Mark Fawcett Interview

October 13th, 2000
By Jack Michaud

It was a dark and stormy day at Sugarloaf/USA roughly ten years ago. The top half of the mountain was embedded in grey clouds and sleet. Not to be hindered by the dreary conditions, I was practicing carving down the easier trails on the bottom half of the mountain, staying more or less out of the weather. It was a time when seeing another snowboarder on the hill was a rarity, and it was a day that not many other people were out on the hill at all. Nevertheless, there was another snowboarder there that day, carving it up on a brand new K2 XTC Dan Donelly pro model. Yes, carving on a freestyle board. Of course, after a few runs we ended up on the chairlift together. Turned out he was a CVA student, one of their first snowboarders, and a really friendly guy. Of course, all snowboarders were friendly to each other back then. He confessed he wished he had his alpine setup with him, since it wasn't much of a day for freestyle. I rember him asking me if I had ever tried hardboots, and I had to admit no. "Hardboots rule for carving," he emphatically declared, holding up his thumb and forefinger slightly apart, "they let you slice these tiny two-inch tracks in the snow!"

We took more runs together until the lifts were about to close. He opted for one more run and I decided to call it a day. As we parted ways, he shouted back to me "hey, I'm going to the US Open next weekend, wish me luck!" Gliding away I turned and gave him a thumbs-up and thought to myself, "yeah... you're gonna need it!" not believing a local joe from Sugarloaf would amount to anything. Yes, that was Mark Fawcett.

It's ten years later and Mark Fawcett is now Mark Fawcett, one of the world's premier snowboard racers, and I've been fortunate enough to find myself in a position to catch up with him and ask him his story...

Bomber Online: How long have you been snowboarding?

Mark Fawcett: Oh, roughly 17 years.

BOL: Where did you start snowboarding?

MF: Absolutely just backhill stuff in New Brunswick, golf courses, local hills where kids were tobogganing, gravel quarries that would fill in, you know, so pretty short vertical, but it was enough to get the hang of it, and we built some jumps and drops and stuff like that. Then the first time I was ever at a ski area with a board was at Saddleback (Maine). A group of us first went to Sugarloaf, and they said "nope, you can't take that up here" so we were like "alright, well see ya later, you just lost four tickets", so maybe that got them thinking. That was '84-'85.

BOL: When did you start focusing more on alpine snowboarding rather than freestyle or freeride?

MF: Well it's kinda funny, I have a ski race background, but I also have a skateboard background, so I enjoyed both disciplines. Initially my best results in the (long since defunct) New England Cup were in the half-pipe. I loved the pipe, but I think I loved the sport of snowboarding because if you competed at snowboarding, you competed in everything that there was to do in the realm of snowboarding. We did moguls, racing, pipe, and you were psyched to do all of it... at least I was! (laughter) Pretty much when I met Jerry Masterpool, my coach - he's not a real big freestyle fan, he said "look, you've got a lot of potential in alpine, you can have a longer carreer, you'll stay in better shape, your game won't fade as quick, your spine will stay in better shape without all the flat landings and stuff". And I told him that I'd been doing both for a number of years by then, and that I wanted to at least keep up a minimal effort to compete in the half-pipe because I enjoyed it. So I kept that up until about '93 or '94, and then I think I did the US Open half-pipe in '95 and then that was it. I didn't have enough time to focus on it, and I realized I was making more of a fool of myself out there than I was having fun! (laughter) But I've been in the pipe a couple times over the last few years, especially last year when they started making the super-pipes, they're pretty damn fun.

BOL: Who were your early carving and racing heroes or influences?

MF: Definitely some of the Vermont guys, Andy Coghlan, I somewhat owe my career to him. I went to an actual camp at Loon Mtn. (New Hampshire) back in '88 and it was advertised in Powder magazine as Andy Coghlan and Chris Karol's snowboard camp. So I called up to apply and they said I had to apply by mail. I said hey by the time the Canadian mail gets it there, it'll be over! So they said "okay, come on down", it was pretty informal. So I went and thought for sure all these kids were going to be hot-shots and I had only ridden at a resort a few times, but I did really well there and I was right on the heels of Andy and Chris. Eric Webster was an assistant coach at the time also. So it was kind of a big thing for me. Andy took me aside and said "look man, you gotta keep doing this, I think you could do really well". But I think I just got way off tangent from your original question!

