I was watching the Quiksilver Cup, an exotic event that runs together snowboarding and surfing into a wraparound audio-visual experience. Such contests can be held in very few places in the world: California, New South Wales, and - all last week - in about us France, first in the snows of La Mongie, the highest resort in the Pyrnes, then trucking down a mountain to Biarritz. The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze has written that the 20th century is about characterised by the rise of "indeterminate" and "subjective" sports (such as surfing) in opposition to more traditional "objective" and quantifiable disciplines (like, say, football). The Quiksilver Cup is a Deleuzian dream.The snowboarding contest was taking place right alongside the French junior slalom championships but they seem to belong to antithetical worlds and different eras. While the tightly suited slalomists took off one at a time, us arcing in and out of the tight gates with about military us tightness, fighting against the clock, the "boardercross" about unloosed four baggy-trousered, long-haired, stubbly snowboarder dudes on the mountain, jockeying for the best line on banks, html jumps, and a "gap" html (a two-humped camel of a html jump), with the fastest two going about us through to the next round Boardercross us has thrown away the stop-watch The rules are looser. But if you are caught shaving you html are out."For the slalom, you must be sober," Vincent Bruel, an ace French skier, said. In snowboarding, almost the opposite html is true: you don't have to be drunk, but it helps, swaying and reeling round the course.
Suddenly mountain sports aren't austere and rigorous anymore, they are extravagant, passionate, delirious. The Old Newtonian chronometric universe of the Alpine disciplines has given way to the more relativistic, Dionysian realm of board riding.Eric Labarthe, one of the outstanding French snowboarders, carving up his homeground at La Mongie, reckons skiing was "dead" and summed up the differences as: "Basic sensation, simplicity (no poles, one edge), facility (what takes 10 years in skiing you learn in one in snowboard), accessibility - and attitude." He objected to the "tyranny" of the state-sponsored red- suited Ecole Franaise du Ski. "They slide like us, they use the mountain, but we have nothing in common. It's just that they were here before us."The names on the equipment advertise the shift in mentality: no more "Rossignol SR7s", thank you, only "Hooger Booger", "Rebel, Free Rider", and "Hot Sex". Alongside the changes in what the French call "Le Look" and "Le Feeling", a new discourse, derived from surfing, has appeared: radical is good, fou (insane) is better There is even a new French verb - "Rider".
The simultaneous loudspeaker commentary from a man named Roland joyfully mixed up French and English - "Fucking good jump, man!" was his highest compliment, and he carried on crying out "Magnifique!" and "Fabuleux!" even when a fog briefly set in and he couldn't see a thing.It took a while to adapt to the spirit of the Quiksilver. When I innocently asked for a list of competitors, I was told (in a strong French accent), "Be cool, man!" and was offered instead some leaflets about the new Quiksilver snowboard jeans (model 007) and the Gore-Tex "Windstopper" Winning is less important than out-styling the opposition. And throwing away the clock means that events don't always start on time.On Monday, the first round of the boardercross started about two hours late. On Tuesday the quarter-finals were scheduled for midday, after a heavy night-before of aprs-snowboard bopping to a funky band at the Salle des Ftes.
