by Tina Basich
The Beastie Boys play at the first Boarding for Breast Cancer Snowboard and Music Festival at Sierra-at-Tahoe, California, 1996.
But of all the snowboarders I knew, it was Adam Yauch who could really take our event to the next level. I knew he was a real snowboarder and would be into supporting the cause if he could make it. I called and talked to him and he said OK, they’d be there, but he wanted to play a warm-up show in Tahoe the night before. He recommended we rent out a pizza joint, and I called around and couldn’t come up with any. So I called Shaun Palmer, a pro snowboarder who lives in Tahoe, to see if they could play at his house. It turned out he didn’t live at the house anymore, but I asked the guy who answered the phone if it was OK if the Beastie Boys played in his living room for a little bit. He quickly said that’d be fine.
The night before the event, we all drove up to Shaun’s old house and there was a mile of cars leading down the road to the highway. Obviously word traveled fast. About five hundred people had turned up. We had to push the couches over like barricades. People were just hanging out the windows and in every corner of that house. I made an announcement on the microphone inviting everyone to come to our event the following day and then introduced the Beastie Boys. They came in, set up, and rocked the house.
The next day, April 13, the day of our first Boarding for Breast Cancer Snowboard + Music Festival, all of us girls were there at 5 A.M., looking out over the scene where our stage was set up in the snow, our banners hung along the halfpipe, and the snowboard manufacturer booths and breast cancer awareness education area and art exhibits were all set up. It was quiet and empty but looked like it’d be a sunny day. We were thinking that if we could get five hundred people to show up, we’d raise $4,000 to $5,000 and that’d be pretty good.
With the Beasties after the show.
That day, 5,600 people showed up. We couldn’t believe it. We had the top pro riders in the country like Michele, Shannon, Michael, Barrett Christy, Tricia Burns, Megan Pischki, Bobby Meeks, Shaun Palmer, Jennie Waara, and Athena who came to compete. We all rode hard, putting on a show for this crowd and doing what we knew best to support the cause. Michele Taggart threw down a backside indy 360 into a “boob-grab”— where she literally grabbed her boobs before landing. Shaun caught such big air off the big-air jump people were blown away and photographers couldn’t take enough pictures because he was sporting our bright pink ribbons that we passed out to riders to show support. Jennie pulled a 180-method that won her top female status and a Trek mountain bike. Of course, being the creative types that they are, snowboarders made up countless other names for our event other than Boarding for Breast Cancer, like Jibbing for Jugs and BoobAID. Well, as long as it raised awareness…
Back at the stage, John Logic and Lisa tirelessly auctioned off goods all day long, including a scholarship to the Wild Women’s Snowboard Camp, boards, boots, clothing, goggles, sunglasses, hats….Snowboarders were everywhere, checking out our art area where we displayed snowboarders’ art and photos, the education area where we had jelly boobs we’d gotten from the American Cancer Society that had lumps in them so people could feel what a lump really felt like. In between the Spent Idols set and M.I.R.V., Andrea Martin, the founder of the Breast Cancer Fund, got onstage to remind everyone about the reason for our event: that more than 1.8 million women in this country have the disease and that 1 million more don’t know they have it. “It has become an epidemic,” she said. “Take charge of your own health, raise money, awareness, and shake things up, shake the tree!”
By the time Sick of It All came on, it was late afternoon and warm and the snow had gone slushy. Everyone had a smile on their tanned faces and you could smell the mix of sweat, wet clothing, and sunscreen in the mosh pit in front of the stage. The music whipped the crowd into a frenzy. Next up were the Beastie Boys. It was so exciting hanging out on the stage with my “event cofounders.” Wearing fluorescent orange overalls and looking a lot like Devo, the “Boys” came out and played their own punk performance under the pseudonym of “Quasar.” People were going crazy. The moshing got super heavy, which made the snow melt even more and the stage started to sink in the front. “Quasar” kept playing while our boyfriends, also known as our volunteer security guards that day, got sucked into the mosh pit trying to tame the crowd. It was useless, so we all just kept dancing on the stage.
