Snowboarding: A Relatively New Sport

Snowboarding

Recently in the last few years a new winter sport has started to rise in popularity. No it’s not skiing but it’s snowboarding. Snowboarding has taken a big hit on people who have nothing to do on weekends and weekdays. For some people snowboarding is not just something to do in the winter but, it is like their life. Some of the things that make snowboarding the way snowboarding is right now is the history, the many different competitions out there for boarders to compete in, and the riders them self.

Snowboarding started as just small wood pieces from barrels that kids in the 1920’s would strap onto their feet and ride down their local hill with a clothesline. The snowboarding we know today didn’t really start till about the 1960’s when Sherman Poppen made a toy for his daughter that combined two skis together and mounted the bindings to the skis on it. He called this invention a “snurfer”, a cross between the words surfer and snow. Within a few years Sherman had patented the design and sold almost one million “snurfers”. Within the next decade a 14 year old boy named Jake Burton Carpenter would start a company that is now a worldwide popular snowboarding brand. Jake’s board was made out of wooden planks that used water ski bindings as the bindings for the board. These bindings are very similar to what we have now. Those are just two of the people who have made snowboarding into what it is today and there are many more.

There are many different snowboarding competitions for all different riding levels. Some of the main competitions that are pretty big worldwide are The Winter X Games, The Winter Olympics, and The Dew Tour. Each of these competitions consists of smaller competitions within them. Slope style, pipe, a...

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...e best? Sometimes Burton, Ride, and K2 Snowboards are considered the best but, if you were to look deeper into that you might find a brand like Lobster, or Bataleon Snowboards whose boards are better quality and might be less known. Clothing is some of the ways riders express themselves. If you see a boarder with baggy clothes you might be able to suggest that he or she likes to ride park and hit big jumps. A rider who wears tighter clothing might like to just go down the hill or snowboard in backcountry.

All in all snowboarding is a new experience for some people and those people might go on liking it. For some people it might not be their thing but sooner or later they will get the hang of it. Just to think that snowboarding what it is today used to be pieces of wood that kids would ride down small hills on and that turned into riders doing 1080’s and back flips.