by The Editors on February 18, 2009
The USC crew at Quiksilver got a little deeper recently when James G. Ellis was added to the Board of Directors on February 13, 2009.
Ellis is the dean of the Marshall School of Business at USC. He began his career with Carter Hawley Hale stores and rose to vice president of Merchandising for the Broadway department store chain. . . . Later, he became president and CEO of American Porsche Design and has been involved in several other entrepreneurial ventures. He held leadership roles in several apparel manufacturers and action-sports companies.
Sounds like Mr. Ellis has all the skills necessary to help pilot Quiksilver into the storm.
[Link: OC Metro]
by The Editors on February 18, 2009
The more we follow the financial press and see the way they operates the funnier stories like this become. Forbes has released a list of the highest paid action sports athletes and they base their numbers on completely on “interviews with industry experts.” In other words, your guess is as good as Forbes.
The experts are saying that Tony Hawk made $12 million last year and that put him in the number one position. Shaun White was number two at $9 million, Ryan Sheckler was number three at $5 million.
As Skateboardworks.com says: “Suspiciously missing from the list is Rob Dyrdek and BAM, who both make at least $1 mill per year.” Makes us wonder what “experts” they actually talked to.
[Link: Forbes]
by The Editors on February 18, 2009
Sure, the Dew Tour Winter Championships has skiing events in it, but we’re not going to let that stop us from checking in on the web every so often this weekend to see how the finals at Northstar-At-Tahoe are going.
We’re going to guess that Shaun White is going to win slope and halfpipe (and the overall titles in both), we’re not sure on women’s slope and Kelly Clark will win in the women’s pipe.
Those who still watch network television can check it out the slopestyle event on USA Network Friday, Feb. 20 9-10 PM PST and the halfpipe on NBC Sunday, Feb. 22 12:00pm-3:00pm PST. Crazy to think that anyone would plan their media viewing around a broadcast time, but the TV networks still think people do.
For all the details of the upcoming weekend of extreme action sports television programming follow the jump for the entire official press release.
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by The Editors on February 17, 2009
We still don’t understand why designers want to take a perfectly simple sliding device and make it more complicated.
Take Sunnyvale, California’s Todd Belt for example. As a skier he wanted to snowboard, but he thought snowboards scraped too much of the good snow off the mountain, according to a story on Onthesnow.com. So he built an articulated platform that allowed him to ski standing sideways.
Because of its unique design, you ride the Deuce like a snowboard but enjoy all of the benefits of two shaped skis. The skis flex and carve like short shaped skis and can accommodate a 47 degree inclination into the turn. Unlike a traditional snowboard that limits the rider to carving on one long edge, the Deuce lets the rider crank out quicker, more responsive turns on two sets of edges.
Unique design? Wonder if anyone has had more success than the guys on the BomberOnline forum in explaining to Todd that this idea was pretty bad the first time it came around in the 80s when it was called the Swingbo.
[Link: Deuce Snowboards via On The Snow]
by The Editors on February 17, 2009
Aline Christina Martins, 19, of Santa Barbara, California died while snowboarding Monday February 16, 2009 at Dodge Ridge, according to a story on KCRA.com.
Aline Christina Martins, 19, likely suffocated, but an autopsy was planned to determine the formal cause of death, said Paul Tualla, a spokesman for the Tuolumne County Sheriff’s Office.
Our thoughts are with her family and friends.
[Link: KCRA.com]
by The Editors on February 17, 2009
As surprised as we were to learn that snowboarders are still racing slalom, it was sad to see that the management at Cypress Mountain, home to next year’s Vancouver Olympic snowboard events, could not pull of the course prep necessary to hold a slalom event and it was cancelled, according to a story in the Vancouver Sun.
We were pre-riding on the race hill and a lot of athletes were irate at the snow conditions,” said a frustrated Alexa Loo of Richmond, a veteran on the Canadian team. . . .“There was basically a metre of sugar. There was no bottom. You try to push and there was nothing to push on. It would have been like trying to run a track meet in six inches of mud.” . . .The decision to cancel was made by the International Federation de Ski and accepted by Vanoc, the 2010 organizing committee which is overseeing the venue as an Olympic test.
Even some of the halfpipe riders were complaining:
“I just get a bad vibe,” Canadian halfpiper Jeff Batchelor of Oakville, Ont., said Saturday. . . His coach, Jesse Fulton, used even stronger language, about both the condition of the superpipe — “it’s off axis, not steep enough, not long enough” — and Cypress’ lack of co-operation.
Hopefully, they’re figure it out by next year when the eyes of the world are watching.
[Link: Vancouver Sun]
by The Editors on February 16, 2009
Two years ago while making practice runs at the 2007 USASA Nationals at Northstar-At-Tahoe 14-year-old Tyler Eklund of Bend, Oregon broke his C-3 vertebrae leaving him paralyzed. But thanks to the work of friends he made it back on Mt. Bachelor snow on Sunday February 15, 2009 according to a story on Kgw.com.
Strapped into a “sit-ski” made by Oregon Adaptive Sports, Eklund packed along his ventilator, and had his breathing tubes wrapped in hand warmers to keep them from freezing. . . . “It feels awesome – a dream come true, pretty much,” Eklund told NewsChannel 21 in Bend Sunday. When asked how long he’d been waiting to get back on the snow, he said, “Pretty much since the first day I got hurt. Just to come up and do it again, it feels awesome.”
Makes us realize how much we take for granted and how strong Tyler and his family are to make this happen again. We’re glad Tyler can still enjoy the ride.
[Link: KGW.com]
by The Editors on February 15, 2009
Okay, so Shaun White and Kelly Clark won the FIS Snowboard World Cup at Cypress yesterday in a pre-run of what will probably happen at the 2010 Winter Olympics. That’s great an all, but we just couldn’t pass up this headline from The Toronto Star:
Red-hot Tomato flies to World Cup victory.
Looks like the sports writing nickname game just had the bar raised.
[Link: Toronto Star]
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by The Editors on February 15, 2009
It appears that the US Snowboarding Team is not going to be able to make it to the final world cup events of the season according to a story on Reuters.
We are short (of enough money) to make it all the way through the season but we’ve known that since last summer when we did our budgeting,” U.S. national team head coach Peter Foley told Reuters. . . . “We thought they would find that money to get us through March but with the tightness of the economy we just haven’t been able to find it. It’s tight with sponsorship and donor dollars and everything costs more.
We were thinking maybe they should have a bake sale but then realized they should probably just shine it and wait until next year when the US Snowboard Team is loaded with people America cares about and the Olympics are on the line.
[Link: Reuters]
by The Editors on February 13, 2009
The Motley Fool investor information site has recently given Volcom a “4-star” rating and a headline that says that the “stock is about to pop.” Not sure what that means exaclty, but here is their logic:
Over on CAPS, 380 of the 416 All-Star members who have rated Volcom — or 91% — believe the stock will outperform the S&P 500 going forward. These bulls include MagicDiligence and bullshiite, both of whom are ranked in the top 10% of our community. . . . Late last month, MagicDiligence noted that Volcom “is smartly run, financially sound, and has plenty of growth opportunities overseas. It’s also extraordinarily cheap!”
Not to say we disagree, just that we’re not so sure that user-generated stock advice is the best guide for where people should invest their money.
[Link: Motley Fool]
The USC crew at Quiksilver got a little deeper recently when James G. Ellis was added to the Board of Directors on February 13, 2009.
