Alibaba and the 40,000 Crappy Snowboards

The Chinese eCommerce group Alibaba is about to go public in what is expected to be the largest tech IPO of all time. 80% of everything sold online in China goes through this company and they flog more merchandise than Amazon and eBay combined. It's not a company most people outside China are familiar with, so we figured we'd take a look and see what all the excitement is about...

4 Things Isabella Laböcks' appearance in Playboy tells us about the current state of snowboarding

Over a year ago we put together an article looking at what was then a small trickle of professional snowboarders who had taken their kit off for publicity. At that time there were 7 ladies and 5 guys who had given it a try. One of the strange things we noticed around this year's Olympics was that in the space of a few months the total number of female athletes choosing to go down this route has more than doubled with another 8 taking the plunge. What does that mean for snowboarding?...