Female snowboarders

Just like girls in skiing, female snowboarders were not taken seriously by their male counterparts, and competitions were closed to them. Advertisements for snowboarding contests, and equipments, featured skimpily dressed girls who were not athletes. Even women's snowboard wear featured half-naked models! In the 1980s and 90s few pictures of female snowboarders actually riding their boards were ever published, and even today some people still regard female snowboarders as less aggressive and less skilled than their male counterparts.

Britain's top female snowboarder Zoe Gillings will be in action in her second Snowboard Cross World Cup of the season in Arosa, Switzerland between 19th and 20th December. Pic from Snow Sports GB

Female snowboarders catch up with the boys
Travis Lupick

By her own admission, Taylor Godber is not your stereotypical snowboard chick. She wears makeup, is into fashion, and wears high heels to her day job as a bartender at Earls in Whistler. In a telephone interview, Godber said that when she started working at the restaurant in 2006, she would bug one of the male bartenders to let her and her friends ride with him for a day.

Four months later, in May 2008, Godber was doing more than simply proving she can hold her own. Only 20 years old, she was selected by Option Snowboards—a Vancouver-based company—as one of its only female team riders.



Godber conceded that it isn't always easy for young women to advance in the world of snowboarding. Guys she's ridden with have acted like her best friend and then shit-talked her style when she wasn't around, she said. And there has been the occasional catcall from the chair lift when she's been riding the Super Park at Blackcomb.

But the gap between male and female riders is closing, Godber added. Competitions once closed to women have opened up to allow everyone to compete, and last September Runway Films released See What I See, its second annual women-only snowboard video.

Meredith Eades, an assistant manager at the Boardroom on West 4th, has been skiing and snowboarding for over 20 years. She said that she has watched female snowboarders slowly progress to a point where they are respected in a way that women in freestyle skiing are not. She said that these days, girls are asking for top-of-the-line snowboards that were once only sold to men. "Girls are coming in saying, I'm not the average chick—I can ride and I can rip it and I want something good," Eades added.

Female snowboarders fitness

2006 US Olympic gold medalist, Hannah Teter, also starred in a documentary about snowboarding: First Descent. Hannah will be will competing on the Winter Dew Tour. The three-event series will open Dec. 18-21 at Breckenridge in Colorado, move to Mount Snow in Vermont on Jan. 8-11 and close at Lake Tahoe in California on Feb. 19-22.



Hannah Teter started snowboarding at age 9 and her event is the halfpipe. To maintain her fitness Hannah has workouts for her muscle and bone strength, and for aerobics capability. Strength training is for the off-season; Hannah does four hours of strength and agility training three days a week. She also does Yoga and meditation for mental peace.

During snowboarding season, Hannah does three hours of halfpipe practice, and a half hour of freestyle snowboard runs daily. And on the days when she's not boarding, Teter works on her cardio through swimming, skateboarding, or trampolining.

Hannah says, "I have a passion for working out. Every time I wake up and know I have a session, I'm excited to charge it again. I like how throughout the weeks, I can see my body change. That's the good stuff: to feel my tummy and think, Ooh, it's harder. Or to go out on the halfpipe and go up for my first air. Just as I take off and I'm boosting, I'll be like, I feel so strong! And when I land, it's, Oh yeah, I feel rock solid! Working out makes me more confident because I feel so strong."

Hannah Teter's close friend Gretchen Bleiler:



While girls have been sexualized in the snowboarding industry in the past, it's different when female snowboarders pose in underwear on their own!