Shaun Botterill-- Allsport for TIME
 nder 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 in the world as he slips off, back
to the chair lift. The Norwegian packs up his third Mount Baker
trophy (a golden roll of duct tape) and prepares to head up to
Vancouver, B.C., to consult on a snowboard video game. And then
probably home to Oslo, or Jackson Hole, Wyo., or maybe back to
Mount Baker. But not to Japan and the first snowboarding events
in Olympic history. Haakonsen is boycotting Nagano.
The would-be Olympians are a few hundred miles south, in the
volcanoes of central Oregon, where the second of three
qualifying events is taking place. The Mount Bachelor ski area
is packed with truckloads of sound equipment, brimming with
$10,000 purses and populated by whole contingents of coaches.
For the halfpipe, snowboarding's freestyle discipline and
Haakonsen's main event, Todd Richards launches and spins his way
past fellow American Ross Powers toward a victory. Richards, who
defeated Haakonsen at last year's U.S. Open in Stratton, Vt.,
was expected to challenge Haakonsen for the gold in Nagano.
Their rivalry will remain non-Olympian and will certainly not
pit the U.S. against Norway.
In fact, Haakonsen cites nationalism as a reason for giving the
Olympics the same salute he has thrown journalists, contest
officials and all who encroach on snowboarding's outsider ethos.
The young antihero dislikes the formatted judging system and
just about everything ordained by the Olympics and is suspicious
of its structure and its ability to deal with his evolving
sport. Mount Baker, with its loose nature, he says, "is a way
more organized and professional contest."
Haakonsen also does not like the way the Olympic snowboarders
are being turned into uniform-wearing team members. Like tennis
and golf, snowboarding has functioned with independently
contracted athletes enjoying, in some cases, six-figure
contracts. At competitions, snowboarders are usually adorned
with various sponsors' logos. Within the Olympic system,
competitors must wear officially sanctioned uniforms provided by
a contracted supplier. Mark Fawcett, Canada's dominant
giant-slalom racer, who draws a good portion of his income from
Fila, must suspend that contract to advertise Nike, official
sponsor of the Canadian team. At one point, Fawcett was so
frustrated by the rule that he tried to join the New Zealand
team. In the end, he decided to go Canadian anyway.
The sponsorship issue is just one battle in an ongoing war
between snowboarding's two governing bodies, the I.S.F.
(International Snowboard Federation) and the F.I.S. (Federation
Internationale du Ski). The International Olympic Committee's
1996 decision to award Olympic-qualifying status to the F.I.S.,
organizer of skiing's World Cup circuit, nearly sparked violence
at some European events. Says Fawcett: "The F.I.S. didn't want
anything to do with us until they realized it was going to be an
Olympic event and that there would be [TV] network interest and
a great deal of money." Other riders felt the F.I.S. had little
understanding of snowboarding's anti-Establishment culture. The
scuttlebutt too was that the F.I.S. circuit is second rate.
Skirmishes aside, 55 snowboarders from 15 countries will be
stepping off the bullet train in Nagano and catching air before
an estimated 10,000 spectators. Riders will be competing in one
of two snowboarding disciplines: the halfpipe and the Alpine
race, the giant slalom. The halfpipe confrontation will take
place in a semicylindrical course (394 ft. long and 12 ft. deep)
in which riders perform like skateboarders, executing flips and
rotations before a panel of judges. The giant slalom in Nagano
will involve threading through gates along a 3,100-ft. run down
the mountain.
One of the must-see rivalries will pit Richards, 28, against
Powers, 18, who is an F.I.S. halfpipe prodigy and has already
done much to pump up the competitiveness of the F.I.S. circuit.
The outgoing Richards, though he had some difficulty in the
first Grand Prix event, came on to win the second stop at Mount
Bachelor with a fluid technical style rooted in his first
passion, skateboarding. Powers, one of the more disciplined and
reserved riders on the tour, has exploded into the top rankings
this winter with several convincing wins. Even without
Haakonsen, the U.S. will have its hands full holding off another
Norwegian in the halfpipe, Daniel Franck. With a crowd-pleasing
style and powerful amplitude, Franck could break his string of
runner-up finishes to add to his country's cache of gold.
Michelle Taggart, 27, looks to be the best American women's
halfpipe artist. A veteran and four-time World Champion, Taggart
has made an impressive comeback run this season, including wins
at both Mount Bachelor and ESPN's alterna-event, the X-Games, to
become the first freestylist named to the squad. A resident of
Salem, Ore., Taggart is one of the few active riders to have won
both racing and freestyle titles, though she now focuses her
efforts solely on the halfpipe. One of the sport's true female
pioneers, Taggart has triple the contest experience of her
competitors and is only getting better as the Games draw near.
In the men's giant slalom, Chris Klug, 25, won his hometown
Mount Bachelor event and picked up a rare win over Canada's
Fawcett to secure a spot on the U.S. team. Klug, a former high
school All-Star quarterback, has the brightest chance for a win
over the Canadians. Europeans, who have long dominated the
Alpine events, still could sweep the giant slalom. "I wouldn't
be surprised if the podium was one-two-three for Austria," says
Fawcett. On the women's race course, Lisa Kosglow, 24, of Boise,
Ind., overcame a rough early-season start to win the Mount
Bachelor giant slalom and rise to medal contention. Her
competition may come in the form of Rosey Fletcher, 22, of
Girdwood, Alaska, whose pre-Olympic results earned her the first
berth on the U.S. women's racing contingent.
And what of the man who may be the world's best freestylist? In
the warm confines of Mount Baker's lodge, Terje Haakonsen steps
onto a makeshift podium as the Golden Duct Tape is hung around
his neck to the cheers of a couple hundred soaking patrons. A
crackling stereo plays the Norwegian national anthem. Haakonsen
grasps his plastic bag of award loot--gift certificates, lift
tickets, stickers and assorted boarding goodies--and hurls it
into the writhing mass of teenagers. It isn't Olympic, but it is
the golden moment he feels snowboarding is all about. |
Events
