 | |  | | | | | | | | | Can you introduce yourself?
My names John Mitchell, Im 43, Ive been snowboarding for 14/15 years.
Have you always snowboarded?
Before that I skated for a few years. Maybe four/five years from the early eighties into the early nineties. So Im quite an old skater as well [laughs].
Do you still skate?
No. Not really, no. Its too much pain. Every single slam means pain in skateboarding.
How did snowboarding take over?
Well, there wasnt as much pain when you slammed [laughs]. Its also faster, its smoother and it has bigger parks.
What was the Scottish snowboarding scene like in the early years?
Very few guys. Like, there were a couple of guys in Glenshee, a small crowd in Aviemore, and Nevis Range hadnt even opened then. Basically, there were 20 guys between Aviemore and Glenshee and it was like that for a good three to four years. It started kicking in around 95/ 96. Thats when the crowds...well, not crowds, but when more people started getting involved. I think they also got involved as the snowboarders got better, because skiers were seeing boarders doing things that skiers couldnt do in ten years and the boarders were doing it after two or three years. So it was obvious that snowboarding was going to be huge, just because it was so easy.
Did you ski before you snowboarded?
No, I never. I never really tried it and dont really want to either [laughs].
How did the skiers take to the snowboarders when it first started?
There was a lot of aggression and they didnt like the snowboarders because at that time you were out of control and you were smashing into the backs of queues and crashing into skiers and we were all like the beginners are nowadays. Now youve got instructors to help you, so learning is a lot quicker, but in our time, for the first couple of years, you would be out killing everyone on the mountain [laughs], so it wasnt taken to very kindly. That only really happened for a couple of seasons though, and then, as people started getting better, the skiers became more aware of it and it wasnt so bad.
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