(oui, oui… je sais. Pas beaucoup information. MAIS regarde la difference pour PRO snowboarders!)
Let’s make a list why French are better and why USA is better for PRO snowboarders. Why? 'Cause in my opinion it would be possible to work on the differences between each country and come together/closer when it comes to support the PROS.
What is better arranged? Yes, to live as a PRO snowboarder IN France. What do you like and what don’t you like being a PRO snowboarder in France. Compaired to USA? Is USA better? And why? And why not?
Let’s see what your own experience is with being a PRO. (I think not every PRO would make commend on this topic but hey take the amateurs then.) Or even the regular riders. What is in your opinion a change for France or USA to satisfied the PRO or regular rider to become better. And the regular rider?
Because that is what we want to be at the end. Better.
I’m not pro, but I have my opinion. Just look at the snowparks, you can’t compair france and USA. USA resorts know what snowboarders need, and they don’t hesitate to spend time & money : sometimes there are 5 or 6 parks just in a little resort, with 10 or 12 persons who work all the week long to have perfect-shaped kicks. In France, even the biggest ones have only 2 poor kickers and maybe only one shaper. French resorts don’t understand nothing to snowboarding, except maybe 3 or 4 (2 alpes, 7 laux…)…that’s why it’s so hard to progress and to become a pro snowboarder in france.
They just don’t want, because they can : they win a lot of money and if they wanted to have great parks, they could.
PS : that’s not the right section for this topic. This one is just if you want to buy or sell something
It’s easy to see why american prosnowboard are so good.
Just when we see all those perfect snoparks in usa: mammoth, brenckenridge, brington, aspen, bear mountain, park city… In those resorts there are 3 or 4 differents parks with differents levels, and it’s so easy to land a trick when you don’t need to stop. All the track is a snowpark!!
But there is one things which make me sick sometime, when I see how snowparks are remade all the time to stay perfect for riders in usa. Whereas in France they do that one time for a contest or to take pictures but when you come (maybe one week after) there is nothing even shapes of kickers are disappeared.
everyone seems to be so found of the usa politic in snowboard and there is some good justifications here…
first point : may be we can just have a look at the price in american resorts and compare it to the one in france and we could get surprised and have a further analysis. for one day in usa you pay for instance in mammoth 78$ and in france you can find tickets from 20 € to 40 € max… then im not so surprised of the diferences beetween our parks …
second point : lets think of which kind of people come to ride in usa. you ll agree with me not everyone ! and those who really like that should really get a sponsor to practice it and so become very good ! in france moutains are quite accessible for the most of us and so you dont have to break everything to go and ride ! the only good riders we have became so because they were made of snow and are genius!!! an another fact is that school in usa support lots more their pupils than in france they do.
then for a pro i think its better going in usa to ride for the conditions they give you althought i think that regular riders (the big part) are the happier riders in the world cause they ride one of the most beautifull mountain and for cheap
Well spoken ionion! But do you say then because it is cheap the level of snowboarding is due to that lower compaired to the USA? Is that than the case? Don’t think so. Besides that… 70 USD is about 52 Euro now… so whether it is up to the money I will leave it up to you…
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR WRITING YOUR REPLY IN ENGLISH => APPRECIATE THAT! Well done!
may be its due to that but its just an idea and an explanation. usa make of their resorts, places very competitive and they put the price so naturally they ask it to the riders. i think its a cultural thing aswell, in usa people are pushed to be the best whatever they do. since schooll you have learned to compete and you re part of a team of sport. In france no. It exists only 1 or 2 school in annecy and grenoble that permits you to compete in snowboard and follow your studies at the same time…
That’s quite a very interesting question. I tryed to figured out why the parks in french ressorts (france) are not developped at their maximum potential. If you check in canada every ressorts have at least a park n you have whistler who have a really big sport. I don’t why france don’t put the money in their park and im sure they have the money. A point that i must talk about is that one reason that the parks in france are not well developped is , i am sure, that french riders imply themselves less than amerians riders in the construction of parks. And in france most rider do ski and in Usa or Canada , it’s now 3/4 snowboarders, which could be the best reason to explain the state of parks.
