By John Weaver, in Vancouver for AFP Published: 10:49AM GMT twenty-three February 2010
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Shaun White, the snowboarding men"s halfpipe bullion award winner. Photo: EPA/VALDRIN XHEMAJ Whether it"s the "jeans" ragged by the US group - in sheer contrariety to the some-more required rigging of the skiers - or mouth-watering themselves to cooking at the White House, the snowboarding "dudes" have combined their own niche.
Competitors in the halfpipe even get to collect their own songs to float to, with Lady Gaga"s Bad Romance and MGMT"s Kids being renouned picks.
Marijuana make use of in between comparison Americans soarsBut no make a difference how self-consciously opposite it is, the sport, right away in the fourth Games, is alternate in to the mainstream, with Shaun White, a halfpipe rider, one of the megastars in Vancouver.
Asked how he was going to applaud maintaining his bullion medal, the multi-millionaire White said: "To encounter the boss of the United States would be cool. Go to the White House. I"m free for dinner."
Pointing to his front he said: "There"s been speak of tattoos. And I"m formulation on removing it right here."
Snowboarding has come a prolonged approach given Sherman Poppen assimilated a span of skis together in the mid-60s to emanate the "Snurfer". But Jake Burton Carpenter, owner of Burton Snowboards, believes it retains the singular inlet and brings an injection of girl culture.
Snowboarding"s initial strictly recognized eventuality took place in Leadville, Colorado in 1981.
It done the Olympic crawl at Nagano in 1998 with the hulk slalom and the halfpipe. Four years after in Salt Lake City the hulk slalom was forsaken in foster of the together hulk slalom. Snowboard cranky was combined in 2006.
Snowboarding"s Olympic odyssey began in argumentative resources when Canadian Ross Rebagliati was nude of his hulk slalom pretension in Nagano after contrast certain for marijuana.
But the award was easy as there was no grave agreement in between the International Olympic Committee and the International Ski Federation (FIS) to anathema the drug.
Carpenter, seen as one of the key total in the sport"s development, pronounced the thought of a skiing physique using the competition jars.
"It"s a small bit ungainly for a ski association to be using a snowboarding eventuality but it"s opportunely not all the time. Snowboarding is a really anarchistic eventuality and it regularly has been.
"There"s the X Games, there"s the Open Series and a lot of opposite events, so I think that"s great since it lets the competition develop.
"What snowboarding brings to the Olympics is a great sip of girl enlightenment that comes from a flattering pristine place and it"s great to do it here but it"s not what the competition is all about."
And he believes snowboarding has defended the interest as a fun event.
"Shaun (White) is carrying as most fun as anybody. He"d be you do it if he wasn"t paid a nickel and he"d be pulling himself for certain but that is so most of what snowboarding is about.
"If you and I go out and ride, we"d only have fun and pull each other, progress. You can feel that in their roving nonetheless they are competitors for sure.
"What"s engaging about snowboarding is that everyone that does it flattering most motionless to do it themselves. It"s not a competition that your silent or your father shoved down your throat where you didn"t have any choice.
"You motionless that you longed for to do it and that sort of gives us all this connection. If somebody cuts you off pushing down the highway with a snowboard trustworthy to their car you"ll cut them a little slack. It"s a really great tie that the riders have and hopefully that will stay forever."
