Ticket to Ride
On The Bay Magazine, Holiday Issue 2007
It’s a scene of controlled chaos. Snowboarders decked out in trendy streetwear hang out in groups, their relaxed demeanour belying more serious intentions. Famous pro riders – including Collingwood-born Jesse Fox – sit in the midst of the crowd, signing autographs for fans. Parents and kids cluster around, waiting for the chance to meet their heroes.
Every winter, snowboarders from all over Ontario make their way north to Southern Georgian Bay to ride the many resorts that dot the local landscape. The high quality of the resorts and terrain parks here, combined with the most vertical in the province, makes it destination number-one for Ontario riders.
But once a year, that traffic reverses and snowboarders head south to the annual Ski & Snowboard Show in Toronto to immerse themselves in the scene just described. Why? It’s not the used-board swap and it’s definitely not the big-city traffic. It’s business.
Unlike the life of a competitive ski racer (a topic we looked at in the Winter 2007 issue of On The Bay), the life of an aspiring snowboarder is very much an entrepreneurial one. Networking may be the typical domain of suits and eggshell-white business cards, but in this case, it’s a chance for riders to meet pros (whose opinions carry weight), team managers (the direct link to sponsors) and media people (who influence).
To snowboard professionally is the goal of many of the riders you see on the slopes and terrain parks of Blue Mountain and the private clubs, but it is a much different game than skiing or even most other sports. “Making it” as a pro rider is not simply just about winning events. Other, more financially lucrative, career opportunities include sponsorships by major companies, filming snowboard-movie parts, and shooting photos for magazines.
These are not necessarily pursuits exclusive to one another. Most of the best snowboarders in the world combine all of the above. But the path to success is one filled with ambition, tough decisions and careful navigation of contractual, financial and social waters. The riders you see flipping, sliding and spinning at the local mountains may just look like they’re goofing off, but many are in hot pursuit of potentially million-dollar careers on snow.
Watching a professional halfpipe competition is always exciting – riders boosting airs out way above the top of the pipe’s walls, spinning an almost inconceivable amount of times before landing back on that same vertical surface. But it was never more exciting than the 2006 Winter Olympic Games in Torino, Italy where Brad Martin – who grew up riding at Craigleith Ski Club and Blue Mountain – qualified to represent Canada in the halfpipe event.
It was the most hype snowboarding had received than in any of the previous two Olympic Games in which it had been included. It was a major attraction and the crowds were massive. Standing at the top of that halfpipe waiting to drop in, Martin says, was “crazy”.
“It’s hard to explain,” he says reflectively, “but standing up there with so many people in the stands….” He trails off, trying to put the feeling into words. “It was just crazy.”
Who wouldn’t want that kind of glory? The Olympics is watched by everyone and is a source of national pride for every country participating – who wouldn’t want a part of that? Yet snowboarding’s history is littered with people who outright rejected any type of organized competition, never mind the Olympics.
Snowboarding was a renegade sport when it started in the late ‘70s and has been filled with renegades ever since. Because of this, formal competition and snowboarding have always had somewhat of an uneasy relationship. Some riders love it, some riders hate it, but nearly everyone starts out doing it. But what are the options for an elite athlete who opts out of competing? Isn’t that an oxymoron?
Snowboarding as a professional sport is primarily driven by sponsorship dollars dolled out by the companies who manufacture the sport’s products. In return for the paycheque, the riders are expected to promote the company’s products. This is where snowboarding differs from other sports, because the obligation for the athlete does not solely rest on appearing in advertisements and catalogues.
Since snowboarding is a sport of “cool” and credibility is everything, the greatest value a team rider can contribute to the brand is to snowboard exceptionally with style, courage, creativity and innovation and be caught on camera doing it. In turn, these photos appear in enthusiast magazines and are put into the hands of the fans – who, the theory goes, buy the products their favourite riders use.
