Ski history question

M

midwestcoast

Member
Who was the first street skier ever? Is it documented? Actual question here.

You think his friends were like, "why ya wanna ski there?"
 
Olga and Helga. Pictured here after greasing their first quad kink.

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honest question here...

Are we talking the first person to just like ski in a town, or on a street etc? cause im sure that was way before any documented record of such things

shit a james bond movie, or 60's, 70's , 80's ski films have clips of people skiing through streets and towns

im guessing we are talking first person to get paid by sponsers to primarily ski/film freestyle stunts in the streets?
 
14577694:CT_CREW said:
honest question here...

Are we talking the first person to just like ski in a town, or on a street etc? cause im sure that was way before any documented record of such things

shit a james bond movie, or 60's, 70's , 80's ski films have clips of people skiing through streets and towns

im guessing we are talking first person to get paid by sponsers to primarily ski/film freestyle stunts in the streets?
Click to expand...

bro really said "freestyle stunts"
 
Not sure who was first overall but I believe that Skogan Sprang was the first skier to have a cover shot of a “street” rail. It was the October 2000 Parkasaurus Issue. The rail is one of the handrails at the base lodge of Snow Summit.

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**This post was edited on Jan 6th 2024 at 2:46:06am

**This post was edited on Jan 6th 2024 at 2:47:10am
 
Street is like a convergent evolution in skiing. It started kinda everywhere at the same time. I grew up in Quebec in the late 90s early 2000s and watch freeskiing blow up.

Rails. I know that in 1998, Le Relais had its full modern park. It had rails, 2 half pipe, 5-6 jumps which 2 were big air. It had to be before then. It was in 2001 I did my first rail and hated it. I saw a few people back then could slide a rail.

Street is a converging evolution of skiing. Skiing down the streets of your town on a snowday is something my parents did. But to take it and stunt it, Charles Gagnier was responsible for making street stylish.

But yeah, there was a huge scene of innovative riders in the US and Europe that I am missing. I was invested in Quebec freeskiing history
 
14577690:Christian_Bale said:
Really good question I would love to know this as well.

Jason Levinthal hit a downrail on skiblades back in 1997, which apparently is the first photo (no clip unfortunately)
https://jasonlevinthal.com/1998/11/01/first-photo-of-skier-sliding-rail/

In Balance (level 1) there's a clip of scott hibbert hitting a picnic bench to rail in 2000, around 24:45 in the video. Don't know of any earlier clips.
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14577928:Farmville420 said:
[tag=17763]@JLev[/tag] any input here? Also curious.
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Thanks for the shout! There could have been others sliding urban on skis pre 1999 but at the time I can confirm I had the first published photo and didn't know of anyone else doing urban (that I knew of). I was also snowboarding in the 90's and snowboarders were already doing urban for years so to me it just seemed normal to want to do it on skis so it was on a major personal mission of mind to make happen.

Keep in mind at that time there were no twin tip long length skis so anyone else would have been riding skiboards and there were people sliding rails in the park on skiboards for sure. This was all prior to the Salomon 1080 or Line 1260 existing, no twin tip long skis were available so people's minds were not thinking about skiing park, so urban was really far from skiers minds.

There was a very small crew in late 1990's at Hood with Eric Pollard when he was in highschool including Griffin Cummings that were making turned up tail attachments they riveted to the tail of their straight square tail skis that I know were sliding rails in the park but not sure if any of them were doing urban at that time.

That Freeze cover of Skogen was the first time any skier sliding a rail of any kind was featured on a ski mag cover. That was shot during Super Park at Mammoth early 2000's. It was on the stairs outside one of Mammoth's mid mountain lodges.
 
^CRINGE CLAIM.^

Real freestyle skiers never water ramped or skibladed.

and we hit rails on single tip skis, poaching the boarder park.

ROFL, ski blade for life jay!
 
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