Dig this blast from the previous as California’s KCRA3 dug into their archives and dusted off this mint piece of snowboarding historical past starring U.S. Ski & Snowboard Corridor of Fame member Tom Sims.
Tom Sims’ affect through the pioneer day of snowboarding cannot be understated. In 1976 he established one of many earliest snowboard manufacturers, SIMS, and was a real evangelist for the rising sport. You might assume you’ve gotten by no means seen Tom trip, however if in case you have watched the 1985 James Bond 007 film “A View to a Kill” you’ve gotten as he was Roger Moore’s stunt double for the snowboarding chase scene. Tom truly lobbied the director John Glen to incorporate snowboarding within the movie and it was a lot of the world’s first publicity to the game he liked so dearly.
Take pleasure in this clip of Tom and reporter Pete Fuentes as they hit the slopes in 1983 to discover this radical new sport.
U.S. Ski & Snowboard Corridor of Fame Profile of Tom Sims:
Snowboarding’s “true pioneer,” Tom Sims formed the game as a world champion athlete, visionary inventor, marketer, artist, and the passionate personification of the boarding way of life. Sims was additionally instrumental in snowboarding’s first debut on the Nagano Olympics in 1998.
Tom Sims was one of the crucial influential pioneers in snowboarding, and in 1976 established his now heritage model SIMS (Skateboards & Snowboards). His pure dedication ignited and outlined the early levels of the game. Tom left indelible tracks in each side of snowboarding, and helped catapult it to a mainstream viewers after convincing the director to let him act as a snowboarding stunt double for Roger Moore within the 1985 James Bond 007 film, “A View to a Kill.”
“I’ll by no means imagine Tom Sims invented snowboarding,” says trade veteran Brad Steward, who labored for SIMS and later based Bonfire. “I’ll at all times imagine he invented the snowboarder.” Sims offered that “first burst of power that made us assume, ‘There may be one thing to do right here, one thing to develop right here,’” Steward says.
As a teen rising up in Haddonfield, NJ, Tom had turn into a gifted skateboarder after a go to to his Grandparent’s dwelling in Los Angeles in the summertime of 1963, the place he was awed by neighborhood children bombing the streets. Later that very same 12 months, when the New Jersey snow started to fall outdoors his seventh grade store class, he constructed what he then dubbed a “skiboard.” It was a brief, crude, wood system that enabled Sims and his associates to mix the sensation of skateboarding and snowboarding on the snow, on the close by Tavistock Nation Membership golf course. Sims was at all times shooed away from the fairways in these days, however at this time a plaque is devoted to honor Tom and commemorate the location because the beginnings of what he would ultimately champion to turn into an Olympic sport. February ninth is noticed as Tom Sims Day in Haddonfield.
Within the early 70’s, Sims moved to Santa Barbara, California and continued shaping full-sized snowboards, longboard skateboards, surfboards and wakeboards. Pursuing his love of boarding in each summer time and winter, he received the title of World Skateboard Champion in 1975, and a 12 months later, based SIMS and designed its iconic winged brand. In the course of the winter of 1982, he was led blindfolded to a secret location in Lake Tahoe (turned out to be the Tahoe Metropolis dump), the place he ultimately witnessed what he deemed to be the way forward for snowboarding. A number of of the native skateboard children had been launching themselves right into a snow lined ditch on SIMS snowboards, sparking Tom’s imaginative and prescient for what would quickly turn into the halfpipe competitors.
With snowboarding banned at nearly all ski resorts, Sims lobbied tirelessly to get them to open their lifts and slopes to this new sport. In 1983, he managed to persuade the proprietor of Soda Springs ski space into letting Sims and his riders construct the primary halfpipe ever for competitors, and host the primary SIMS World Snowboarding Championships. Sims received the title of World Snowboarding Champion in 1983. In these early years, a divide existed between the East Coast Burton alpine riders, and the West Coast SIMS riders who had been additionally skate boarders. Sims’ persistence in including the skateboard tradition of competing with methods and having workforce riders received out, and the halfpipe turned king in snowboarding, and later, a revered Olympic occasion.
Sims had ardour and a artistic thoughts to revolutionize the tools, and his technological breakthroughs stay legendary — some embody first heel and toe fold down bindings, first cracked steel screwed-in edges, first males’s professional mannequin with a revolutionary rounded tail, first all-mountain mannequin, first ladies’s professional mannequin. Quite a few early SIMS snowboard workforce riders are famend, some included Terry Kidwell, Craig Kelly, Shaun Palmer and Shannon Dunn.
In the meantime, Sims was leaving his personal mark as a competitor and the poster boy for the boarding way of life, equally gifted as a skater, snowboarder, wakeboarder and surfer. In 1985 alone, he received the slalom on the U.S. Open of Snowboarding, captured the legendary Mt. Baker Banked Slalom, and, as a stunt double for Bond, launched thousands and thousands to the game when he bombed down the mountain and streaked throughout a lake on a snowboard (all on the primary take).
Whereas Sims’ tools advances had been revolutionary, and had a sterling popularity and product, in addition to a expertise of all-world workforce riders, Sims wasn’t capable of safe financial institution loans as snowboarding was thought-about a startup “fad” sport in these early years. Unable to compete financially in a abruptly fertile snowboard area, the SIMS enterprise mannequin turned licensing agreements with numerous companions all through the a long time.
On Sept. 12, 2012, Tom Sims handed away as a consequence of issues following cardiac arrest, at a hospital close to his dwelling in Santa Barbara, Calif. In 2001, Tom met and married Hilary Sims, who turned actively concerned within the enterprise. Collectively they raised 5 youngsters (Tom had two sons and a daughter from a earlier marriage, and was Step-father to Hilary’s two daughters).
Hilary continues to personal and oversee SIMS. Along with a small workforce, By no means Summer time Industries in Denver, and SIMS companions in Japan, they’ve all labored to push ahead the long-lasting model and stick with it Tom’s legacy, by relaunching SIMS again to core specialty retailers world-wide. SIMS in Japan is presently relaunching the skateboard sector as nicely.