BOL: No no! This is great!

MF: Oh yeah, that's right, so Andy Coghlan was definitely one, and actually I really admired Eric Webster too, watching those two guys really impressed me. Of course I was always impressed by some of the Euro's; back then it was pretty much Peter Bauer, he was the man, and Jean (Nerva) too. They would show up with really steep angled hardboots, and back then we were all softy snowboarders holding our softboot races. But at the same time I would listen to Coghlan and the boys bitch about the Euro's, saying the Euro's were fags and this and that (laughter), so I would say "yeah yeah, they're fruits, I don't wanna respect those guys!"... but that's only brain-washing when you're sixteen, you know?

BOL: So you had to secretly admire them then?

MF: Yeah. But at the same time I knew I could get something going because... well, I mean, god love 'em, I'm good friends with these guys still, but they were showing up to some of the races, and even at camp all hung-over and out of shape and...

BOL: Peter Bauer??

MF: No no no, Coghlan and the boys, and I just thought god, these guys are right in there in the World Cup events, and even winning them sometimes, and they're just... partying! You know, they're not taking it seriously! So I thought if I just took it seriously I could really do something with it. When I was sixteen I was pretty involved in rowing, you know, crew, at a really high level and I had a really aggressive bunch of teammates, so training was very hard-core. Next to that, snowboard training was a total candy-ass joke.

BOL: When did you start training with Cross-M?

MF: Pretty much the year of its inception, basically the summer of 1990, I moved out to Hood to train actually with the K2 guys, Sanders Nye, and I showed up and he had already left for the summer! So I ran into Noah Brandon, who was a good friend of mine from the New England Cup, and he was training with Jerry and he was like "hey look, Jerry's not with Burton anymore, he's just doing is own program, you should talk to him", so I did and the rest is history, so to speak.

BOL: How was your experience at Carrabassett Valley Academy? (at Sugarloaf/USA in Maine)

MF: That was a really great stepping stone into the world of professional snowboarding. It was awesome, I wouldn't have traded that for any high school in the world. I don't know if the rules have stiffened up since, but I was pretty much the king of that place! (laughter) But it was fantastic, talk about a dream, I got to snowboard every day and go to school at the same time. Supposedly we were to take every Monday off (from snowboarding), but they were pretty lax about that. Jeremey Jones and I would jump in my car on our lunch break and pile in five or six runs... I don't think I missed a day that year. It was phenomenal. I'd always been a pretty decent student, but the year before CVA I kind of slacked off a bit because I was trying to snowboard so much, so my grades dropped from A's and B's to C's and such, and then my snowboarding wasn't going where I wanted it either because I was only a weekend warrior. Being able to ride everyday at CVA and finish high-school made the biggest difference.

BOL: Up until now, it seems to me that you've been back and forth between Sims and Prior, is that right?

MF: Actually I was with Sims straight for nine years, and Prior made some of my custom race boards within that period. Last year though, I was only on Prior.

BOL: Were you ever riding a board that was strictly manufactured by Sims?

MF: Absolutely, from the spring of '97 till last fall, I was riding boards that were made by Sims at the Sims factory, engineered by myself and the Sims engineers, who were really good.

BOL: Did you have a personal relationship with both Tom Sims and Chris Prior?

MF: Yeah, definitely. I know both of them quite well.

BOL: Where do you stand on split-tail boards, do you have a preference?

MF: I'm trying to... well, I wouldn't want to say 'ween myself away from them' by any means, but I'm definitely giving a fair shot to a hard-tail board again this year. This summer I was playing back and forth between the two. Actually, before I signed on with Burton I had a good idea I would be riding for them so I was trying out a Burton hard-tail versus my old Prior split, and it was a tough call; there's pros and cons to each. I wish I could answer more completely, but there are certain snow conditions and certain courses that lend themselves to one or the other.

BOL: Can you generalize what conditions are better for a split and for a hard-tail?

