by Tina Basich
Up at the starting gate, it was a different scene than at the pipe because there were only four of us entered. It reminded me of my first contest at Donner Ski Ranch, when there were only four girls that I knew who even snowboarded. I think the guys thought we were going to back out. They were checking to see the fear in our eyes, which we had, I admit. But we didn’t back out. All of us found our confidence and took our runs, even though we were extremely nervous. I did a backside 360, my best trick at the time, and ended up third behind Barrett and Tara. It wasn’t anything spectacular, but it was one of those days when I was glad to get through it and at the same time was so proud of having been a part of the first big air in the Winter X Games.
The X Games gave me a new focus, and like other riders, I knew this meant our sport was getting the attention it deserved. Of course I wanted to be a big player in all of this because I’d worked so hard and this was my life. From that point on, I’d freeride and film with Justin to gradually work my way into that backcountry film scene, but did it in between bigair contests. I felt good. The next summer, I spent almost every day riding the glacier at Mt. Hood High Cascade Snowboard Camp, a place where snowboarders go to ride in the off-season to train for big air. I was hucking myself over and over off jumps to try to improve my rotations. While sometimes you have to just throw down the motions and see what your body and talents are capable of doing, I’d learned doing well also came from having the right mind-set. I’d been pulling off my backside 360s in a few competitions, which my body was now so programmed to do, and was ready to push it to the next level. I knew there had to be a way to pull off two rotations in midair—a backside 720—and was determined to learn it. Only, no one had ever seen a girl do it before, so if I could pull this off at a big-air contest, I was sure to win.
Ask Tony Hawk about his 900 skateboarding trick. It took him years and hundreds of crashes to finally land it. People didn’t think it was possible because no one had ever seen it done before. Snowboarders didn’t even know if a backside 720 was possible at one time. I remembered back at my first World Championships when I was so impressed by Amy Howitt, who had gotten one foot in the air out of the halfpipe, and it made me leave that competition wanting to be as good as her. And now I had a much bigger goal: a backside 720 over a 60-foot jump.
I tried to go faster down the ramp, spin tighter, but just kept crashing, over and over again, trying to figure it out. I had bruises all over my body from crashing and needed to get it into my head that it was possible and actually see or visualize myself completing the trick. Ironically, the importance of visualization was something I had learned from drag car racing school in California at the Pomona Raceway the previous year. I’d been invited to take the drag car racing course for a TV show that featured female athletes doing crazy stunts. There were three of us “crazy athletes”—a professional surfer, a Tai Kwan Do champion, and me. We walked into driving school for the eight-hour class before racing and it was filled with musclehead, hot-rod guys who stared at us with that old familiar look like, “What are these girls doing here?” But we all completed the two-day course and clocked in some of the fastest quarter-mile drag times at 155 mph in our $120,000 race car rentals. Although some of the guys didn’t like getting beaten by a girl (so what’s new), we made an impression, I’m sure.
What I gained most, however, was a new view on the importance of real-time visualization that can be applied to all sports, whether you’re drag car racing or doing a jump on a snowboard. In class, they taught us that you have to visualize the action in real time, at the real speed. Before I’d learned this, I used to visualize the movements my body would have to make, moving in a certain way, practicing throwing my shoulder over my front leg to do an invert, and then doing that over and over, but had never visualized doing it in real time. So, now I’d visualize taking my three breaths before dropping into the run and then visualize the actual speed of myself coming up to the jump, rolling my shoulder over my front leg, grabbing my board, and then landing and riding down to a stop. By visualizing this in real time, you’re not skipping any part of it, because when you drop in and visualize it as you’re doing it, you’re prepared for the whole thing, including landing and riding away from it, so nothing can catch you off guard.
Drag car racing school at the Pomona Raceway.
With the power of visualization, it still took maybe another twenty times of trying my 720, almost rotating enough, then crashing, before it suddenly clicked. One time, I almost landed it, but from then on, I could feel what it would be like and I knew it was possible now. I knew I could do it.
However, doing it in competition was another thing altogether.
By January 1998, at the time of the Winter X Games big-air snowboarding competition, launching over 60-foot gap jumps on my snowboard was considered one of my specialties. I’d placed top three many times in smaller competitions and often took large jumps in the backcountry for filming. I felt comfortable in the air and I liked the feeling of flying.
Still, I was nervous. I wanted to win so badly with my new trick that it just burned in my stomach. I wanted that recognition, like when people noticed I could throw a ball really hard, or when I’d throw down new tricks in the halfpipe on the World Cup tour. It was a competitive drive, but not so much because I wanted to beat the next girl. I wanted to be recognized for pushing the level of the sport to something no one had ever imagined, like a freestyler winning a slalom race with a Domino’s pizza box wrapped around her arm. I knew no one else had pulled this trick before in a big-air competition and I wanted this moment to be mine.