Though skiers do freestyle too! Leave them in shitty parks then? Point is that the demand for good parks is there. Man, I even think people are willing to pay an extra cent for that aswell. Point is that from the top of the organisation, there where the rules are being made, is that just dont see the point of having a freestyle park. To be continued…
In the US many snowparks are so develloped that the mountain is not used anymore like a natural place but only like a resort (like a skatepark…understand)
But isn’t it much more funny to ride in a natural place than in a big park shapped with too much salt that pollute and with big rattracks that spit CO2 too ??
For me, the advantage of riding in France is that you can ride 360 days a year because of the "glaciers’ here and also because of the great backcountry.
There is also very good backcountry riding spots particularly in Canada (B.C) but in the States, it’s really hard to ride there without being caught by the Rangers
So, I just wanted to say that we have the greatest mountains all over the world with a real possibility to use it and that’s why I prefer to live in France rather than in US.
After that, I just wanted to tel you that the best riders are not only americans anymore!! The North contries have « produced » really good rider such as Eero Etalla or Andreas Wiig whereas there moutains are really flat and the parks aren’t so great…
I think that these differents politics about snowparks are the reflect of two differents states of mind We have a different culture, in the US all is always BIGGER, and BETTER than anywhere else…
I like riding in a big resort, with a big snowpark, music, and lot of riders…but most of the time, with my friends, we go to little resorts, maybe 10 or 20 slopes and unknown freeride spots…Just snow, trees, hand-shaped BC kickers, and us. back to the roots
I just wanna react to the Pande’s answer, because i agree the fact that snowparks in usa are sometimes bad for the environnement but you said that we have the greatest mountain in the world.
In fact we have a lot of big resorts who join themselves to make a kind of megaresorts ( « les 3 vallées » for instance) and that why we are famous all over the world. Usa does the same thing, as they don’t have huge moutains like us they make on its huge parks to make them more attractive.
So i don’t understand why our resorts don’t built a good snowpark (they don’t need to be bigger than american’s snowparks) even small, with three tables and two rails. If they reshape it daily i think that could be enough to progress. And at the same time they win a lot of money.
(Messages combinés automatiquement)
+1 I love this kind of riding but we haven’t the same tastes!
« And at the same time they win a lot of money. » = « And at the same time they earn a lot of money. »
(just a small correction there)
But in fact it is not the size of the mountains or the size of the country itself… it is what is asked by the visitors and what to offer. What can be offered for the millions of people who are seeking to go wide and long as possible ‹ et voilà › ‹ we › build the Vanoise Express… but just compair it with the community inside your own city or village. How long, and I know from personal experience, does it takes to get even just a small 25,000 Euro concrete miniramp in a certain area inside your city or village. YEARS! Now, let’s go back to the mountains. Ofcourse for some the will is there, take a look at the Les Arcs Apo park. But it is also how to fill all that in. How to deal with a problem and to maintain the level (the level in USA as reference) that the freestylers demand from the workers at and inside the park. It is a hell of job, but someone need to do it. Well… what am I waiting for! Oh yeah, ‹ I forgot › (…) there we have the bureaucratie…
Watch « Follow me around » in EEro Ettala’s part. He presents us his local skiing resort in Finland: 1 chair lift, one slop, and 2 kickers. That’s it. He says « It’s gooood! »
What i want to say by that is at the creation of the world everybody where doing ski only… you know… N at this time the only freestyle was the acrobatic ski (ski acrobatic) like in the olympics or les bosses(lol) … n then you got the snowboard that came… And snowboard pierced (a percer …) more in north america than in europe… even today as i said in my previous message… in europe its like 1/4 snowboarders… n in north america … 1/4 skiers. So when the snowboard started, the freestyle as known now has started too. It snowboard that developped parks and freestyle in general because of the skateboard style and aside the ski made his freestyle too. My theory is that ski hasn’t followed the same expension as snowboard did in north america. Thats why lots of park in north america n not in France.
I don’t say to leave the skiers in shitty parks… just explainning why the current situation is happening.