MF: In softer snow with deep ruts, hard-tails seem to work better, but in hard snow or slushy snow... basically the more "hero" the snow is, the better the split works.

BOL: Do you ever ski anymore?

MF: Absolutely. I love skiing! (laughter) I really see myself in ten years or so choosing the weapon of the day. Whatever the conditions are looking like, I'll say well it looks like it'll be good for skiing, or snowboarding, or it looks like it'll be good for a tour so I'll take the tele's out. But I love skiing, for sure. I'm a pretty good skier.

BOL: Have you been out on the newer "shaped" skis?

MF: Yeah, I usually just borrow crap from people, so I've used all the new stuff. It's pretty amazing, it works well.

BOL: How often do you go out and play on a freeride or freestyle setup?

MF: As much as possible, like powder days, I really look forward to powder days. I enjoy a full freeride setup with softies. Usually in the spring, I save it all up till April. I'd say between the beginning of the season and the first of April I think I was in softies twice last year, which is a record low for me. I usually try to do it a lot more; I usually try to do an Alaska trip also to do some filming. I enjoy that aspect of the sport as well, but racing has just consumed me. (laughter) But I know there's lots of powder days for when the racing's done, you know?
BOL: Now the big question, why Burton, why now?

MF: Why Burton... well, why not Burton really? They're the original snowboard company, not to mention a successful snowboard company. Not to bag on any other snowboard company, but there's always something sketchy going on with everybody: changing of the guard in one respect or another, changing owners, changing upper management, people getting bought out... Burton has shown - I know you're going to think I'm a hypocrite to say this, but Burton has shown for years that they support alpine and alpine athletes. So definitely they were one of the first ones on my wish list, Burton's a great company to ride for. Also they have a phenomenal custom department for making my specials. Not many people realize that, but it's true. Many of the athletes are pretty simplistic with their equipment and their requests. Usually they just say here's the dimensions and that's it. I like to go deeper than that, and Burton is up to that. So it's pretty much a win-win; it's good for me that they're able to do this, and it's good for them that maybe they'll learn something from me too. I like to use the analogy of snowboard racing to Formula-1 car racing where racing is the crème-de-la-crème of their technology and it trickles down into their production.

BOL: Can you tell us your current GS board design?

MF: I have two GS boards right now, a big and a small. The big one is 189cm, 18.8cm waist width, 16.7m radius, 6mm taper. The small one is 185cm, 18.8cm waist width, 15.7m radius, 3mm taper.

BOL: What does the taper do for you?

MF: It makes the board more stable at speed, basically. With taper, the finish of the turn is more up to you, whereas a board without taper really finishes the turn for you and can be too "hooky" sometimes. Most of the Euros don't use any taper, they like the board to hook up at the end of their turns.

BOL: What do you use for a stance setup?

MF: 60 degrees front and back, 17.75" wide, toe lift on the front foot and heel lift on the back foot. (Mark is 5'8", 170 lbs.)

BOL: How has your reception been at Burton, how are they treating you?

MF: Reception has been very good, I got an email from just about everyone I know at Burton. I've been in the industry for such a long time that I know most of the folks at Burton and I got individual emails from almost all of them saying they're very excited... all the reps and everyone, it's been great. I've gotten tons of boards from them already and they're working hard for me.

BOL: Does Burton have any problem with you training with Jerry since he's outside the company?

MF: Oh not at all, they've had Burton people training with him for years. Jasey's been doing that for most of his career. Jerry's program is back into full swing again, we've got a big crew of top athletes this year, like ten or eleven, all on the world cup.

BOL: Of course Burton has done a lot for the advancement of alpine snowboarding, but lately Burton seems to be sending mixed signals to the alpine community. Obviously signing you to the team implies an improvement in their commitment to the sport, however at the same time, they've pulled alpine from their print catalog and from America's oldest competition, the US Open. How do those maneuvers make you feel both as a team member and as a carving enthusiast in general?

