Word: snowboarder
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Under dark, wet snowfall deep in Washington State's North Cascades, Terje Haakonsen charges his snowboard across the finish line to victory at the Mount Baker Banked Slalom. Through the evergreen mists, he carves to a stop past a small group of racers, officials and assorted stragglers. Within inner circles, Haakonsen, 23, is considered the Michael Jordan of snowboarding, and Mount Baker possibly the sport's most respected event. But when Haakonsen finishes, there are no corporate sponsorships, no teams, no coaches, no flags, no network TV. A few ragged kids in wet gear cheer the best rider...
...Snowboard makers have been busy too, developing boards for the growing number of children and adults joining the teenage boys who once dominated the sport. This year's trends include a longer board with deep side cuts that allow snowboarders to descend all kinds of terrain with greater control. Among the hot models: the Search by Sims ($365), Salomon's Directional 163 ST ($420), the Custom by Burton ($430) and Avalanche's Sanders148 for women...
...knows? Maybe someday a child on a snowboard will watch in awe as someone speeds by him on the slopes. "What was that?" he'll ask an older person. "They used to be called skiers...
...Snowboard fashion, both male and female, is hot, and so, believe it or not, is snowboard literature. Surfing the Himalayas, a vapid, new-age novella written by Frederick Lenz (a discredited guru once known as Rama), is surfing the best-seller lists. The book tells of how a snowboarder and a monk known as Master Fwap come to a mutual understanding after the rider knocks the monk down. In that regard, the book mirrors the new age on the slopes. "The war is over," says Bob Gillen, the marketing director for Stowe. "There is peace in our time...
That comes as a great relief to Paul Graves, a snowboarding pioneer from Redding, Vermont, who has been fighting an uphill fight for 32 years. "In the early days," says Graves, "back when we were riding these primitive things called snurfers, skiers looked on us as lepers. I remember being escorted off Mammoth Mountain in California by the ski patrol and told never to come back." This week Mammoth is host to a special snowboard competition for women. At the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, in 1998, snowboarding will be introduced as a medal sport. (Park City, Utah, the site...