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BACK IN THE DAY CONTENTS BURTON HISTORY The History of Snowboarding in North America 3 The History of Snowboarding in Europe 6 The History of Snowboarding in Japan 9 A Sport’s Roots: Vermont’s Burton Snowboards 11 Burton Sportartikel: The History of Burton Snowboards’ European Headquarters 13 Burton Japan: The History of Burton Snowboards’ Japanese Headquarters 15 Burton History Timeline 16 US Open Historical Highlights 18 BURTON COMPANY FACTS Company Fact Sheet 22 Beyond Snowboards: Burton’s Family of Brands 25 How Snowboard Graphics Get Created 26 BMC Factory Tour 28 Facts on Chill – Burton’s Non-Profit Learn to Snowboard Program 33 Burton’s Resort Programs Fact Sheet 34 ABOUT JAKE Jake Burton’s 2006 Biography 37 How Burton Got Started – In Jake’s Own Words 39 For more information on Burton Snowboards check out www.burton.com You can also call Burton Rider Service at: (800) 881-3138 THE HISTORY OF SNOWBOARDING IN NORTH AMERICA On Christmas morning in 1965, Sherman Poppen walked outside his home in Muskegon, Michigan, looked at a snow covered hill, and saw a wave. It seems like an odd scenario for the birth of snowboarding. But the Beach Boys had just sold twelve million albums, so it’s not surprising that a land-locked inventor with several industrial patents under his belt got the surfing bug and translated it to snow. “My wife was pregnant and told me I had to do something to get my two daughters out of the house or she was going to go crazy,” said Poppen, who was fascinated by surfing, though he had never tried it. “When I looked at that hill, I thought why not?” Remembering his daughter Wendy’s past attempts at standing on her sled, he hastily screwed two pairs of children’s skis together with some doweling and fashioned a surfboard for the snow. Within a few days, all the neighborhood kids were begging Mr. Poppen for what Mrs. Poppen dubbed the "Snurfer" by mixing the word "snow" with "surfer." Six months later, Poppen licensed the idea to Brunswick Manufacturing. Over the next ten years, more than a million Snurfers were produced and sold through chain sporting goods stores and toy stores. As with all inventions, there's always some speculation about who really pioneered the movement. Before Poppen, there were accounts of World War I soldiers standing sideways on barrel staves and sliding down snow-swept hills while they were stationed in Europe. At a local garage sale, Jake found a board dating back to the 1920s. And a recently discovered film shows an elegantly dressed man by the name of Vern Wicklund riding a snowboard-type sled sideways down a small Chicago hill in 1939. Wicklund family members have also uncovered patents for the board. This discovery adds historical depth to snowboarding, but it was Poppen’s Snurfer that first brought the idea to the masses. Jake remembers the Snurfer as his first winter ride. So do Winterstick Snowboards founder Demetrije Milovich and Avalanche Snowboards founder Chris Sanders. Burton, Winterstick and Avalanche all started up in the late 70s and early 80s, as did the West Coast-based Sims. Not long afterward, snowboarding arrived in Europe. Early European pioneers included Frenchman Regis Rolland, who rode his swallowtail snowboard into history as the “good guy snowboarder” being pursued by the “bad guy skiers” in the cult classic movies known simply as Apocalypse Snow I, II and III. The French dubbed the sport Le Surf, and surfing on snow became the newest winter sport worldwide. 3 In the early 80s, ski movies by Warren Miller and Greg Stump occasionally featured clips of snowboarders surfing deep powder. Articles on snowboarding gradually began popping up in skateboarding, surfing and skiing publications. Unlike with the Hawaiian-born water sport of surfing, no single occurrence brought modern-day snowboarding to the masses. Surfing hit the mainstream in the 60s, after the 1959 release of the movie Gidget and Bruce Brown’s 1966 release of The Endless Summer. Though the Vietnam War slowed the sport’s growth until the mid-70s, the romantic notion of chasing waves instead of paychecks was already firmly engraved into the world’s youthful minds – especially in America. But if any year could be marked as the beginning of the snowboarding explosion, it was 1985. That was the year the first magazine dedicated exclusively to snowboarding, Absolutely Radical, hit the newsstand, backed by visionary publisher Tom Hseih. By then, dozens of snowboard entrepreneurs were addicted to riding and recognized the huge potential of the sport. Six months later, Hsieh changed the name of his magazine to International Snowboard Magazine to tone down the sport's already "radical" image and to better represent the snowboarders of the world. In 1987, the launch of TransWorld Snowboarding Magazine and Snowboarder Magazine continued spreading the word. The