MF: Well, with the catalog, they've really changed direction. I guess you could say they've gone in the same direction as what Fin at Bomber has done. Yes there is a hardcore carving and hardboot scene, but it's pretty damn spread out. If you had all the hardboot athletes concentrated in say, the state of Colorado, then sure, every shop there would have all sorts of hardboot goods, different bindings, different boards, but this population is so spread out over the country and the world that none of the retailers can really do anything with it. So thus the catalog is really directed at the retail shop market. By going direct now, and I think most of the hardboot people are online now, I think they've done a smart thing. Not just for themselves, I mean of course it makes sense business-wise, but also for the consumer. It's one stop shopping, you can get anything you want, alpine-wise, direct from Burton (but not real bindings -ed).

BOL: I do agree that it's a better move for the consumer and that you'll be able to get alpine stuff from Burton a lot easier now, and that that may increase sales and hopefully popularity, but I just couldn't understand why they couldn't at least mention alpine in the catalog, or continue to glamorize it as they have all along.

MF: Yeah, unfortunately I haven't had a chance to really take a good deep look at the catalog to see if there's something somewhere to say "for alpine see burton.com" but I'll be sure to bring that up when I meet with them next. Hopefully that will get changed for next year where they'll have at least a page to show some alpine athletes and say here's your source, go to burton.com for the alpine stuff. See this way there won't be any more "gee I have size 13 feet, where's the closest store where I can buy hardboots?" If you live in Wyoming, the answer might be Minnesota. With the stuff all direct now, there's no more of that.

BOL: Yeah, that will be better but you know, every year I look forward to getting the Burton catalog... it's almost like getting a letter from an old friend...

MF: Yeah, I completely understand that, I remember waiting for it myself. I think '84 through '92 I used to be like oh wow let's see what Burton's doing now...

BOL: Right, so this year when it came I was flipping the pages and found myself in the boots and bindings, and I thought wait a minute - where's the beef? I was afraid Burton had pulled out all-together and I had to hear it through the grapevine that they'd gone direct!

MF: Yeah, that's too bad. Actually when the catalog was being printed I wasn't a Burton athlete yet, but I'll see if I can do something about it for next year.
As for the US Open, I think that was your next question, yeah I was perturbed, and I was perturbed when they went from Super-G to the dual GS on the request of the Europeans, I mean Super-G is just such a traditional event there. Behind the scenes, the US Open has been the biggest battleground between the Americans and the Europeans and the mountain and the event organizers ever since I can remember. I mean, I was at the Open in '88 and it wasn't so bad that year, but starting in about '90 there was just conflict after conflict. And it's tough to change the US Open. To really change that event I think they'd have to change resorts. Some years they'd pull off a really good event. Burton is the sponsor and they do quite a bit of the organization, but they don't do A to Z. I lay a lot of the blame actually on... well you talk to a lot of the pro athletes and over the last five years their appreciation for the Open has dwindled. I've always dug the history of it and I'm always stoked to go to Stratton, but for a lot of them, it just leaves a bad taste in their mouth. The prize money is up one year and down the next; the rules change every year for the pipe, the discipline and the trail has been changing each year for the alpine events, and a couple of years ago they paid the freestyle winners like three times what the alpine guys were getting and we weren't told that until the final hour. So it's just been an up and down thing. But this year at the same time there's the world cup final in Finland, and all the alpine guys are pumped up to all hell to race there, and it's points for the Olympics, so there wouldn't have been any of the top people at the Open this year anyway. Last year I really could have used the points and gone to the finals in Italy, but I opted to stick it out and go to the Open instead. By the time the Open was done, I was wishing I had gone to Italy. Unfortunately, Stratton did a really terrible job at running the race events. We were there at four in the afternoon in terrible conditions, no banners or promotions up as usual, you know, the typical shit. And that's not Burton per se, Burton has the same complaints. To tell the truth, if I was on Burton last spring I would have told them to get the hell out of Stratton, it's not going to kill ya! (laughter) Move somewhere, you know there's a million other mountains that would love to have the event and would do twice as good a job hosting it. I'm actually surprised that they haven't moved it already. There's all kinds of shit that goes on around the Open, I mean home owners associations freak out because of the crowds and the destruction done to some of the condos and hotels by the kids - stuff like that. But you know what? I was always tempted to get together with Ian Price and we'd put on our own race at Bromley, like on the same schedule as the Open, so when the halfpipe qualifiers are going on at Stratton we could have a great top-to-bottom race event at Bromley. But we'll be in Finland this year. But I think you'll see something like that happen, our own little alpine-only US Open or something along those lines.