Unfortunately, a rumor had started among the some of the mountain operators who had radios and it was translated back in town by police who were listening to the channels that “there was a riot up at Sierra.” Suddenly we could hear the whomf, whomf, whomf of a helicopter’s rotor blades overhead, just as Quasar figured out they’d better stop playing or else the stage was going to sink into the moshers. A big voice overhead called out on a megaphone, “Please clear the area, please clear the area…”
Quasar had stopped, but an impromptu skim pool competition, where snowboarders try to skim on their boards at high speed over a pond of melted snow, was already in high gear. One at a time, they came flying down the hill to see how far they could skim before crashing. A snowball fight started on either side of the skim pond, so the heli made another flyby. Of course, people started trying to peg the heli with snowballs. It was insane. Only after getting dunked in icy water, hit in the face with a slush ball, or threatened by another heli flyby, did people start to disperse.
All that was left was lots of garbage, banners askew, roadies packing equipment, and us. We’d forgotten to hire a clean-up crew. So, we grabbed some bags and started packing trash. We were tired but had raised $50,000 and were incredibly happy, talking and laughing about our event as we picked up programs and cups. We knew Monica would have appreciated the whole craziness of it all. That day at least, we knew we were appreciating life, and living the way we were supposed to.
Backside 360 in the backcountry of Utah.
Copyright © Kevin Zacher
CHAPTER 10
THE BIRTH OF FREERIDING
Now that there were more established female athletes, representing in contests, doing good things for good causes, we started to look at what else we really wanted to gain from snowboarding. For me, that answer came on one of the European World Cup tour events the season of that first Boarding for Breast Cancer. Shannon, my brother, and I traveled to a competition in this small village in Italy that was hosting the World Championships. The mountain runs were a total of 700 vertical feet, which is considered very short and small by any standards. There wasn’t even enough pitch in the mountain for the racers to get real speed to make a decent turn in the Giant Slalom course. The halfpipe was made up with what little snow they had left and was fenced in so the cows wouldn’t walk onto the course. And this course was going to determine the World Champion! Whatever. We weren’t the only ones who were bummed. All sorts of pros turned up and were disappointed at the conditions and the location that was chosen by the tour. I looked at the poor condition of the halfpipe and wondered how the weather was in Utah—they probably had fresh powder. Competing on the World Cup was so unglamorous sometimes. Shannon and I knew there was so much more to snowboarding than just competing, like freeriding down a big mountain with fresh powder on it.
We decided to finish up the trip with a freeriding day in Cortina, Italy, which was only an hour away. Cortina has huge mountains and it’s where the James Bond movies are filmed because of its scenery. Shannon and I took the gondola up to the very top. We scouted out a run that was untracked powder. We had to traverse on our boards around this cliff range to get to it. We kept going around the mountain and at one point I looked up and thought, “Oh my God!” I told Shannon to stop and look up. We couldn’t believe the mountain and this cliff we were standing under—it was about 600 feet above us and we were right underneath it so the view was breathtaking. Down below looked like the perfect run. Wide, open, diamonds of powder. We thought, let’s do this run together—we’ll do doubles instead of going down one at a time. We dropped in and it was one of the most memorabl
e runs of my life. Fresh powder turns that were perfect, snow flying in plumes with each turn, and we were yelling to each other the whole way down. At the bottom, we high-fived and hugged each other and were crying. We were so wrapped up in this feeling of a powder day in a beautiful place with friends. It was incredibly emotional.
After that experience, it was hard for me to go back on the World Cup because it had changed my views on contests. I couldn’t go back to a crappy little 700-foot mountain with an icy halfpipe with flat landings when I could have this. I was getting tired of the grinding schedule of contests. They were so organized, and snowboarding to me wasn’t about being organized and having to snowboard in an unsafe halfpipe with flat landings if that’s all the mountain provided for the contest. I’d traveled so far from Utah to compete in far from perfect conditions only to hear over the phone when I checked in with friends at home that I’d “just missed the most incredible snowstorm and fresh powder runs!” I was jealous. “Well, you guys just missed a really ‘fun’ competition in an icy, bumpy halfpipe on a mountain with no snow.” I was traveling in Europe but wondered if it was worth it.