I woke up at 7 A.M. and checked the weather as usual. It was sunny. It’s so much easier to perform your best when you can actually see the landing. Snowy competition days are tough because visibility sucks of course, and because conditions are constantly changing, including wind factor and the speed of the snow. If the snow is hard or cold, the speed of the snow means you go faster. If it’s warm and slushy, the snow is slower and you have to get more speed to clear the jump. In bad weather, snow conditions can change in minutes and the last thing you want to do is misjudge the speed you need to clear the jump, launch off the lip too slow, dangling there, or get pulled by the wind in midair. It can mean the difference between first and last place, or lead to serious injury. I was never as worried about the placing as I was about the serious risk of getting injured. It’s not just in Alaska where the weather matters to snowboarders; all snowboard contests can be cancelled due to weather.
Copyright © Eric Burger
That morning I stayed in my pj’s for a good twenty minutes watching the Weather Channel and stretching with a couple of yoga moves. I never eat on competition days, which is probably the worst thing I can do for my energy level, but I can’t handle having a nervous stomach full of food. I packed my backpack with extra goggles and my CD player and headed up to the mountain.
We usually get about an hour of practice time to warm up on the jump before the competition begins. First things first: I checked out the jump. My best place for visualizing is standing right on top of the jump. I have to talk myself into it every single time. You’d think by this point I might be over this feeling. But I’m not. I always watch a couple of people hit the jump before I go. I’m a visual person. I watch where they start from, speed checks, and how the jump throws them. Most of all, I watch how hard the landing looks. I watch because I can learn from whatever mistakes they make by misjudging things—even slightly. No one ever wants to be the first to hit the jump. Sometimes a team manager will use a radio to let everyone at the top know how much speed to take to clear the landing. But there wasn’t a team manager at the bottom at this event, so I had to make my own judgment call.
OK, I thought to myself, it’s now or never. I didn’t want my first jump to be during competition so I decided to take the practice jumps. I grabbed my board and my helmet and hiked up to the start gate. I had Metallica playing on my CD player. I don’t ride with a player anymore
, but when all you’re doing is hiking along the side of the jump to the start gate, it helps to listen to music instead of your own heavy breathing. Plus, it gets me in the right mood to huck over a 60-foot jump. That first jump is always the hardest part for me. How fast should I go? Did I used the right wax on my board, which can mean the difference between going too fast or too slow? Is the snow going to be fast today?
I did a straight jump first—leaving the jump facing forward and landing forward—to be on the safe side. I worked my way up, pulling more difficult tricks, to prepare for what I knew I had to do for my competition jump—a backside 720. After all the time practicing at Mt. Hood on the glacier, I’d tried this trick only once before at a big-air competition, two months earlier in Aspen, Colorado. I’d gotten my spin around, but didn’t stick the landing. Still, it’d made an impression. There was a buzz about it among my peers. People saw that it could happen—that a female professional snowboarder might be able to pull off a backside 720 in competition.
I had to be the first.
Each competitor got three jumps and the score of the best two jumps combined would win. The adrenaline was flowing in each of us, but compared with other competitive sports, like gymnastics, where the girls barely talk to one another, the scene was supportive and exciting. Everyone was cheering each other on. I couldn’t do what I do if the other girls were trying to psych me out. It helped me to not be so hard on myself and stay focused on landing my trick. Win or lose, it would be an incredible experience because millions of people would see girls snowboarding and understand that another whole level was possible.
Practicing at Mt. Hood, Oregon.
Copyright © Justin Hostynek/Absinthe Films
I had to try my backside 720 right then. On my first jump of the competition, I’d decided to go for it. The official called my name. A few of my friends knew what I was going to try and gave me that look like “You can do it” in the starting gate. It was my turn—this was it. My heart started pounding as I strapped my board on my feet and entered the starting gate. I tightened my goggles and ratcheted down my bindings a little tighter, looking down at the jump. I could see the crowds of people around the landing zone with hats on like colorful dots in a painting. I had to block them out and visualize what I knew I could do. I took three deep breaths and dropped onto the runway. In my head I repeated the words “strong legs, strong legs…” The speed was fast and I launched off the jump, twisted my body to begin the rotation, spun around once very tight and fast, then went for another spin in the air. I think I actually closed my eyes for part of the trick. I came around to see my landing and my rotation was perfect, square to the mountain. I landed exactly where I had visualized it. I could not believe it. I could barely breathe. I had done it! I surprised myself. I surprised people watching. Performing a backside 720 over a 60-foot gap jump was no longer impossible. No one would dare say that was pretty good for a girl! I could hear all my snowboard friends up at the starting gate cheering for me. It was one of the greatest moments of my snowboarding career. My next two jumps included one more 720 and a 360, which, combined, were good enough for first place. I had just won my first gold medal at the ESPN X Games and thousands of people had suddenly seen me at my best. Interestingly, even a few pro snowboarder guys came up to me after that contest and told me they couldn’t yet do that trick. They looked at me a little differently—they were truly impressed. It was such an amazing feeling.
