Snowboarding not so flaky

ASPEN, Colo. – Lots of people like to say they were there at the beginning.

Jake Burton really was.

The man who had a feeling the snowboard could provide more than merely a way to pass time and save money on the back hills now sees his name on those boards at pretty much every ski resort in America.

He watches one of his proteges, Shaun White, making millions and dominating the pro scene. He hears the old debate – the discussion about whether snowboarding really belongs in the mainstream – being replaced by more relevant topics. All in all, he likes the landscape he sees, as snowboarding gets ready for its fourth Olympics – more than three decades after Burton made a business out of the “lifestyle” sport.

“For a while there, snowboarding got a little bit too much of, sort of, ‘I’m better than you,’ and there was sort of a hierarchy,” Burton said last weekend at the Winter X Games. “Now, I just think it’s much more pure. Everyone from the kids to the best riders in the world, they’re clearly having the time of their lives.”

Having a good time: That was the backbone of snowboarding, from the time Sherman Poppen rigged together two skis and a rope to make what he called a Snurfer in 1965, to when Burton quit his job in Manhattan a dozen years later to advance the concept and bring the boards to the masses.

For decades, ski resorts rejected snowboarders as reckless, stoners and neer-do-wells. (And possibly because they didn’t spend enough.)

“I remember going to the contests, them handing us a shovel and saying, ‘Go ahead,’ and we’d start digging out the halfpipe,” said Seth Wescott, the defending Olympic champion in snowboardcross.

Also for decades, snowboarders chafed at the thought of having outside forces, mainly from the buttoned-down skiing world, telling them how to run their competitions.

These days, many of the old debates are fading, in part because the biggest stars of the sport have largely embraced where the sport has gone.

The next big issue, it seems, will be how much is too much.

White, with his long, red hair and breezy, engaging personality, has raised the bar for snowboarding but also found himself alienated from some of his fellow competitors, who make only a fraction of his estimated $9 million a year. (A good portion of which comes from Burton’s company.)

“He’s so into it, though,” Burton said. “You really get the feeling that if the whole thing went away and there wasn’t a penny in it, he’d be doing it. It’s the fact that he’s so easygoing and so clearly enjoying the whole process. That’s why he connects with people.”

There is also a rapidly evolving danger component to the sport – both on the wipeout-filled snowboardcross courses and on the halfpipe, where White’s multi-flipping, multi-twisting Double McTwist 1260 is the trick that will win – or lose – the Olympic gold medal.

Burton is convinced all these issues will sort themselves out the way most have over the years: Riders will figure it out.

“If the sport got to the point where halfpipe riding became really dangerous, I think riders would do something about it,” he said. “It wouldn’t be cool anymore. Then something would have to happen and something would have to be tweaked.”