Snowboard cross

Snowboard cross courses share common traits with motorcycle motocross courses, hence the similarity between the names of each sport. Competition format is typically a time trial followed by a knock-out tournament.

History

When Steven Rechtschaffner and partner Greg Stump had run out of ideas for segments for a TV show they were producing for Fox TV called Greg Stump's World of Extremes, Rechtschaffner recalled the race concept that had been in his head for years. Given the need to come up with a final segment, Rechtschaffner, a passionate snowboarder, pitched the idea to Stump, who loved it, and Blackcomb Mountain, who put up prize money and snowcat time in order to build the first course in 1991. John Graham, who was Stump's business manager, was credited with conceiving the name boardercross. After being seen on the Fox TV show and re-aired on MTV Sports, others began staging boardercross events in Canada, the U.S. and Australia. Rechtschaffner travelled to many of these events in order to help them learn how to build the boardercross courses.

Rechtschaffner had trademarked the name boardercross primarily as a way to ensure that people putting on events did so in a way that was safe, exciting and respectful to the world of snowboarding. He denied the ski sanctioning body F.I.S. the rights to use the name "boardercross", as he shared the majority of snowboarders' belief that a ski sanctioning body should not be in charge of snowboarding events. That’s why boardercross is referred to by the F.I.S. as “snowboard cross” in Olympic events, even though the overwhelming majority of boardercross racers still refer to their sport by the original term.

In 2000, Rechtschaffner channeled the spirit of boardercross into a series of hit video games he produced for Electronic Arts called SSX, which sold over 8 million copies over the following years.

In 2006, boardercross (referred to as snowboard cross) became an official event at the Turin Olympic Games and subsequent Winter Olympics.