Waiting in the lift line with Shannon after making some powder runs.
Copyright © John L. Kelly
Maybe the other reason I was over the halfpipe was my first-place finishes were getting harder to come by. The level of riding the pipe among the new crop of girls was increasing and the competition was getting tougher. People were specializing in the pipe now and I was not into riding day-in and day-out pipe training. I had to explore the rest of the mountain, ride through the trees, check out natural chutes. My results started to feel the effects—thirds, fourths, fifths… I knew I could focus on pipe and train harder and blow off the powder, but I didn’t want to. That feeling in Cortina was something special—it was the ultimate snowboarding experience for me. It was real. So, from then on, I decided to stop competing in the halfpipe full time.
I decided I was going to reinvent my riding. Other riders like Dave Downing and Victoria Jealouse never competed anymore, but were sponsored and popular because of the things they’d accomplished in the backcountry or riding big mountains, which was captured on film. Riders like them didn’t compete on the World Cup and deal with bad halfpipes. Maybe I could maintain my sponsorship by freeriding like they did? So I announced my decision to sponsors and everyone else that I was done competing in the halfpipe and moving on.
This ended up being a huge mistake.
* * *
hotel workout
Shannon Dunn and I have traveled so much on the road together, we’ve figured out a few great hotel workout travel tips. If you don’t like to go downstairs to use the gym, or if your hotel doesn’t have a gym, we have some funny techniques for working out in your room.
1. Use the chair in your room to do dips with your butt off the end of the chair.
2. Do regular push-ups against the bed with your upper body on the bed, your feet on the ground.
3. Find some room on the floor to do three sets of sit-ups. I sometimes do them on the bed because there isn’t enough room with all of our luggage and snowboards everywhere. Still, even if you’re on the bed, you have to keep your back straight and contract your abdominal muscles to do the most effective sit-ups. These are great to do during commercials if you’re watching a movie.
4. Put the phone books and the bible in a pillowcase and use this as a weight to do arm curls or arm lifts off the bed.
5. A stretching and strengthening exercise for your ankles is to stand on one foot on the bed and hold your balance for about a minute. Do this at least three times on each foot. This also helps with your balance. Try it with your eyes closed.
6. If your hotel provides a bathrobe, use the waist tie for stretching out your calves. This is so great after those snowboarding days at resorts that have plenty of toeside traverses. Lie on your back on the bed with one leg extended straight up in the air, wrap the middle of the belt around the ball of your foot, and pull down gently until you feel the stretch.
7. And of course jumping jacks on the bed, because it feels like a trampoline and it’s fun.
* * *
Copyright © Lisa Hudson
First place, Big Air, at the Winter X Games, 1998.
CHAPTER 11
BACKSIDE 720
As a professional athlete, you cannot simply say you’re going to change and expect everyone to go with it. When I announced that I was stopping with halfpipe competitions, my sponsors called immediately and wanted to meet right away, friends called to ask why I was “giving up snowboarding,” and the media announced I’d retired.
I hadn’t “retired” and I wasn’t giving up snowboarding and I hoped my sponsors wouldn’t drop me. I’d just stopped competing in the halfpipe. I was transitioning! People do this. Madonna did it a million times, J-Lo, Britney Spears… But I wasn’t them and I didn’t have millions of dollars from a record label for financial backing. It was too much of a stretch for most people and I wished I’d transitioned more quietly, testing the waters, slowly moving from halfpipe to freeriding and doing more filming on my own. The other problem was that transitioning into becoming a freeriding snowboarding film star was much harder than I imagined. First off, there weren’t many girls at Victoria Jealouse’s level who were sponsored and didn’t compete. The guys who filmed were used to filming with their own group of riders—people they knew who could hit their mark. If I was invited it was often on a fluke because someone had dropped out, and I wasn’t prepared to ride on cue all the time because I took too long checking out the jumps or cliffs. It was frustrating, especially when I didn’t nail the landings and my segment ended up on the cutting room floor. Sometimes I felt like I was wasting their film and I’m sure they felt that way, too, because I didn’t get invited back often.
