Snowboarding
We intercepted Superman of snowboarding Travis Rice at the Union Bindings HQ in Lake Como, Italy.
Have you met Giacomo Kratter this time around?
No, unfortunately not yet. When I come to Italy, I definitely try to have a dinner with him, or at least he recommends me where I have to go to… usually he just gives me an address in Milan, or in Rome, or he goes ahead and makes all the arrangements for my dinner and… dude, it's always the most amazing dinner experience I've ever had! Places that you definitely don't see otherwise, really well-dressed Italians around and stuff… I'm stoked to hang out in Italy right now for a little while, appreciating life at a slower pace.
Back to our business. How was your past season?
It was great. I got to snowboard a lot, I worked on some projects, I've been doing a lot of pre-production almost for the last two years, like the Ultra Natural contest, and also we got ready to restart a new Red Bull film this year. I'm really looking forward to it. The Red Bull Ultra Natural contest has been postponed for this season due to some problems with TV times schedule, and so we don't have the ability to do it this year; but I'm not too worried although I've been really looking forward to doing it this year, because we're going to change a bit the format which is going to get it more exciting… but it's OK, because we had set our goals, our eyes to the winter of 2015, and probably we're gonna do a new location… This contest takes two years to get ready, so once we got it, we keep it get running. I'm anyway so satisfied the way we did it last season and all the riders who came appreciated it so much and they walked away all saying "Man, this is the greatest contest ever, it's so great for snowboarding!".
My goal has always been to start something more than just a single event, and hopefully we'll have this same conversation in two, three years about this contest coming to Europe; we've already got some ideas about it, 'cause there are so many great places to do this in Europe.
Now talk us through this project of yours here at the Union Bindings Headquarters…
It's fun for me to work on my different projects just like this one. I've always been very hands-on to the products that I do, for example with the outerwear line with Quiksilver, or the board line with Lib Technologies. I got on Union two and a half years ago, and the curious thing is that it was a brand I've always been a huge fan of, since I was pretty young.
It was kinda the same thing when I chose Lib Tech: when I was a kid and a consumer myself, it's always been such a cool brand. When I got to that point in my career that I could decide who to represent, I went for it. And more that just being a huge fan of Union since the very beginning, I've always loved to work with very self-motivated people, and our bigger goal is to build a product that people actually like to ride. I always attempt to spend more time on a snowboard than anyone else, and I treat my equipment pretty rough and so usually my commitment with Union is working on fine-tuning the bindings, when shape and design meet functionality.
They all have so many years of experience in building bindings, using different materials and having a whole lot of technology culture about it. Last summer I already came and spent a week here, and also this fall working on the bindings that are out now which are my first Union model. It's a multiple step process, we're working now to the model which is going to be released in two, three years. One as a consumer might think that a binding is kinda simple, but holy shit once you get into it you realize that there's a whole crazy world to discover: the amount of materials for example, all the tooling to cut those materials, metal blocks for each freaking part of it… I think that bindings are the most tech and complex and difficult-to-produce equipment for snowboarding, even compared to boards and boots. With bindings there's soft parts, solid parts, metal and plastic and rubber, there's a lot of torque and different forces that a binding has to bear. There's a lot of technology behind it.
Apart from snowboarding, how's your sailing experience been with the America's Cup crew?
Last year I went to watch some racing comps with AC 45s, kind of pre-cursor to the America's Cup, the contest circuit just before people got ready for the Louis Vuitton Cup which selects the challenger for the America's Cup Final, and right then Red Bull was kind of considering getting on board with the America's Cup and I'm a sailer myself, so that's why I got interested in. So I spent some time speaking to Red Bull about getting into the America's Cup and we talked with the sailers about some ideas about it and the guys were motivated as well, to get sailing become kind of our alternative action sports side project for the off season. Because right now sailing is so on edge, and so many people have become interested into it: some time ago it was kinda boring, the two boats were never really battling head to head, but now the boats are actually flying at amazing speed on water and the lead changes several times before the race ends… it's incredible.
I have a 48 carbon catamaran, and so it's kinda similar to those AC 45 boats and for me it was such an incredible opportunity, getting into the field and feeling what's like being part of that team. We sailed for three days, then we left for a month and eventually we came back when they set up a whole race course, and we each had our own AC 45 boat with the America's cup crew, and we had to do some of the decision making or impart orders and we actually raced each other. That was an incredible experience working with those guys and just getting to see Team Oracle's back end: they got 160 employers working around the clock, and the AC 72 - which is the boat that they raced the America's Cup - is something like made out of NASA. They spend hundreds of million dollars on this project, the aerodynamics and everything that comes with it…
Meet the sailors, hang out with them and see their campaign… of course now I'm a super fan of sailing and I watched every single race of the America's Cup screaming in front of the TV... "Come on boys!". (End of the 1st part. Stay tuned for the second part dropping soon!)
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