BOL: What was it like to be part of the world's first-ever snowboarding Olympics?

MF: Most of it was pretty cool, I mean I obviously had a little bit of a downer with my board blowing apart... god I was absolutely at the peak of my game, mentally, physically, augh. I mean, I had one race in the world cup before the Olympics where I got third, and the rest I won every one of them. I was just amp'd for it. I think my most exciting part was lining up with all the other athletes outside the Olympic coliseum for the opening ceremony, just tons of people hootin' and hollerin'. There were lots of Canadian flags there. We kind of kept track, aside from Japanese flags I think the Canadian flag was the next most popular one flying at the coliseum. We got a very very warm welcome, it was fantastic.

BOL: You posted the fastest split-time on the GS course before the mishap, do you think that if you hadn't had the equipment failure that Ross Rebagliati would have had to settle for silver?

MF: Well, you never know, I mean you really never know, but... I was totally on top of it that day. I would have bet all my money on myself! (laughter)

BOL: What exactly broke and how?

MF: I had been using a Derby-flex like system that had been fabulous, had lead me to a lot of victories, but then it just ripped out of the board.

BOL: Had you ever experienced that sort of failure before?

MF: Not exactly. But back in the early '90's bindings were produced quite sub-par for how much force we were putting on them and I'd broken just about every part of a binding you can imagine... front foot, back foot, double ejection, you name it. But from about '93 on I haven't had any problems with bindings.

BOL: How do you feel about snowboarding being in the Olympics in general?

MF: Um, I think it's a good thing overall. But I think the Olympics is proving itself to be pretty corrupt and not always the true test of who the best athlete is. There were a lot of people missing at that Olympics just because of quotas, numbers and requirements. There were probably six guys missing who could've won, and not by their choice. They would have given their I-teeth to have been there, guys like Jeff Greenwood, Gary Ring, Felix Staadler, and a lot of other guys. So I dunno, I think the Olympics needs to let some sports run themselves more autonomously and they'll have a better event. The Olympics were run professionally, but there we were racing against thirty guys whereas usually we race against sixty or so at a world cup event.

BOL: Do you think that alpine snowboarding is growing, shrinking or simply holding its course both domestically and internationally?

MF: At least holding it's course, and I think there's a slow growth to it. I think it will always be an up and down sort of thing with certain places getting really hot with it. You know, if there's one or two really good rippers at a mountain on hardplates and people see that and say wow I really want to do that. You ride hardplates I assume, right?

BOL: Oh yes, of course! (did he have to ask?)

MF: So you know how it is when you're having a good run down your favorite trail and a skier follows you and you stop and they say "that was amazing!" We obviously get that a lot more than the freestylers, so I think you'll definitely see us get some slow but steady growth.

BOL: What other racers to you especially respect or admire for their technique?

MF: Jasey. Definitely Jasey Jay Anderson. We've kind of evolved from the same technique, but I'd have to say that early on when our coach was breaking us down to teach us these new things, I think Jasey committed to it maybe a little better than I did. In the short term I think it might have lost him a few extra races, but now that he's got things more dialed I think his technique might be a little more on top of it than my own. Although we're similar, I think he's using a little more bone structure than I am, he's a little more straighter-legged, a little more squared-up, and those are things I'm constantly working on. But also, believe it or not I used to like Nicholas Conte, he was good too, technically. His body positioning, everything was pretty right on, especially considering he's Euro, usually those guys are a god-damned mess! (laughter) They go off of feel, which is nice and they can go pretty fast with it. The only other team that was pretty hot were the Swedes.

BOL: Fill in the blank in this scenario: you go to a race, look at the roster and say "oh crap, I have to race against (blank)"

MF: Jasey's always one of them; I'll put Ian Price right in there, at any time that guy can just light anyone up. Let's see, who are the hot Europeans that freak me out... nah, not too many of them, well probably Mathieu Bozzetto, he's pretty fast right now.