Alternatively, if they are filmed doing their brave feat, this may make it into a snowboarding movie, produced by a number of brands and film companies in the industry. These videos are immensely popular with snowboarders and play a key role in shaping public opinion as to what riders and what companies are cutting-edge and cool.
Some riders, such as Jesse Fox, almost solely focus on filming and rarely compete at all. Their careers are based on getting riding footage that ultimately promotes the brand they represent. Others, such as Brad Martin, combine both by focusing primarily on competition but taking the time to go filming as well. Whichever route you choose, success requires dedication and a lot of hard work.
Jesse Fox grew up at the foot of Blue Mountain, right on Highway 26 in the home he shared with his parents and two brothers. All talented athletes, the Fox boys spent their childhoods on the ski hill and when snowboarding burst onto the scene, Fox was instantly intrigued. “The first time I saw a snowboard, I was at the tobogganing hill, which is now the tube-sliding zone at Blue Mountain. I saw someone hiking up with a snowboard and I wanted one right away. That Christmas, I got one from the Sears Catalogue,” he remembers with a laugh.
Like Martin, Fox started his career by riding in local halfpipe contests and soon found himself with enough good finishes to attend the Junior National halfpipe finals in Lake Louise, Alberta. He was just 15 years old, but had already picked up a sponsorship by Sims Snowboards. He won the event, and in doing so, earned a new sponsorship with snowboarding heavyweight Burton Snowboards.
After the win and the new sponsorship, he competed “a lot”, travelling all over the world to chase World Cup points, attempting to earn a spot on the 1998 Canadian National Snowboarding Team. He wanted to go the Winter Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan but crushingly, missed being selected by just one slot.
The missed opportunity marked a turning point, Fox says, and his priorities shifted. He was still interested in contests, but now that his schedule was freed from the pressure of earning World Cup points, he could pursue snowboarding in a whole new way.
Moving to Whistler, B.C., he started filming and shooting photos for magazines as well as competing in different kinds of contests. (Major contests like the Winter X Games rank much higher than the Olympics in the eyes of many riders.) His sponsorship with Burton ended, an unexpected turn that was then followed by his “best season ever”, earning contest wins, a feature interview in Snowboard Canada magazine and a part in a snowboard movie.
Today, Fox’s momentum remains strong. He rides for Rome Snowboards, continues to get coverage in major snowboarding magazines and has a new part in the Rome Snowboards’ movie Any Means. He spends his winters out in the B.C. backcountry and on trips all over the world, shooting video for his sponsors and earning his living with 5 a.m. wakeup calls and long days trying to land new and ever more difficult tricks.
He never imagined snowboarding would take him this far, he says, but it’s an opportunity for which he’s grateful he’s been able to pursue.
“I never wanted to do it to make a living by any means, but it got to the point where people were still supporting me and allowing me to do this and I was like ‘I’m going to do everything I can to keep this going because it’s a great lifestyle.’”
Getting to the point that both Fox and Martin have reached isn’t easy and as the sport gets more sophisticated, it only gets harder. The tricks that riders have to do to top one another get bigger and more technical and there is an ever-greater pool of talent to compete against for sponsorship dollars. There has to be a starting point though, and while both Martin and Fox both started out in the more formal structure of the Canadian Snowboarding Federation (CSF) system, today there are a variety of ways young people can pursue a professional career, especially here in the Collingwood area.
Contests remain to this day one of the best avenues to gain name recognition as a rider and generate hype to attract sponsors. Locally there are three main competitive options for freestyle snowboarders: CSF-sanctioned events, such as the halfpipe events run by the Association of Ontario Snowboarders (AOS), privately-run or resort-based events such as the Blue Mountain Triple Challenge and private club events.
One of the fastest-growing local contest series is the interclub freestyle snowboarding series, run as a coalition between Osler Bluffs, Alpine Ski Club, Georgian Peaks and Craigleith Ski Club. It has grown from 30 people when it first started seven years ago to an average of 120 per event last season. “It’s probably one of the most successful programs of its kind in the country,” says Jeff Dawson, snowboard program director at Craigleith Ski Club and one of the founding organizers of the series.
