What is Snowboarding
Background
Snowboarding, like its surfing and skateboarding ancestry, is as much a lifestyle and culture as it is a popular sport. Its popularity is attributed to a freedom of expression rarely enjoyed by many mainstream sports.
Snowboarding can be enjoyed recreationally (for fun), with around 2 million people in the UK travelling to winter playgrounds every year, or competitively at both amateur and professional levels.
Competitive disciplines:
- Freestyle - judged subjectively on height, technicality, execution and most importantly style.
- Half-pipe - derives from skateboarding where riders drop into the half-pipe to fly high out of its vertical walls aiming to re-enter and then charge toward the opposite wall.
- Big Air - a steep run-in leading into a launch pad which sends riders up to 30m through the air, reaching heights of up to 10m.
- Slope Style - largely considered the ultimate test of an athlete's all-round freestyle ability, taking them over rails, slide boxes, jumps, hips and quarter-pipes all in one run.
- Alpine - timed or fastest competitor
- BoarderX/SkierX - like Motocross on snow, competitors race flat-out, and side by side over a course of jumps, bumps, gates and rollers.
- Parallel Slalom - derived from it's skiing counterpart, 2 competitors race on separate slalom courses that lie parallel to one another
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Brief History
It may not come as news that skiing was initially devised as a method for travelling across snowy plains and not for cranking huge powder turns in the name of fun. It may, however, surprise you to learn that examples of rock carvings discovered in the Arctic rim, depict men standing on what appear to be very long skis, and date back as long as 5000 years ago... yep, Stone-age rippers!
Snowboarding evolved from skiing in the late 1960's and employed the design principles of surfboards and skateboards. It has steadily developed to become the fastest growing winter sport in the world and in 1998 gained Olympic status in half-pipe, boardercross and parallel slalom disciplines.
Today, there are over 6,000 snow resorts around the world in more than 70 different countries
Facilities and Equipment Required
The UK has numerous snow resorts in Scotland and boasts the largest concentration of artificial and indoor slopes in the world; facilities which provide all year round snowboarding possibilities. Most resorts and slopes will have clubs that can cater for competitive aspirations.
Snowboarding requires specialised boots and boards, but all equipment may be hired at the snow resorts, artificial and indoor slopes.
Benefits of participation:
- Fitness
- Exhilarating
- Co-ordination and balance development
- Spatial awareness
- Skill acquisition
- Confidence building
- Single or group participation
- Beautiful surroundings
