The Return of Style by Nils Degremont DISCUSS THIS FEATURE HERE

First of all, I would like to apologise for my English which is really French-influenced - I hope the meaning of what I want to say will be clear to all!  Nils.

2004 soon.... it's been 32 years almost since Dimitri Milovich invented the real snowboard. It seems ages for the younger breed of riders, and a very short time to us, the second and third generation of boarders. What is the state of the sport today?  Where do we see it going? A few people think it's time for a reaction, time for style, time for a business free snowboarding spirit and want to share that and teach it to the willing ones.

  
It is important to see the relation between the sport’s history and its relation to the business to understand why snowboarding is having an identity crisis, and what can be done to try to help escape that situation.

The 70's, with the pioneer years, marked the time for total experimentation - people creating boards and fighting with the resorts to get the snowboard allowed to be used on the lift systems. It was the time of the backyard shapers, the genius of certain people that created brands, inventing each time the better tool for snowboarding. Apart from in the USA, most of us didn’t hear of snowboarding back then, and the first generation snowboarders were pretty much alone using whatever they could find to dress, and have fun in the powder (no edges, no bindings).

The 80’s marked the growth of a sport at the time of VCR’s through the first videos, and images that were shown to the X generation at this time. Regis Rolland’s importance to the sport is considerable.... Most of the people that saw the Frenchman escape from the jaws of evil monoskiers in the sequel "Apocalypse Snow" wanted to feel the same freedom.  It started the snowboarding mania in Europe.  Surfing, Windsurfing, and Snowboarding were the three S's of the fun years, when we wore colorful and ugly pink sun blockers and white sunglasses with gold plated screens. Snowboarding was then exploding with the creation of many brands worldwide, all created by snowboarders at a time where the ski brands didn’t want to believe in what some called a seasonal fashion that was too small to worth investing money in.

The 90’s saw the development of different kind of riders and tools - the freestyle as in opposition to the alpine which was perceived as evil skiing spirit. These were the years when ski companies created snowboard companies with camouflage names so that they could not be recognized and banned: Oxygen and O’sin were the undercover names for Atomic and Dynastar. That decade also saw the influence of snowboarding on skiing, and the salvation of a stagnating ski market thanks to new sidecuts imported from the snowboard designs.

  
A mature activity with a childish attitude.

Ten more years have past and we’re now ruled by freestyle and 16 year old pierced, tattooed and marketed pro-riders. The ski companies have taken over most of the market by either eating the competition and killing it (A snowboards...) or even removing the camo names (this year marks the end of Oxygen, and O’sin). Now the snowboarding spirit is created by trend makers that decide one year in advance what colors are the hype colors, what boarders will ride, and how much the parents will spend on the equipment. Our beloved sport is now in the hands of global economy, international flows and trends. It has reached maturity and at the same time childish behaviours in an image/success-oriented society. It is now eating itself, raping the last ounces of freedom that once was within it.

Meanwhile, as the market took over snowboarding, two different approaches are trying to live, away from the magazines and hype. The first is soul riding, and the second is the search for style.

Soul riding consists of a man, a tool and the mountain, away from cameras and magazines. In search for the perfect powder or carve line on the snow. In France, people like Polo Gasgoin hiding in La Grave before ski bums invaded the place, or even Marco Siffredi who died last September on Everest are good representatives of this philosophy. No need for sponsors or coverage - just ride for the sake of it, away from crowds and society.

This has limits, however, and cannot apply to most of us who are living in cities, with families and jobs to take care of. Only a handful of people in each sport like surfing and snowboarding are lucky enough to live that way. The spirit within is, however, shareable and shall not be forgotten.... it is communicable and creates huge fun for those whom approach it.

Last week I bought a French snowboard magazine and felt the danger.  Out of 230 pages there was just ONE page actually showing a snowboarder on the snow, simply turning on snow. The rest was 229 pages of ads, and teenage riders spinning into air - most of the pics didn't show the mountain below them. I tried to imagine how many years would it take before snowboarding would be called 'circusboarding' or 'trickboarding', and when snow wouldn’t be needed at all. It made me wonder why we let that happen, why we let the magazines be driven by the ads and the ski companies wanting to appear as cool, and why we should let marketers make a sport for teenagers when most riders are grown ups.

The alpine community is the first real community within snowboarding. It made the snowboard itself what it is today, and is the missing link between the 80’s and today. At a time when the companies started leaving the alpine market in order to launch the FS movement, alpine riders worldwide stuck to what they knew was a real form of freedom - carving pure lines on the groomed snow away from the buzz of the market.

This is where the extremecarving story began - in the mid 90’s, at the time of baggy pants and aggressive attitude. Jacques Rilliet and Patrice Fivat were two Swiss snowboarders and they worked hard on their own, unnoticed, in developing a style that would be the purest and cleanest of them all. They worked on the boards, and on removing from the riding technique the unnecessary movements that create bad looking, inefficient and overall bad quality snowboarding. 

Meanwhile, most European alpine riders - especially in France, Italy and Switzerland - felt like dinosaurs, riding boards that were about to disappear, surrounded by pipes and parks that would make them look like aliens. The internet made it possible to search for others, federate, and try to think into the future. I was surfing on google a few years ago when a search took me to a small clip showing the two Swiss ripping like I never could have dreamed possible. We met through email, and finally decided to do something about the situation. They created a website that would try to make a point by showing what style can be. More than a technique and a way to carve, the idea was to teach, explain, and explain again how to achieve a better style through better technique of riding a snowboard - for all styles of riders - in a desire to achieve perfect gesture purity.  Pushed to the extreme, the site offers a new way of riding we called "extremecarving" - carve a turn to its extreme physical limits. It's goal is to produce extreme feelings and basically pure easy fun. We then decided to create a snowboard company that would produce a board able to be taken to the limits of what our riding style could permit but that is another story (it all began when people kept asking about our proto boards).
  

Extremecarving is just a matter of style

Most people think extremecarving is a way to look cool in front of people because it is so spectacular. We try to think past this (although it does look cool btw, and people "aaahh" and hoot when they see proper extremecarves!), and work continuously at improving our technique in order to clean the style.  The final goal being to make every turn look smooth and easy as if it was just basic business or walking in the street.

Snowboarding as a form of martial art

We try to discipline our body moves so that no extra useless moves appear while riding - ever. This approach is similar to that of ballet dancers, or martial arts followers that fight the pain in order to make impossible moves real and clean. Hours are spent mastering the arms, the legs and the rest of the body motions in order to achieve total control of the board, which is just an extension of our body and shall not take over the riders.

This quest we do toward pure style and minimalism - banishing arm waving and other counter-rotational behaviours also makes us better freeriders in the powder when we ride our powder swallowtail boards, and better also when it comes to jumps and small tricks. I personally feel way better on powder days today using that cleaned style which helps me forget about anything but me and the snow.

Extremecarving will pull alpine snowboarding to a more fun activity than where it is now. Competition boards and stiff race bindings made most beginners turn away from alpine snowboarding. We are trying to bring people back on the groomed slopes instead of snowparks, trying to make them have fun with their families or friends just carving freely without need for speed where the snow is - on the slopes.

We have had many people hypnotised by the videos and photos of extremecarving, and are receiving many emails from people that say they felt really lonely when they were the only alpine rider in a given resort - and felt that they could now have a goal..... to progress into something that would improve their overall riding and give them incredible feelings.  This is our main goal.

Nils Degremont works for Swoard snowboards.  To find out more about extremecarving, check out the site www.extremecarving.com.