{"id":20222,"date":"2019-11-21T10:51:36","date_gmt":"2019-11-21T17:51:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/?p=61622"},"modified":"2019-11-21T10:51:36","modified_gmt":"2019-11-21T17:51:36","slug":"remembering-jake-burton-carpenter-snowboarding-pioneer-dies-at-65","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/remembering-jake-burton-carpenter-snowboarding-pioneer-dies-at-65\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering Jake Burton Carpenter: Snowboarding pioneer dies at 65"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure class=\"wp-block-image p402_hide\">\n<div class=\"caption-container\"> <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"325\" height=\"260\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.skyhinews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2019\/11\/Olympics-VDN-122213.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt srcset=\"https:\/\/cdn.skyhinews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2019\/11\/Olympics-VDN-122213.jpg 325w, https:\/\/cdn.skyhinews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/9\/2019\/11\/Olympics-VDN-122213-300x240.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 325px) 100vw, 325px\"><figcaption><strong>Jake Burton was a pioneer for the sport of snowboarding, from his participation at the &#8220;King of the Mountain&#8221; tourament at Ski Cooper in 1981 to his efforts to lobby the ski industry throughout the 80s to allow snowboarding on ski mountains. Snowboarding became in Olympic sport with the 1998 Games. <\/strong><br \/><em>Jeff Curtes, Special to Vail Daily<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Jake Burton Carpenter, more commonly known as Jake Burton, was a pioneer for the sport of snowboarding. Born in April 29, 1954 in El Paso, Texas, Burton helped develop the modern-day snowboard through founding Burton Snowboards in 1977, a company that still holds some of the strongest brand recognition in the snowsports industry.<\/p>\n<figure><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"about:blank\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" allowfullscreen data-rocket-lazyload=\"fitvidscompatible\" data-lazy-src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/206637002\">[embedded content]<\/iframe><noscript><iframe loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/player.vimeo.com\/video\/206637002\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" allowfullscreen>[embedded content]<\/iframe><\/noscript><\/figure>\n<p>Burton\u2019s impact on the Vail area was immense. Aside from the hordes of Burton-brandishing snowboarders who live in and visit this area, the Burton US Open is one of the largest competitions in snowboarding and has been hosted in Vail every year since 2013 after a run of 30 years in Vermont.<\/p>\n<p>Every person who has ever strapped into a board owes a debt of gratitude to Burton. Burton is survived by his wife, Donna, and sons George and Timothy.<\/p>\n<p>Burton died Wednesday night in Burlington, Vermont, according to an email sent to the staff of the company he founded. Carpenter had emailed his staff this month saying, \u201cYou will not believe this, but my cancer has come back.\u201d He had been diagnosed with testicular cancer in 2011 but after several months of therapy had been given a clean bill of health.<\/p>\n<p>Carpenter quit his job in New York in 1977 to form the company now known simply as Burton. His goal was to advance the rudimentary snowboard, then called a \u201cSnurfer,\u201d which had been invented by Sherman Poppen a dozen years earlier.<\/p>\n<p>It worked, and more than four decades later, snowboarding is a major fixture at the Winter Games and snowboards are as common as skis at resorts across the globe.<\/p>\n<figure><noscript><\/noscript><\/figure>\n<p>\u201cHe was our founder, the soul of snowboarding, the one who gave us the sport we all love so much,\u201d Burton co-CEO John Lacy said in his email to the staff.<\/p>\n<p>It is virtually impossible to avoid the name \u201cBurton\u201d once the snow starts falling at any given mountain around the world these days. The name is plastered on the bottoms of snowboards, embroidered on jackets, stenciled into bindings.<\/p>\n<p>At a bar in Pyeongchang, South Korea, not far from where snowboarding celebrated its 20th anniversary at the Olympics last year, there was a wall filled with Burton pictures and memorabilia \u2014 as sure a sign as any of the global reach of a company founded in his garage in Londonderry, Vermont.<\/p>\n<p>The company sponsored pretty much every top rider at one time or another \u2014 from Shaun White to Kelly Clark to Chloe Kim.<\/p>\n<p>Carpenter watched all his champions win their Olympic golds from near the finish line, never afraid to grind away in the mosh pit of snowboarders and snowboarding fans that he helped create.<\/p>\n<p>In an interview in 2010, he said he was happy with how far his sport had come, and comfortable with where it was going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI had a vision there was a sport there, that it was more than just a sledding thing, which is all it was then,\u201d Burton said. \u201cWe\u2019re doing something that\u2019s going to last here. It\u2019s not like just hitting the lottery one day.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Lacy said details about the celebration of Burton\u2019s life would be coming soon but, for now, \u201cI\u2019d encourage everyone to do what Jake would be doing tomorrow, and that\u2019s riding. It\u2019s opening day at Stowe, so consider taking some turns together, in celebration of Jake.\u201d<\/p>\n<figure><noscript><\/noscript><\/figure>\n<p><em>Reporting from The Associated Press was used in this story<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/news\/remembering-jake-burton-carpenter-snowboarding-pioneer-dies-at-65\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Jake Burton was a pioneer for the sport of snowboarding, from his participation at the &#8220;King of the Mountain&#8221; tourament at Ski Cooper in 1981 to his efforts to lobby the ski industry throughout the 80s to allow snowboarding on ski mountains. Snowboarding became in Olympic sport with the 1998 Games. Jeff Curtes, Special to [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20222","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 00:02:30","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20222\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}