The First Generation
January 06, 2009 @ 3:00 PM - Features: Sports
Women’s snowboarding would still be skulking in the shadows of the men’s scene if it weren’t for the actions of a mould-breaking few. Here are their stories...
Words by: Chris Moran
In 1993, the Australian lager company Castlemaine XXXX ran a campaign on British television in which two Aussie men stood around watching their pick-up truck being
loaded with crates of beer. As an afterthought, they ask the shopkeeper for two bottles of sherry “for the ladies”. The axle on their truck buckles under the weight of the added bottles, and the owner turns to his friend and says “looks like we overdid it with the sherry”. It was a popular and funny ad, which worked because everyone knew it was ironic.
Around the same time, however, the worldwide snowboard industry seemed to have a similar attitude, but without the joke. The 1994 Air & Style comp, for example, featured a 60ft kicker, and although there were girls invited to ride at the contest, that particular jump was strictly out of bounds. To hammer it home a sign on the run-in even read ‘No Girls’.
Today of course, the situation is far better. There are girl-specific boards, lines of clothing, film producers making girl-only movies and magazines like the one in your hands. Such infrastructure means an elite of female snowboarding superstars is sustainable. Hannah Teter showed off her Olympic Gold medal on the David Letterman Show, our cover girl Torah Bright is perhaps one of the most famous sportspeople in Australia (though whether she’s a sherry drinker is unlikely) and the next generation of girls such as Jamie Anderson are increasingly riding for equal prize money, a feat not even the tennis world has achieved.
But all this is no happy accident. The gap has been closed due to the actions of many influential characters, each one chipping away at the stereotypes and adding vital strength to the girls’ scene. While a list of those riders would be exhaustive, standouts include Bonnie Zellers from the first TB series of films, Shannon Dunn, owner of the first pro model board, Michelle Taggart and her pipe riding skills, and those behind the scenes such as Amy Howat – instrumental in organising the Mt Baker Banked Slalom, still hailed today as the most fun snowboard competition in existence.
Without these riders and more, we may well still be stuck in the dark ages. But it is without doubt the following five girls that have made the most lasting impression on the world scene. After all, it was one of them that stood up to the ‘No Girls’ sign back at the Air & Style all those years ago. “I looked at the jump,” said Tina Basich in her autobiography Pretty Good for a Girl “…and then went and put on the Beastie Boys to get all amped up. There were like 100 stairs to the top of the jump. We walked half way up and stopped. Then I don’t remember walking the rest of the way up but I did not hesitate. I took three breaths and then dropped.”
Magazines reported that she “had gone bigger than the guys” and probably would have placed in the top ten. “I think the gap between men and women just makes women
work harder,” said Tina in 1999. “If we were right there, we might not take it to the next level. So we’re definitely pushing toward closing the gap, and we’re motivated.”
The Big Five
Barrett Christy, USA
Buffalo NY isn’t exactly a snowboard hotspot so in 1992, after a couple of winters learning to ride at Killington and Vermont, Barrett moved
to the emerging snowboard scene at Crested Butte, Colorado. It’s easy to see the attraction – Crested Butte was famed for its powder and nearby Vail had opened the world’s first snowboard park two seasons before, so the chance to ride with the best riders in the US, coupled with the bonus of getting some freshies, was too much to ignore. Christy liked to think of her style as being quite skateinspired, claiming the idea of keeping things flowing was her main goal. “Whether it’s linking turns in powder, riding technical lines, jumping, sliding or whatever, it’s that quest to get the feeling as often as possible,” she said at the time. But while she was riding for her own satisfaction, she was hitting the park enough to start entering comps and impressing her peers. “Barrett is little,” said Vail’s Todd Richards, “but she carries a big stick.”
In between impressing the seasonaires at Butte and Vail with her cliff lines, Barrett saw the freestyle opportunity and pushed herself to ride hard. It was a gamble that paid off. After winning an amateur pipe contest in Vail, she went on to be the most successful freestyle snowboarder the US has ever produced, with a medal placing at every single X Games up until 2003. But while she was big time at the comps, she could also hold her own in the backcountry. “I need to balance out contests,”
she said in 2001. “If I don’t have time to just snowboard for myself, it gets a little gruelling.”
Where she is now
After having a pro model on Gnu snowboards, Barrett finally moved out of the pro scene in 2004. Now 35, she spends her time riding at Mt Baker and Vail, or working out of Portland, Oregon. Today she coaches and manages the Nike 6.0 snowboard team in the US, is married to fellow Gnu pro rider Temple Cummins and is hugely thankful for her time as a pro rider.
Reflecting on the growth of women’s snowboarding she says, “The winter X Games didn’t exist until 97, and that seems like a pivotal time in snowboarding. They brought snowboarders to people’s living rooms and made some riders household names overnight. As a pro there weren’t the pressures that go along with the big paychecks today. Now, riders are expected to perform at all these events and often still film for a movie segment and get photos for sponsors and editorial.” She also notes how much better women-specific kit is these days. “The biggest obstacle I faced in the early 90s was getting equipment that was right for me,” she says. “I was always riding boards that were too big, too wide and too stiff.”
Tina Basich, USA
Tina’s first day riding came in 1986 when she hiked the slopes of Soda Springs, Lake Tahoe, in a pair of moonboots with her brother Mike in tow. After learning to ride properly and placing well in some local and national contests, Tina turned pro in 1989 with a $250 a month deal with Kemper Snowboards. Riding with fellow pros Andy Hetzel and Matt Goodwill pushed her hard. “It was all I could do to keep up,” she said in an interview for The Way of the Snowboarder. “I even started to jump cliffs because I had to get the girl shot for the team.”
It was an attitude that served her well, and Tina became the dominant female pro. She also had one eye on the longevity of the girls’ scene, and along with fellow pro Shannon Dunn, launched Prom Clothing in 1995. “We wanted to start a girls’ line because at the time boys’ clothes were super-huge. So we called it Prom and wore prom dresses in the ads and made it all pastel colours.” Although the feeling had been that Tina and Shannon were trying to “make fun of the whole girl thing to get noticed as something different,” said Tina, the fact that the industry took it at face value and didn’t get the irony meant that Tina was unwilling to continue with the brand. Around the same time, her friend Monica Steward – one of the co-founders of Bonfire clothing – was diagnosed with breast cancer. Along with Shannon Dunn and Michelle Taggart, Tina organised a charity event and the foundations for Boarding for Breast Cancer were in place. Monica died at the tragically young age of 29.
Where she is now
Boarding for Breast Cancer has gone on to raise over $1 million, while Tina is universally hailed as one of the most influential women riders ever. Her autobiography Pretty Good for a Girl has sold incredibly well, she is a regular on the US chat show circuit and still rides regularly. She lives near Squaw Valley, Lake Tahoe, is a keen artist, and presents GKA (Girls Kick Ass) on Fuel TV in the US. She still says her favourite, favourite thing to do is to picnic in the backcountry with friends. “No hustle, no noise, no tracks, just fresh turns.”
Looking back on her career she says, “I think being a female athlete was part of the challenge but also part of the drive to push harder, get recognized for your skills and make your mark.” On snowboarding’s stratospheric rise she says, “It’s amazing how fast it grew. I think that it gives you such a feeling of freedom that it’s easy to get hooked on, and that’s what the world did, they got hooked on snowboarding.”
Amen to that.
Coming up: Nicole Angelrath, Circe Wallace and Victoria Jealouse…