Filmmaker Justin Hostynek from Absinthe Films was one of the few guys who had the patience to let me figure things out and encourage me, which is why I ended up filming with him from then on. He thought the transition to freeriding idea was a good one for me because he thought I had more talent in freeriding than the pipe anyway. Overall though, filming as a freerider was not enough and I wanted to be part of something bigger. So I had to come up with a Plan B.
Don Bostick, who used to manage GoSkate when I was growing up, first told me about the X Games. He was working for ESPN on the event and he said I should definitely check this out. The X Games were a new concept of having multiple action sports and athletes together in one competition venue. Events like ice climbing, downhill mountain bike racing, shovel racing, snowmobiling, freecross skiing, slopestyle, and snowboarding were all a part of it. There was also a new racing component for snowboarders called boardercross, which included six riders going down the mountain in an elimination format on a course made up of banked turns and whoop-de-dos, which was inspired by how motorcross riders raced on a dirt course. The X Games also offered snowboarders another new event called the big air, which was a single jump off a large ramp where snowboarders performed one freestyle trick in the air. Up until this point, jumps like this in competition were usually in events called obstacle course or slopestyle, which offered medium-sized jumps within a sequence of obstacles like rails or kickers in the snow that each rider had the option to hit while going down a run.
First big-air contest at the Winter X Games, Snow Summit, California, 1997.
Copyright © Patty Segovia
The X Games had combined all of these events over the course of five days and put together an enormous awards ceremony, which they said would be televised around the world. The event also included nightly parties and interviews of athletes throughout the week. It was new and exciting for all of us, because we had never had such potential global recognition. Of course my sponsors encouraged me to enter because, obviously, freeriding was only giving me a little exposure and I’d dropped off the halfpipe scene. I thought it was a good idea, too. The X Games seemed like our version of the Olympics and the ev
ents would be telecast to 110 million viewers. With an event like the big air, which I thought I could probably do quite well in, I decided I wanted to be a part of it.
There was something about a big-air event at the X Games that rang true for me. I knew I could do it because I liked catching big air off of cliffs in the backcountry, and while I wasn’t getting a lot of film exposure yet, I did have a lot of still shots in magazines from some of my backcountry big airs. I was known for going for it. And with my sponsors and peers thinking I’d retired, it gave me that burning drive to make this my new thing and be the best. I had no idea at the time that this transition into big air with the X Games meant I was about to come into a new fame I could never have imagined even on the World Cup tour in Japan. Big air would become what I was most known for in my entire snowboarding career.
While the world was watching the first Winter X Games in 1996, it was important to have girls represented in every division. All of the female snowboarding professionals believed this. The X Games provided the perfect transition for many of my friends and we all signed up for different kinds of events. Leslee Olson, known for her giant slalom racing, entered in boardercross. Tara Dakides did halfpipe and slopestyle—the latter of which she dominated. And for me this was a perfect transition from my halfpipe and filming into big air.
Sixteen girls entered the big-air contest that year, but when it came down to the day of competition, only four of us showed up that morning to get our bibs. We’d been scoping the jump ahead of time and even the guys were scared. It was risky and dangerous—a 50-foot jump with snow conditions that were icy and firm, which meant the speed up to the lip of the launch would be really fast, which meant the air would be big, and the landing would be harder to control. It was completely sketchy, to say the least, and scared off most of the competitive field. Barrett Christy, April Lawyer, Tara Zwink, and I were the only girls who committed to doing it in the end. Of course, we couldn’t back out because we had to have a girls division. But looking at that big air was scary beyond belief because it was so much bigger than any jump I’d ever hit before. Not to mention the fact that this would be in front a huge audience and televised so there was that pressure of it being a “comeback moment” even though I’d never really gone anywhere. The other girls looked at me like I looked at them—if one of us didn’t do it, it was doubtful there’d be a girls division in the future. We had to make sure this happened at the X Games.