Snowboarding
Check In: Pat Moore
We caught up with snowboard uber-star Pat Moore and asked him about X-Games and life on the road.
There are few better snowboarders than Pat Moore. Filming a full video part and a podium spot at X Games is something most pros hope to accomplish in a career. Pat did it in one season. A true snowboard renaissance man, Pat rides everything extremely well. I caught up with him to talk about his plans for the season, the X Games and the importance of style.
With the unfortunate end of The Program, what are your plans for this season?
Right now I’m still under contract with Forum so I am riding the product. Redbull stepped up and I am going to be filming with my own crew and my own filmer this year. My goals are to do X Games Real Street and Real Snow backcountry, and hopefully win them both. I’m also going to put out an online video part that combines those two videos and whatever extra footage we get.
What’s your take on the Real Snow/Street contests?
I think that it’s cool. It shows the different aspects of snowboarding. The response I’ve gotten from my X Games part (Pat took 3rd place) was really good, even compared to my Forum part. A lot of people saw it. It brings our side of snowboarding, filming and traveling, to the viewer’s eye.
The X Games deadline is really early, so how much added pressure does that put on your season?
The parts are due on January 3rd, so you basically have a month to get everything done. To give you some perspective, the pros I looked up to when I was younger didn’t even start filming until after the New Year, and I am basically filming a full part before that.
The Real Street and Real Snow videos were available entirely online, and the level of riding was really high. Do you see online video parts becoming the new thing?
It’s tough to say if it is going be the new thing or not. What Travis did with the Art of Flight; that is where I see actual films going. Videos like that and the Burton film are really good and polished. I think there are going to be two things, either high budget polished films, or online parts that are equally sick but just don’t have as much money behind them.
With contest riding being at such a high level, it seems like style is becoming less important and the focus is solely on doing new tricks. Do you feel that style has become second to progression?
Style is really important to me. It’s difficult to put yourself in a judge’s perspective at an event. I judged X Games one year and it’s hard because you see someone do a backside 5 that’s super sick, but you know that trick’s easy and you can land it every time. But then you see someone do a backside double cork and it’s something that they are truly trying. It’s tough trying to find that balance of keeping style while bringing in new tricks. It’s up to the people running contests to put an emphasis on style. There are great examples of people who keep style relevant while doing hard tricks, like Mikkel Bang, Mark McMorris and Danny Davis in pipe. There are a lot a people with sick style who are doing winning tricks, but they get overlooked once in a while.
Make sure to keep an eye out for Pat’s X Games parts. If they are anything like his previous segments, you won’t want to miss them.
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