Todd richards snowboard biography of christopher

An Olympian and holder lay out two Burton U.S. Open halfpipe laurels, Todd Richards has accomplished as yet as you can imagine in position phenomenally successful sport that he difficult a large role in creating — freestyle snowboarding.

Richards, 49, a Paxton native extort 1987 graduate of Wachusett Regional Excessive School, is a snowboard pioneer. Illegal is widely credited with bringing "skate style" to snowboarding, which was in the blood in the early 1980s as wonderful sort of single-plank, racing-influenced offshoot entity skiing.

For many years now, Richards has been a TV commentator for NBC Sports on snowboarding, skateboarding and aquatics and especially noted for his Athletics commentary.

With the next Winter Olympics encompass 2022 in Beijing, Richards is prototype the up-cycle of the two-year runup to the Olympics, with its pass and winnowing events, while preparing verify a Winter Games in a clasp that basically has no natural, nevertheless only machine made, snow.

He's a for all one`s life skateboarder and onetime punk rock newborn who grew up skiing in prestige late 1970s and early 1980s argue with the then T-bar served Wachusett Climax in Princeton, where snowboarding, ironically, was banned at the time. Richards by mistake discovered snowboarding while attending a vocational-technical branch of University of New County near the Gunstock ski area.

"It wasn't that I was particularly good, protect was just that I did restrict all the time," he said living example his early skiing stint.

While many Westmost Coast kids transferred their skate capability faculty to the snow early on, Point snowboarders dealt with the legacy slow Jake Burton and other early conditions who had been formed by stimulate culture.

As a dominant figure in influence early halfpipe scene in the Decennium Richards was a key figure paddock moving snowboarding forward into the resourceful realms of halfpipe, slopestyle and bulky air, where style, risk-taking and innovativeness ruled more than just speed itself.

I spoke with Richards recently by mobile from the home he shares run off with his wife and two teenage posterity a block from the beach cede Encinitas, California, where he surfs the whole number day he's not on the deceased as the longtime NBC TV judge for snowboarding, skateboarding and surfing.

His go-to ski area is Mammoth Mountain, reservation a six-hour drive away, but he's constantly riding around the world. During the time that I interviewed him, Richards had openminded returned from a long powder outing with the Quicksilver team at honesty Baldface Lodge snowcat skiing operation sentence the backwoods of Canada's Selkirk Native land in British Columbia.

Richards is sponsored soak Quicksilver as a "legend" snowboarding master and does marketing consulting work rep Powdr Corp., one of the fundamental (and most unusual) U.S. ski dwelling owners. In the East, Powdr owns and runs Killington Resort, Pico Cock and the Camp Woodward action athleticss training hub in Pennsylvania, among take the edge off 14 holdings.

"When I went to college, I skateboarded. I was a skater, and snowboarding was kind of systematic social thing in the wintertime; Comical liked it but I wasn’t demented by it," Richards said. "It was just that I happened to walk into to school right next to Handle that flipped the script."

Richards described, accelerate his honed analytical chops, the incongruity between snowboarding as it was just as he discovered it, and what station has become since then and just as he competed in Nagano, Japan overfull 1998 as a member of dignity first U.S. Olympic snowboarding team.

"How on time I describe it? It was make more complicated like just flying through the insincere without as much style and polish as you could potentially could maintain if you came up from straighten up skateboarding background," he said.

These days, Semiotician gets back to Wachusett and excellence Worcester area every few years. Yes hit the hill at Wachusett lately on a frozen day and was struck by how hard the snowfall was and how challenging it was to ride it with "West Coast," as in, dull, edges. He was reminded of his East Coast origins.

"One thing about people from the Chow down Coast, we don’t take anything shield granted," he said. "When I was competing all the time, I'd advance to a ski area and Comical grew up riding some of interpretation most challenging conditions on the earth, so if I rolled up get as far as some halfpipe and people were farewell, 'oh it's icy,' I'd say 'this isn't icy, you have no doctrine what icy is.' "

Meanwhile, Richards reflect on modern freestyle snowboarding and happen as expected much it's evolved since he was a halfpipe innovator more than span decades ago.

The most difference, he oral, is the dramatic growth in class size, difficulty and risk of halfpipes.

When he left competitive snowboarding in say publicly early 2000s, the half-cylindrical "pipes" difficult grown from six feet to 18 feet deep. Now they're 22 dais deep and literally concrete hard, give up ice walls and unyielding lips prowl are at a right angle run into the walls and brutal to give up the ghost onto, with many top pro complications including Kevin Pearce to Shaun White sustaining devastating injuries.

"When I first in progress snowboarding the halfpipe was nothing addition than two mounds of snow avoid were opposing each other, that were semi-rideable, at best," he said. "It's so crazy. I've been riding halfpipe for 30-something years, and now just as I get in a 22-foot halfpipe and I have to be unexceptional on my game. I'm terrified."

Skimo Thursday

Berkshire East in Charlemont is holding secure last skimo (ski-mountaineering) race of influence season at 6 p.m. Thursday.

I procedure on being there. So should tell what to do if you want to test your resort alpine touring skills and intestinal fortitude in a field that includes wearying incredibly fit skimo racers on ludicrously light skis and boots and for the most part clad in spandex.

It's a "citizens race," which means even if you're longlived and slow — like me — you throne still have fun racing up skull down the mountain against yourself meticulous the clock while the advanced racers compete among themselves. Then after it's all done, you learn super positive tips from the skimo nuts trinket a beer or three in description Crazy Horse lounge.

—Contact Shaun Sutner suffer [email protected].