Update: Has Snowboarding Lost Its Edge?

Written By Unknown on Senin, 21 Januari 2013 | 17.35

Brennan Linsley/Associated Press

LATE last summer when Shaun White, the two-time Olympic gold medal snowboarder and X-Games superstar, was charged with public intoxication and vandalism, he became at age 26 an accidental metaphor for his sport: a young phenom all grown up, and in a spot of trouble.

After exploding onto the scene about two decades ago, snowboarding is now sputtering in the United States, according to a recent study by RRC Associates, which tracks trends that affect the winter-resort industry. "Today, there is every indication that the growth in snowboarding we took for granted has stalled, and visitation from snowboarding is headed toward a path of substantial decline," Nate Fristoe, RRC Associates' director of operations, wrote in the National Ski Areas Association Journal.

For several months now, Mr. Fristoe's report has been the buzz of the industry. For some it's also become a rallying cry to revive this sport, which, with its bad-boy image, was widely credited with saving a dull and moribund ski industry in the early 1990s.

From just 7.7 percent of all visits to American ski slopes two decades ago, snowboarders accounted for nearly one-third of visitors two years ago. Now that surge has fizzled. The percentage of visits to resorts by snowboarders even declined slightly each of the last two seasons, to 30.2 percent last winter, according to a survey by the National Ski Areas Association. The average number of days that snowboarders — usually a more hard-core bunch than skiers — hit the slopes also has seen a "sharp drop" from 7.6 days a year at its height 15 years ago, to 6.1 today, Mr. Fristoe wrote. Meanwhile the average number of days that skiers went to the mountains has remained consistent at about 5.5 days for several years.

"Snowboarding lost some of its mojo around 2005, 2006, and we've been running on fumes since then," Mr. Fristoe said. "It's like any kind of trend: It's full of all sorts of energy ... until it isn't."

The causes of the slowdown are many, Mr. Fristoe said. Chief among them is age: the young "grommets" who fueled the sport's explosion have matured. A 15-year-old who started snowboarding in the 1996-97 season is now 30. Nearly 38 percent of snowboarders are either part of a couple or have children, up from 23 percent a decade before, the report said.

"They're getting older, they're forming families, they're in their career-building phase," he said. Translation: less free time to shred, and less money to burn.

Yet other forces are at work, too, including the fact that fewer young people seem to be taking up snowboarding. In the 2003-4 season more than 42 percent of all beginners on the slopes ages 14 and younger started out on a snowboard. The percentage has steadily fallen since then, last season dropping to about 34 percent, according to the ski areas association.

One reason may be that snowboarding simply doesn't have the rebel cachet that it once did. Skiing has appropriated everything from snowboarding's swagger to its trendy clothing to technology like fat skis. Simply put, it's cool to be on two planks again.

Then there's the gender gap. Though male and female boarders start the sport in equal proportion, many more women are dropping out as proficiency grows. "We're not retaining our female participants like we should," Mr. Fristoe said. Furthermore, he said, those female boarders don't switch to skiing and are "lost" to the resorts. "Combine all those factors, and that's what makes us fearful of a lack of rebound of snowboarding."

If nothing is done to reverse the slip, visits by snowboarders to resorts could plunge by one-third from its high by the winter of 2021-22, Mr. Fristoe predicts.

Though some industry leaders say Mr. Fristoe's projections are too dire, others are listening.

"We need skiing and snowboarding to grow in lock step" for the continued growth and health of the industry, said Michael Berry, president of the National Ski Areas Association.

TO that end, efforts have been made to attract new snowboarders by making the entry into the sport easier, especially for young children.


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