Tyler King, snowboard program director and terrain park manager at Alpine is another key player in the interclub series. He says the raison d’être for the series’ was to create a fun, non-competitive atmosphere in which riders could test their skills. Because snowboarding is so culturally different sport than skiing, emphasizing fun has been an critical to the program’s success, he says.
“Our goal is that every participant gets a prize. We don’t focus on the top three people that place in each event – the winners are announced, but they don’t necessarily get the best prize. It’s a bib-draw for all the prizes that involves all the riders.”
The interclub series helps prepare Alpine riders for the next level up, which is provincially-sanctioned competition run by the Association of Ontario Snowboarders (AOS). Riders at the provincial level can work towards going to the North American (NorAm) Snowboarding Finals, and ultimately, try to make the national team. It’s been a successful formula – Alpine has sent riders to the National Finals every year for the past decade.
For Jeff Dawson, the real value of the program is not in its ability to shape skills. Its value is its legacy of shaping attitudes and keeping the fun and friendly spirit of snowboarding alive.
“I think we’re playing a big part in the development of these athletes that really does translate through the years,” he says. “You go to the national championships and everybody is a friend at the top of the pipe and everybody cheers everyone on. I can’t say that the good attitude all stems from grassroots-style programs, but I think it’s from the love of doing it. It’s much different than other competitive sports where there’s not a lot of camaraderie. I think it’s one of the great things to have in the sport and I think it makes it unique.”
One of the more recent local developments in snowboarding has been the rise of private coaching. Leading the charge is Jesse Fulton, a former pro rider and a long-time fixture on the local hills. His Icarus Shreducation program is designed to take young riders from beginners to pros in a carefully designed system of coaching, mentoring and progression. One of his star riders, Palmer Taylor, 14, is a Collingwood local and member at Alpine Ski Club.
Fulton can be seen at almost every local event and at the parks on weekends, riding up and down the slopes with his riders, calling out tips and encouragement as they make their way down a contest course, halfpipe or day of training in the terrain park.
He believes that the best way to get a rider like Taylor up the ladder of success is to teach her everything he has learned first-hand as a pro. He’s had incredible success with the program so far, with riders like Taylor raking in contest results and others such as Harrison Gray and Zac Stone already signing major sponsorship contracts. His advantage? He knows the game, he knows the opportunities that exist and he knows how to take advantage of them.
“I want these kids to learn from my mistakes. I’ve blown a lot of opportunities along the road, with ego and the illusion that it was going to last forever. For example, I’m really strict about how kids handle their sponsors. It’s really important. If you don’t portray yourself well, they can get a sour taste in their mouths and that can shut down your career. You have to maintain your composure and you have to be polite.”
Private coaching has been a rarity in snowboarding until recently, but its explosion in popularity can be seen as proof that there are a lot of parents out there who a) understand there are opportunities in this sport, but are b) a bit bewildered about how to take advantage of them given the sport’s non-formal structure.
The opportunities to succeed in snowboarding are unconventional, yes, but the endearing nature of the sport is that success in competition does not necessarily have to define an athlete. With this pressure removed, so to is some of the fierce aggression that defines other sports. Snowboarding is fun and no matter what the stakes, riders seem to find ways to have a good time. Brad Martin saw it firsthand in the Athlete Village in Torino when he noticed that national flags and rivalries simply haven’t permeated snowboarding in the same way they have in almost every other sport.
“I found it funny that the snowboarders were all hanging out together in Torino, from all of the different national teams. You’d look at other sports’ teams and they were all by themselves all the time, hanging out with their own teams. Snowboarding is it’s own little culture and everyone is having fun.”
“With some sports, you go to the Olympics and that’s your thing, that’s what you do,” he adds. “But with snowboarding, there’s so much else.”
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