Behind the US Open, "De-Marginalized"
2005 Snowboarding Championships in Stratton, Vermont

By George Davis - With over a quarter million dollars in prizes (cash, cars, etc.), it's abundantly clear that the US Open Snowboarding Championships are about more than just fierce competition and a gathering of the tribes. This event represents the pinnacle of professional sports marketing, the meticulous alchemy of athletics, entertainment and commercialism. Across its 23-year history—from humble conception as the National Snowboarding Championships to the spectacular US Open of today—the "Super Bowl" of snowboarding has evolved beyond anyone's wildest expectations or predictions. While it's always easier to judge from whence we've come than to understand the present or presage the future, my outsider's perspective permitted a glimpse into snowboarding not often paraded across the covers of the industry glossies.

Airborne above the mondo half pipe. (Photo by George Davis)

Burton, Stratton and a host of promotional and organizational partners put on one hell of a spectacle! Period. Everything is bigger and "badder" than you can anticipate. From the increasingly posh venue (owner/operator Intrawest has been making improvements to the Stratton Mountain Resort at a dizzying rate) to the splashy productions of high profile sponsors, from the carefully choreographed media output to the entertainment quotient (underground hip-hop phenomenon, Talib Kweli, dropped in for a "surprise performance" after the Rail Jam awards ceremony), the US Open has traveled far from its funky grassroots origins.

Commentators and advertisers often evoke those simple, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants roots when snowboarding equipment and apparel were improvised, and the only "rider lifestyle" was a shared passion for snow surfing instead of skiing. By definition those pioneers competed and innovated at the periphery of the winter sports industry.

Of course, time and success changed all that. Today, as evidenced at the US Open and dozens of publications and websites dedicated to the sport, snowboarding has swung from the margin to the mainstream. Snowboarding is quite literally eclipsing skiing as the hip, glam and only cool winter mountain sport and lifestyle. But its success presents some complicated challenges.

Those early days profoundly influenced snowboarding culture. It was alternative in every sense. In fact, it was so alternative, that it was close to a decade before most people even realized it existed. Many ski mountains banned it or limited access which inevitably pitted snowboarders against skiers and exclusive skier-centric mountains. Struggling for turf, snowboarders were perceived as rebellious as they sought to subvert the norms, the restrictions, the stereotypes. Due in part to this renegade reputation—and in part to the generally risk-averse nature of large corporations—snowboarding was not initially embraced by the ski industry titans. Instead, dozens of small upstarts began designing and producing snowboarding equipment and apparel to accommodate and propel this fledgling movement.

So the snowboarding culture was born: alternative, rebellious, blatantly subversive and decidedly un-corporate. This formula proved to be, well, highly effective, especially for selling snowboarding to the young generation already grappling with many of the same issues. Despite the maturation of the industry and the eagerness of more conventional ski industry companies to join in, this early established culture persevered, due in part to recognition by savvy marketing gurus that it was a highly effective sales niche.

Today, with the snowboarding industry booming and the un-corporate startups becoming seasoned, mainstream conglomerates (or else being gobbled up by other seasoned, mainstream conglomerates) it strikes an ironic chord to witness a snowboarding industry struggling to define itself as ever more alternative, more rebellious and more subversive. As the industry inevitably grows more and more corporate, more and more conventional, great effort goes into contriving a sort of ersatz funkiness hearkening back to the grassroots days of yore.

What do I mean? Am I implying that the inevitable byproduct of the industry's image-conscious marketing is that snowboarding is becoming a caricature of itself?

No. My depth of experience is sufficiently shallow that any such sweeping observations elude me. Yet I can't help but have the impression that snowboarding is concluding its innocent and experimental youth and entering an awkward adolescence, conflicted between spontaneity and rebellion and a more conservative, more calculated adulthood.

After a quarter century has snowboarding become conventional or is it simply coming of age? Let me share several indicative anecdotes garnered from my week at Stratton.

Chatting over lunch in the Sun Bowl Lodge, Burton's in-house legal council began discussing the recent acquisition of Four Star Distribution's snowboarding brands: Forum Snowboards, Jeenyus Snowboards Jeenyus Snowboards, Foursquare Outerwear Foursquare Outerwear and Special Blend Outerwear. He was grumbling about the challenge and inconvenience of absorption. Apparently it was taking a vast amount of work to get these little companies up to the sort of corporate muster mandated by Burton which involves good transparent bookkeeping, verifiable records and enforceable contracts with manufacturers, sponsored riders, etc.

I laughed and asked if the haphazard business practices he was struggling to overcome weren't endemic to the industry. He acknowledged my point but was quick to assure me that times are changing. The sloppy bookkeeping and accounting practices tolerated in the past are no longer acceptable as mergers and acquisitions render more conventional corporate frameworks, emphasizing transparency and accountability.

Another anecdote comes from a conversation I overheard between Hannah Teeter and Abe Teeter following the Halfpipe competition. Hannah announced to her brother that he'd won the $5,000 Nintendo DS Best Trick award for his frontside inverted 9. "Yes!" he shouted and pumped the air with his fist. "That's great because I'm totally broke." It reminded me of the sort of excitement voiced by a waiter or bartender after receiving a particularly good tip. Is snowboarding just a job?

Perhaps even more telling is the emergence of The Collection, a cooperative of top tier professional snowboarders including Ross Powers, Kelly Clark, Gretchen Bleiler, Andy Finch and Luke Mitrani.

"[The Collection is] a group of five top snowboarders who banded together at the 2004 Open to create the sport's first rider-controlled team. Since then, the Collection has hired a coach, physical therapists and a team manager to make travel arrangements and haul gear to events. The riders also share expenses during the week of an event by staying together in a rented house." (www.nytimes.com)