About Snowboarding
Snowboarding is a highly popular sport and popular recreational activity in ski resorts. Snowboarding involves a person sliding from a hill covered with snow, with a single snowboard that is attached to the rider's feet. It combines the thrill of skateboarding along with the fun of snow skiing.
Snowboarding is one of the most popular sports in locations with snow covered mountains, along with skiing. It is considered by many as an extreme sport, with roughly seven million snowboarders across the United States and many more across the world. It draws participants from other sports such as skateboarding, skiing and surfing, since it is more demanding and challenging than any of these sports.
Its increasing popularity has gained it a spot in the Winter Olympics competitions and various other competitions around the world such as the X-Trail Jam, Air 7 Style, X Games, Burton Global Open Series, World Snowboard tour or the Ticket to Ride, U.S. Snowboarding, Open and the Shakedown. The International Ski Federation formulates all the rules and regulations for the competition.
Snowboarding was an enhancement over skiing, another sport where riders slope down snow covered mountains with a pair of skis on their feet. The modern snowboards were invented by an engineer named, Sherman Poppen in Michigan in 1965. Poppen designed the first snowboard by fastening two skis and attaching a rope on one end for holding on. This board was an early version of the snowboard known today and was called as snurfer. This was sold as a toy for children and became very popular. By 1970s, Poppen organized the first surfing competitions that increased the popularity of the sport and attracted fresh snowboarding enthusiasts from all over the United States. Tom Sims was another snowboarding enthusiast who made improvements to snowboards. By the mid-1970s he started producing commercial snowboards.
Earlier snowboards were made of wood, and were considered too expensive and weak. Developments in construction materials let to reduction in price and increasing strength of snowboards, which made them affordable for everyone. The first World Snurfing Championship was held in 1979 at the Pando Winter Sports Park. Contestants at this competition came with snowboards of different designs, leading to protests from other competitors. After this competition surfboards were made to officially agreed standards and only these boards were used in competitions. In 1985 snowboarding was recognized as an official sport and the first world cup was held in Zurs, Austria. In 1994, the International Snowboard Association or the International Ski Federation was formed, which formulates all the rules and regulation of Snowboarding.
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