If there’s one thing that 50% of the population will remember about this year’s Olympic snowboarding, it will be Shaun White’s gold medal winning halfpipe run. For the other 50% the defining moment was when Hannah Teter and Clair ‘her surname sounds like a ceramic bum washing device’ Bidez, featured in the 2010 Sports Illustrated swimwear edition. 

As a result the defining moments of the Oympics according to a large number of snowboard blogs and forums have been; Hannah Teter’s bum, Clair Bidez’s weird belly button, the impressive amount of Photoshoping involved and definitive proof that it is not possible to look sexy in rubber boots...

So the Olympic snowboarding is as good as over for another four year, and now the news coverage can get back to the war in Afghanistan and that’s exactly what we are going to do. This week illicit takes a look at a snowboarding destination that’s not on most snowboarder’s travel plans due to the constant danger of war-induced death.

Last Resort No. 3 - Snowboarding Afghanistan

People have been warring in Afghanistan since the duel inventions of Afghanistan and people. There are very few places on earth that have seen so many and such varied people, come to practice the art of running amok. Just a few of the notable exponents, so far, include; Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, the British (4 times and counting), the Russian Empire, the USSR and most recent bandwagon jumpers - the USA.

Notorious Snowboarders #2: Melo “Mellow“ Imai

In the next few days as the Vancouver Olympics kicks off a select few snowboarders from around the world will compete for Olympic glory. For a few weeks these previously relatively unknown athletes will be thrust into the spotlight and carry the hopes of their nations on their shoulders. A very small number will succeed and become household names, but most will not, and after the Olympics they will quietly go back to relative obscurity. This is the tale of one snowboarder who was a Japanese medal hope in the 2006 Olympics before a crash and the results of a difficult upbringing took her, not only back to obscurity, but into infamy...

In the lead up to the impending Vancouver Winter Olympics it looked like one of the big snowboarding stories was going to be the first appearance by a Bahamian snowboarder - Korath Wright.

Shaun White has his own private halfpipe, DC have their Mountain Lab and Illicit has our very own private resort and ice palace. 

Photographic proof that we do. Wear it corporates.

White House : DC Mountain : The Glorious Kingdom of Illicit

This week Illicit has a crack at the very topical art of Infographics and we take a look at which faceless corporations lie behind the snowboard brand names that we all know and love.

The Big Corporations That Run Snowboarding Map

The idea for this came from the forum on Yobeat and some lad called Andrew Nagel, aka ‘GnarBuckets’ who reposted a post from back in 2006 on Snowboard Mag’s site, by a very angry man who went by the name of ‘The Public Advisor’. The Public Advisor lad posted quite often at that time about the corporations behind the brands and he really was not a happy bunny. He didn’t like any company that was any bigger than just some punter in a garage, good news for illicit then because he could be a fan of ours. Unfortunately it seems that The, which I assume is his Christian name, disappeared from the Interweb recently, probably due to becoming so incensed by capitalism that he combusted.

Anyway this article answers GnarBuckets question “I was wondering if any one could update it and add other companies that are now in snowboarding and what not and just every one give there 2 cents on this.”

And to answer the first part of Mr Buckets question here is something we just drew up and are going to call a ‘Piste Map’, showing which corporations own the brands in 2010.

It’s worth taking a look at the map in full size version which you can do by clicking on the picture. In our shiny new Flickr account you can also experience a version with interactive brand names.

Snowboarding first appeared in the Nagano Olympics in 1998 and in just three games it’s already notched up more than its fair share of controversy. This article takes a look at the alternative Olympic heroes - they didn’t all win in the old-fashioned gold-medal sense, but they all left their mark on snowboard history. Here’s hoping the guys at next month’s Vancouver Olympics can live up to the legacy of these Accidental Heroes. 

Before snowboarding had even made it’s first appearance, the controversy had started…

In the recent Snowboarding Celebrities articles we’ve started to force the concept of a theme on them. This week we take a look at famous athletes that snowboard and we found out a few interesting things.

Very few athletes from any other sport have tried snowboarding. Quite sensibly this is due to snowboarding being a notoriously body shattering type pastime and as athletes pretty much rely on their bodies this would have a negative impact on their careers. Hence, most athletes not only choose not to pursue our sport, they also tend to have pretty hefty contracts that prevent them from doing it. This quickly narrows down the potential field of snowboarding athletes to…

1. Athletes from sports that do not require physical effort, such as snooker or darts.
2. Athletes who are so used to breaking their body that one more opportunity is no big deal.
3. Athletes that are so good at their sport they can do whatever the hell they want and stick it to the man and their contracts.

Ultimately the resulting list was very short, I found two and they both fit in the last two categories. Unsurprisingly there are no recorded instances of anyone in the first category having a bash at snowboarding.

Not a snowboarder

The two athletes I found also happen to be very, very rich guys and it’s pretty interesting to compare their earnings against the top pro snowboarders. So here’s The Top 5 Highest Earning Snowboarding Athletes…

Last Christmas we took a look at the snowboarding legend that is Santa Claus, so this year we take a look at another member of Team Christmas – The Snowman.

The Accidental Hero column is dedicated to snowboarders who brought something to snowboarding but for whatever reason did not become a household name. This week we take a look at Banana George, a man who didn't quite make it to snowboarding superstardom because he was a bit of a late starter. 

Skiing has brought the world a number of dubious trends over the years. In the 80s and 90s one of those trends was the appearance of a plague of ski-related cartoons. Things got so bad that, for a time, anyone vaguely aware of the sport was exposed to an array of them, through unwanted Christmas presents, Fat Face/White Stuff t-shirts worn by posh ski punters and seeing them decorating the walls of almost every resort toilet.

Like this one for example, usually seen accompanied by some sort of 'on the piste' joke

Over time snowboarding has taken on some of the trends of skiing but fortunately the pandemic of the snowboarding cartoon has not reached us. Wanting to understand how we avoided this danger I have run a test of the snowboard cartoons available in the internet to understand why it hasn’t caught on.