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Intro

Snowboarding feels like it has always been there, but most of its history fits inside one lifetime. People who rode the first mass-produced boards are still riding today. In roughly thirty years the sport went from a children's toy to something banned on most ski slopes, and then to an Olympic sport.

This article follows that path, from the earliest experiments to the modern competition formats. Where sources disagree, we say so.

The early experiments

People had tried standing sideways on a board in the snow long before anyone called it snowboarding. The earliest well-documented case is Vern Wicklund, who in 1917, at age 13, rode a modified sled standing up in his parents' backyard in Cloquet, Minnesota. Years later he patented the idea, but only a handful were ever made, and it did not catch on.

1965: the Snurfer

The real starting point is a garage in Muskegon, Michigan. On Christmas Day 1965, engineer Sherman Poppen bound two children's skis together into one wide board for his daughters to ride down a hill. There were no bindings. A rope tied to the nose let the rider hold on and steer.

His wife Nancy named it the Snurfer, a mix of "snow" and "surfer". Poppen applied for a patent in March 1966 and was granted US patent 3,378,274. He licensed the idea to the Brunswick Corporation, best known for bowling equipment, which put the Snurfer in shops within a year.

It sold in huge numbers, though sources give different figures. Wikipedia says more than half a million were sold in 1966 alone. Smithsonian Magazine says Poppen sold close to a million by 1970. Either way, a generation of American kids grew up riding one.

Brunswick also ran Snurfer competitions from 1968, and these contests brought together several people who would go on to build the first real snowboards. Poppen died on 31 July 2019.

The 1970s: the board builders

The Snurfer was a toy. The people who turned it into a sport were surfers, skateboarders and tinkerers who wanted something that could really carve.

Winterstick (1972)

In 1972, Dimitrije Milovich, a surfer, founded Winterstick, generally described as the first modern snowboard company. His boards were inspired by surfboards and had features such as laminated fiberglass, steel edges on some models, and nylon foot straps. Winterstick boards worked well in deep powder, which is where they were designed to be ridden.

Sims (1976)

Tom Sims, a former pro skateboarder from California, had experimented with boards since his teens. He founded Sims Snowboards in 1976 and brought skateboarding's style and attitude to snow.

Burton (1977)

Jake Burton Carpenter started Burton Snowboards in Vermont in 1977. He had ridden Snurfers as a teenager and wanted to make a version for adults with better control. Burton is often credited with helping popularise the word "snowboarding" itself.

In 1979 Burton turned up at the World Snurfing Championship in Grand Rapids, Michigan with a board using his own binding design. According to the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History, he won, though he was also the only competitor in the event he entered. The rivalry between the East Coast Burton camp and the West Coast Sims camp shaped the next decade of the sport.

The 1980s: fighting for the lifts

The new boards had a problem: almost nowhere would let you ride them. Through much of the 1980s, most North American ski resorts banned snowboarding, citing insurance liability, safety and the behaviour of snowboarders.

The numbers show how fast that changed:

• In 1985, only about 7% of US ski areas allowed snowboarding, according to Wikipedia.
• By 1990, most major ski areas had made room for snowboarders, often with separate slopes or parks.
• Today, about 97% of ski areas in North America and Europe allow snowboarding.

Competitions grew along the way. In 1982 the first national snowboard race in the United States was held at Suicide Six near Woodstock, Vermont. In 1985 Absolutely Radical, one of the first magazines dedicated to snowboarding, appeared. Board technology moved quickly too: high-back bindings, steel edges and boards designed for hard-packed snow made it possible to ride on groomed runs, not just in powder.

The 1990s: halfpipes, freestyle and the big mountains

Once riders were allowed on the lifts, freestyle took off. Early halfpipes were dug by hand, and quality varied wildly. In the early 1990s, machines such as the Pipe Dragon made it possible to cut smooth, consistent halfpipe walls, and that let riders go much higher and develop new aerial tricks.

At the same time, big mountain freeriding and filming became a culture of their own. In 1996 the Swedish rider Johan Olofsson became famous for his runs down steep Alaskan faces in the film TB5, which showed that a snowboard could be ridden at high speed on big lines.

1998: Olympic debut at Nagano

Snowboarding entered the Olympics at Nagano, Japan, in February 1998 with two disciplines for men and women: giant slalom and halfpipe.

It was not a smooth debut:

• Ross Rebagliati of Canada won the first men's giant slalom gold, then was stripped of it after testing positive for marijuana. The Court of Arbitration for Sport gave the medal back, because marijuana was not on the IOC's list of banned substances at the time, even though it was listed by the ski federation (FIS).
• Many riders were unhappy that the Olympic events were run by the FIS, the international ski federation, rather than by snowboarding's own organisations. The Norwegian rider Terje Haakonsen, widely considered the best halfpipe rider in the world, boycotted the Games.
• The first halfpipe gold medals went to Gian Simmen of Switzerland and Nicola Thost of Germany. Karine Ruby of France won the women's giant slalom. American Shannon Dunn won bronze in the women's halfpipe.

The Olympic programme since then

The Olympic snowboarding programme has grown steadily:

The most famous Olympic snowboarder is probably Shaun White of the USA, who won the halfpipe in 2006, 2010 and 2018. His success, along with television coverage of the X Games, helped make snowboarding a mainstream sport in the 2000s.

What changed, and what did not

Comparing a Snurfer with a modern board shows how far the equipment has come: bindings and boots instead of a rope, steel edges, sidecut, camber and rocker profiles, sintered bases and carbon or fiberglass layups. We go through those in our guide to choosing a snowboard.

The culture has kept more of its roots. Snowboarding still borrows from surfing and skateboarding, still values style as much as results, and still has a tension between contest riding and riding for its own sake. The Haakonsen boycott in 1998 and the countless riders who never compete at all are both part of the same story.

Timeline

Sources

• Smithsonian Magazine: A brief history of snowboarding
• Smithsonian National Museum of American History: Inventor Sherman Poppen, snurfing his way into history
• Wikipedia: Snurfer
• Skiing History: Sherman Poppen
• Wikipedia: Snowboarding
• Wikipedia: Snowboard
• Wikipedia: Snowboarding at the Winter Olympics
• The Canadian Encyclopedia: Ross Rebagliati
• CAS ad hoc Division (Nagano) 98/002: Rebagliati v. IOC
• Olympedia: Snowboarding at the 1998 Winter Olympics
• Red Bull: The history of snowboarding