Copyright © Kevin Zacher
1998 Summer X Games.
CHAPTER 12
ROCKSTAR
By now, female athlete–endorsed snowboards and apparel were the norm. I had my own signature snowboard boot from Airwalk, apparel line from Tuesday, and Tina Basich snowboard model by Sims. The year after I did my backside 720, I sold 6,700 pro model snowboards, mostly in Japan, and it was the top-selling pro model for my company—outselling all of the guys. This was my biggest year so far. It was no longer a question of whether women were marketable or not, they definitely had a place in the global snowboarding market. Women in sports were getting more media coverage, and I was now on my fourth cover for a snowboard magazine.
After winning at the X Games, I was starting to feel the pressure to win again at the next contest. Big air was so popular at the X Games that they started including it at the Summer X Games in 1998, not just winter. Summer X Games had events like rock climbing, BMX, skateboarding, motorcross, and now…snowboarding big air. The thing is you have to have snow for a big-air jump, so the X Games built a huge “slope” from a maze of scaffolding with man-made snow on it.
My ’62.
Copyright © Scott Sullivan
I got on the road in my ’62 Impala, ready to roadtrip from my aunt and uncle’s house in Los Angeles to San Diego for the event, top down, all summer lovin’ feelin’. About an hour south of L.A., I had a blowout and rode on my rims for two miles until I could get across the seven-lane highway to pull over. I got out and tried to get the tire off with my socket wrench, but it wasn’t the right size because I’d just pimped-out my car with new rims. So I hiked down the highway, off the exit, found a gas station, and they gave me a bigger crowbar that they said would fit my rims. I had to pay them $20 to borrow it for thirty minutes. I went back to my Impala and changed the tire myself and was freaking out because I knew I’d be late for practice and I had a new version of my 720 I wanted to test. When I finally drove into San Diego, from about a mile away I could see the scaffolding of the big-air jump popping out of the city. It was quite an engineering feat and just amazing—so big and so out of place. Like a white-covered roller coaster. I quickly checked in, got my competition bib, and ran to the jump with my gear just in time to hear them cancel the practice session because the heat was melting the snow. They had to blow more snow the rest of the day and all night to have enough for the competition the next day. It was so frustrating. I really needed that practice session.
Anyway, the next day I decided to pull an inverted version of my 720. I’d only practiced it a few times and should have practiced it more before doing it in competition, but it was summer, and I thought I’d try it. I was so excited about having pulled my backside 720 in the winter games that I had this feeling if I tried the invert version and failed, it was OK, sort of, because at least I was pushing it even more and trying a new trick. It got me off the hook if I crashed, I figured, and so I wasn’t really nervous.
I was more nervous about hiking the scaffolding with these tiny steps in snowboard boots all the way to the top of the jump. It was weird to look out over this crowd of people in tank tops and shorts, and here we were at the top of a snowboard jump in the summer in San Diego, in snowboard pants and gloves and T-shirts. We were so hot that beads of sweat kept dripping in our goggles. I still wore goggles as a protective eyepiece, but it’s strange to be wearing them around in the summer, like in a desert sandstorm or something. I liked the jump even though it was man-made because it was easier to judge my speed, since there was only one place to start from at the starting gate. It wasn’t like you had the option of starting higher up the “mountain” or lower. We all started in the same place. And the weather wasn’t changing—it was just hot. Plus there was padding on the flat deck, so if you didn’t clear the landing, you would just land in the foam. We all talked about that foam, wishing we had it all the time.
When I pulled my inverted 720 that day, I pulled it off just enough to get around and land it, but it wasn’t all that graceful and I popped back a bit to catch myself on the landing. However, it was good enough for second place and I was stoked I had another X Games medal. I don’t mean to be ungrateful—I was very excited about the medal—but frankly, it was summer and I had that summertime feeling. I really just wanted to get out of snowboard boots and back into my flip-flops and cruise in my Impala.
Over the course of the next year, I started to notice a difference in the pressure I was putting on myself and the expectations of others. I was now the big-air favorite to win or
at least place second and that pressure weighed heavily on my mind. I started to feel judged with every jump I took, even in practice. I can tell you that being the underdog and winning is the ultimate high. But winning when you’re expected to win is more of a feeling of relief that you can even come out there and pull it off. Somehow it’s more satisfying to prove people wrong than to prove them right.
The women’s abilities in snowboarding were getting more competitive. Girls like Leslee Olson, Tara Dakides, and Barrett Christy were all raising the bar and pushing the levels of competition in the big-air category. The contests themselves were getting more competitive and had bigger sponsorship dollars. Suddenly the sponsor banners that hung along the side of the halfpipe went from being the local skate shop and ski resort to corporate banners by Taco Bell, AT&T, and Mountain Dew. I remember us all talking about it at the X Games and wondering, “What do they want with us?” I couldn’t figure it out. There was a shift in views and it seemed as though, suddenly, the green-haired punk kid on a snowboard who was once not allowed at ski resorts was “marketable” and considered “cool” by mainstream America.