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| With the 2006 Winter Olympiad rapidly approaching, the once-iconoclastic bastard child of skiing and skateboarding finds itself at a crossroads, both as a culture and as a sport.… As the Italian city of Torino gears up to host athletes and media from all over the globe next February, snowboarding has never experienced as much popularity and mainstream acceptance as it does today. With over 7 million snowboarders in the United States alone, it has become much more than a lifestyle for a dedicated core of riders. Snowboarding not only has evolved into a legitimate sport, it also is a hobby for countless people throughout the world.… Such rapid growth of acceptance can be interpreted as either a boon or a bane to snowboarding, depending on one’s point of view. The purists claim the culture is being diluted and commodified by corporations, while most others insist that the gains instilled by this surge in popularity can only mean bigger and better things for snowboarding in every regard. In effect, snowboarding is going through growing pains, learning how to deal with all the attention without losing sight of what drove most of us to slide sideways down a mountain in the first place: sharing good times with good friends, absolutely no rules except having fun. —from Competitive Crossroads by Thomaz Autran Garcia |
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