hold your feet into place without the string. This idea led to the Burton snowboarding company. In Manchester VT, Jake Burton worked out of his garage and shaped wood into the shape of his idea of snowboarding. Then he attached straps known as bindings and used two to hold your feet in place on the board. He went door to door selling his idea out to people at first. He envisioned to make a safer snowboard that gave people control down the mountain. This led to Poppen shutting down his business and going back to his old perfusion. In the early 1980s at suicide six mountain in VT held the first snowboarding race competition. The US Open was the first ever snowboarding competition and it moves to magic mountain. The recently after it moved there it moved to Stratton Mountain Resort where it is still held today. VT was also the first state in America to ever offer a terrain park at a ski resort. A terrain park is a section of the mountain off to the side that has jumps, rails, boxes, and a half pipe. In 1994 snowboarding was declared a Olympic sport. This now means it was accepted as a real competitive sport and not just one that would fade away again. In 1998 was the first time the Olympics held a separate competition for snowboarding. Ross Rebagliati won the first Olympic meddle for the slalom contest, since no one liked snowboarding at the time he was made to submit a urine sample. This showed he was positive for marijuana and they tried to take his meddle away, this was a big impact for all snowboarders all around because it ruined the little reputation they had. People all around thought that all snowboarders consistently smoked marijuana. Snowboarding slowly evolved to the grate sport that it is today. having to deal with limited spots to go to snowboard with the mountains not allowing them in and having to deal with the feud between skiers and snowboarders. In 2004 snowboarding made its biggest hit with over 6.6 million people taking part in the sport. In 2008 this number reduced to 5.1 million because the weather wasn’t so great. Snowboarding isn’t just about fudes, over time snowboarding has other interesting things that’s evolved from the start to now. There is many different styled of snowboarding such as free ride, witch is just going down a mountain doing whatever you please having the best time as possible with no groomed trails just fresh powder. There is dry slope witch is a man made slope that is freshly groomed more for the speed and accuracy. There is free style witch is jumps and rails and doing tricks. Last there is free carve witch is going down a powdery or man made slope carving like a slalomed. In competition all of this falls under a category but all of the skills from each one will help you. In competition there is many different competition categories such as slope style, big air, half pipe, boarder cross, Indy cross, rail jam, racing, and slush cup. Snowboarding has become a big sporty and most recently in the past thirty years it has progressed alot.
By Chad McNeal
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