Extreme Sports

Are you interesting in taking up snowboarding? Maybe you’ve got a pre-teen or teenager who was really fired up by watching snowboarding on television and it’s the next big thing for them. Well, if you or your child join the ranks of snowboarding enthusiasts you will be part of a growing trend. The sale of snowboards has gone through the roof in the last decade, and especially the last few years. Perhaps the most evident symbol of the sport’s success is that it has been an Olympic sport in the last four games, and viewership for snowboarding is generally extremely high. Before you get online and pick up a couple of snowboards, here’s a brief primer about the sport.

You might be surprised to know it began as long ago as the late 1960′s. Its inspirations are not hard to find – surfing, skateboarding and skiing. Early snowboards were pretty basic by today’s standards, though the basic shape is still very similar. These early models had no boot or binding, just a small slot or groove to place your feet for stability. When snowboarding began to take off, the earliest and best snowboards were made by companies that are still making the best snowboards on the market – companies like Burton, Barefoot, Sims, and Gnu. Early on, many called the budding sport “snurfing,” as you can guess, a combination of snow and surfing. Early designers of snowboards tended to be surfers and skateboarders, and the early models reflect these influences. Riders stand sideways on the board, unlike a forward position when skiing or water skiing.  Read more...

Snowboarding was developed in American in the 1960′s and 70′s as a combination of skateboarding, surfing and skiing. It started out as a simple toy invented by Sherman Poppen, a Michigan engineer in 1965. He fastened two skis together and attached a rope to one end for controlling direction and gave the toy to his daughter. The idea was so popular amongst all his daughter’s friends that he licensed the idea as the ‘snurfer’ and sold over a million of them in 10 years. In the early 1970′s Poppen organised a ‘snurfing’ competition which was attended by Tom Sims, a keen skateboarder. He went on to make commercial snowboards in the 1970′s. At the same time an American surfer constructed a snowboard on the basis of a surf board and got much publicity in mainstream magazines, helping to launch the sport of snowboarding. In 1977 a young guy called Jake Burton Carpenter entered a snurfing competition but had modified his ‘board’ to include bindings to secure his feet to the board. In the same year he founded Burton Snowboards. In 1979 Jake entered the first ever World Snurfing Championships but there was opposition to his use of a modified board so a new category was invented just for him and snowboarding was born. During the 1970′s and 1980′s snowboarding as a sport became more popular with new board and binding designs.

The first world cup for snowboarding was held in Austria in 1985 and in 1994 the International Snowboard Association was founded. However, ski resorts were less than happy to adopt snowboarding and allow snowboarders on the slopes. There was a misguided idea that snowboarders would wipe the snow off the runs. In 1985 only 7% of American ski resorts allowed snowboarding and the situation was similar in Europe. As equipment and skills improved snowboarding gradually became more accepted and by 1990 most ski resorts has separate slopes for snowboarders. Now around 97% of ski resorts allow snowboarding and there is no or little division between slopes for skiers or boarders.  Read more...

Surfing in recent years has made major advancements in popularity and growth. Although it has only become popular in the last fifty years, surfing has been around for a very long time now. Research has shown us that surfing dates back to Tahiti all the way back to 1767. Cave drawings have depicted Polynesian cultures riding waves on long boards in addition to other drawings. It has also been that the chief of these villages was actually the one that could surf the best and biggest waves.

A long time later in 1912, surfing caught on in the United States and was brought over by James Matthias. He was influenced from the Polynesians that were participating in this strange sport and he brought it to the East Coast. In Virginia Beach, he brought a famous redwood board that he rode and taught people. From that point forward, Virginia Beach has remained a very popular surf location due to its history.

At around the same time, the West Coast began catching on thanks to new surfing innovations and board designs. This led to more public exposure and led to an explosion of surfing culture. Mainstream society and also Hollywood began to eye the sport and start to embrace it.  Left and right, surf shops began to appear in beach towns and promoting the surf clothes that the culture loved.

With the help of the Beach Boys and other large music groups and also a movie called “Gidget” about a young surfing girl, surfing became a huge scene that everyone wanted to be part of.  This is when surfing style was born.  To accompany the popularity of the sport, the fashion industry started to boom with clothing to go along with it.  One thing that has helped boost its mainstream appeal is that surf clothing promotes self expression and individualism.  Read more...

In the early 1900′s the Hawaiians organized the Hui Nalu (surf club) and competed in neighborly surf competitions with the Outrigger Canoe Club. This drew a great deal of attention to the Waikiki surf shore, bringing a revitalized interest in the sport, which had fallen out of favor in the late 1800s. Duke Kahanamoku, an Olympic star in swimming, popularized the sport further by traveling internationally and showing off his surfing style to thrilled audiences around the world. He was favored by Hollywood elite; having acted in bit parts in films and was always recruiting new surfers wherever he went. He is credited with surfing the longest wave of all time in 1917, in the popular surfing area now called Outside Castles in Waikiki. His 1000 meters plus wave record has yet to be overtaken.

In the 1930s, the sport of surfing was experiencing a Renaissance. Tom Blake, founder of the Pacific Coast Surf Championships that ended with the onset of war in 1941, was the first man to photograph surfing from the water. Another photographer and surfer named Doc Ball published California Surfriders 1946, which depicts the pristine coastal beaches and good-time, relaxed atmosphere of surf living. Surfing, although curtailed in the aftermath of WWII, revived as always by the 1950s. Bud Browne, an accomplished surfer and waterman, created the first ‘surf movie’ with his 1953 “Hawaiian Surfing Movie”. This inspired many photographers, filmmakers and surfers to continue documenting the sport, culminating with is arguably the best surf movie of all time, 1963′s “Endless Summer” by Bruce Brown. The film opened up the genre of the surf movie and the art of surfing to non-surfing people, accumulating fans and inspiring neophytes.  Read more...

Man has always held the fascination of the underwater world. The wish to spend some time in the depths of the seas and oceans had captured man’s attention. This inspired him to come up with ways and means which will enable him to explore the marine world.

Many inventors were keen to develop equipment assisting underwater exploration. Ideas and equipment developed during the 1500′s leaned towards a diving bell. This equipment was basically a bell-shaped apparatus with the bottom open to the sea. The first diving bells were large and heavy weighted to sink in a vertical position, therefore trapping enough air to allow a diver to breathe.

So let us start with the chronological events on the history of scuba diving.

The first recorded reference to an actual practical diving bell was made in 1531. However, it was within the late 1600′s that great strides were made in this technology. This meant that now divers were able to spend hours underwater.

In 1690, an English astronomer named Edmund Halley developed a diving bell in which replenished air was sent to the divers by sending weighted barrels of air down from the surface.
The next evolution in the history of scuba diving was the deep sea diving suits, which at that time were referred to as the diving dress.

In 1715, an Englishman by the name of John Lethbridge developed what was to be the first diving dress. This was basically a barrel covered in leather equipped with two arm holes with water tight sleeves and a glass porthole enabling the diver to view underwater. This apparatus was lowered from a ship just the same as a diving bell.

Although several designs were used in later years, this gear still had the same limitations as the diving bell because the diver was restricted in his movements.  Read more...