magazines enjoyed high circulation numbers, targeting skateboarders, surfers and cross-over skiers. By 1990, every European country as well as Japan, Canada, Australia and New Zealand offered exclusive coverage of snowboarding. Local "zines" and independent filmmakers released Snowboarders In Exile and Totally Board while snowboard manufacturers like Burton fed the fire with Winter Waves and Chill. Skiers started to wonder, "Where did all these snowboarders come from?" For some staunch traditionalists, snowboarders came straight out of their worst nightmares. To them, snowboarders were the bad boys and girls of winter who, according to a 1994 television episode of American Journal, were "knocking down skiers like bowling pins." But that same year, the May 5th cover of Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “Snowboarding scores as the fastest growing sport with participation up 50 percent since the previous winter." Appropriately, a day later, Ride Snowboards became the first snowboard-specific company to go public. It raised over $5.75 million in its first day on the stock exchange. All this from a sport that was discounted as "a fad" by many ski resorts and mainstream media journalists. Parade Magazine quoted Time Magazine in its January 1988 issue, calling snowboarding the "Worst New Sport...To traditionalists, the breezy fad is a clumsy intrusion on the sleek precision of downhill skiing, but to some 100,000 enthusiasts, many of them adolescent males, it is the coolest snow sport of the season... Of course there are holdouts. Complains veteran Vermont skier, Mary Simons: Snowboarding is not about grace and style but about raging hormones." But that was 1988. Still, the sport continued to struggle for acceptance at many resorts in the early 90s. Many adolescent males rode snowboards, and while they had the same attitudes as adolescent males on skis, resorts and skiers saw a few bad apples riding fast and out of control, cutting lift lines and disregarding ski area boundaries. And so the stereotypes began. Anyone on a board was regarded as "one to watch" by the ski patrol and "one to watch out for" by the skiers. Eventually, riders and manufacturers began policing each other. They also started writing letters to the resorts lobbying for acceptance. Many resorts began to allow snowboarders, but a few resorts still held out against riders. Today, only a handful of resorts that ban snowboarders remain: Alta and Deer Valley in Utah, Taos in New Mexico and Mad River Glen in Vermont. Park City in Utah finally gave in during the 1996 season after bidding for the snowboard events at the 2002 Winter Olympics. More recently, on April 1st, 2001, Aspen opened its slopes to snowboarders. Snowboarding debuted as an official Olympic sport at the 1998 Winter Games in Nagano, Japan, proving that it was no longer a fad. The 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics fully launched 4 snowboarding into the mainstream, dominating the media and public’s attention before, during and after the Games. Burton Team rider Kelly Clark captured the first snowboarding Olympic gold medal for the United States at the 2002 Winter Games, winning the Women’s Halfpipe Competition. And Burton Global Team rider Ross Powers won the Olympic gold medal in Men’s Halfpipe, leading the Americans to the first medal sweep at the Winter Olympics since 1956. Burton Alpine rider Chris Klug also walked away from the Olympics with a bronze medal in the parallel giant slalom event, bringing Burton’s medal count to three – two gold medals and a bronze. After the huge success of snowboarding in the 2002 Olympics, the sport returned to the 2006 Winter Games in Torino, Italy featuring three different diciplines: halfpipe, boardercross and parallel giant slalom. Snowboarding was definitely the highlight of the games for 2006 selling out every single event and attracted more media attention than ever. In the end, Burton riders Shaun White and Hannah Teter took the gold medals in halfpipe and were both launched into a media tour whirlwind following their gold medal wins. The constant evolution of snowboarding can be seen in competitions with new formats that push riders to progress year after year. Competitions such as the Burton Global Open Series, the Abominable Snow Jam, The Arctic Challenge and the X-Games provide a showcase for top riders and expose up-and-comers to the snowboard community. Evolution of the sport has also been documented by the multitude of snowboard films that are released every year. Riders travel with film crews around the globe to capture new tricks and huge, superhero-like feats on film. In 2004, Romain De Marchi and Travis Rice were the first two snowboarders to conquer the infamous Chad’s Gap in Utah. One year later, Mads Jonsson landed a place in the history books soaring 187 feet off one of the biggest kickers ever built.