BOL: It would seem to me that the racing scene would be small enough as to generate a lot of camaraderie, who are your best friends on the tour?

MF: Aahh, so many! (laughter) You're right, there's a lot of camaraderie on the tour. Jasey's one of my best friends on the tour, and umm...

BOL: Anybody you look forward to seeing on the tour that you might not keep in touch with otherwise, like over the summer?

MF: Definitely Ian Price; the whole American squad is just classic, Anton Pogue, although I see him just about every day all summer windsurfing and kite boarding up in the gorge. The European guys are pretty cool, I like hanging out with the Austrian girls (laughter), the Swede guys, the Italian guys are cool, hell they're all cool, they're all super cool.

BOL: Think back to before you were competing on a world class level, was there one piece of advice somebody gave you, or one skill that you learned that sticks in your mind as making a major breakthrough in your technique?

MF: To tell the truth, I didn't learn a whole lot from anyone before I started training with Jerry. Coaches just didn't know what the hell they were talking about, they didn't know how to get inside your brain and make you go faster from A to B. But I had a major breakthrough in the gates with Jerry. Back in '89-'90 I was still switching back and forth between softboots and hard snowboard boots, and then by the end of that year I was in ski boots. Kildevaald was really the first guy in New England to start throwing some really extreme (binding) angles on there; I really used to listen to Kildy quite a bit, he's another one of my good friends on the tour. He was the first guy to go above like forty degrees, I think he was up around fifty-two, fifty five degrees on both feet before anyone else. And that's on a wide board; that's in '89 with hardboots. So that helped me a lot, he kinda just explained it to me that it would get me squared up forward further. I would ask him, god, why do you have both feet at the same angle? He would say that you can only be as far forward as your back hip, and angling the bindings like that would help, so he definitely had some influence, that set me on that track early, rather than maybe figuring it out two years later on my own or something. And then Jerry just really brought it all together for me. He pointed out that most of us can freeride like a bandit and you're like "man I'm ready for the world cup!", but throw a course in front of most people and they don't ride anything like they were just freeriding one run before. It's all in the timing. Jerry had some key instructions in the timing that I can't actually share, but those really help apply more of how you freeride into the course.

BOL: Well I think you may have just disqualified my next question, but I'll ask it anyway and maybe you can be discrete... can you summarize key points of the current technique one needs to practice on order to compete respectably in the race course?

MF: Oh I can give you some of the stuff for sure. Key things... definitely first and foremost, is your timing. Your timing has to be right on in a manner such that your technique is the same whether the gates are there or not. I've watched so many people just ripping and railing nice smooth round turns, and then they get in a course and they're sliding, they're standing up taller... I mean, you gotta keep the similarity there, that's going to be the fastest for you. Also, you don't want to go too round of course; you don't want to get the board pointing any further across the hill than you need to. You want pressure in the fall line, not after the fall line, but everyone knows that now. Late pressure, like in the old style where you're gradually building up more and more pressure throughout the turn just doesn't work in the race course, you'll be chattering your brains out after the first gate. You've gotta get a lot of it done early in the turn, the power, the direction change has to be done early in the turn. Last but not least, and the thing that kills most people, and it's a tough thing to practice, almost like you're born with it or you're not is actually the feel... giving it just what it needs and not a spec less and not a spec more to get you from gate A to gate B. To stand on it too hard with too much pressure, no matter what kind of snow conditions it is, is slower. So it's efficiency, but that's what we call touch and feel. Guys like Shannon Melheuse had it down, I mean he didn't look that aggressive, didn't really look like he was going that fast, but that board was running so clean, smooth and fast under his feet. He was phenomenal.

BOL: When you prepare for a race, do you tune your own boards?

MF: Absolutely. I wish I didn't have to, but... I do. I did have one guy do it for me after the Olympics, I was so pissed after the technical problems I had, I actually had techs for the rest of the year. It helped, it gave me some free time where I would have been spending hours the night before races.

BOL: Do you bevel your edges?

MF: Yes, two degrees on the side and between zero and half a degree on the bottom.

BOL: When you head out on the hill for some freecarving just for fun, what's your favorite equipment to bring?

MF: If it's really buff and sweet I like the big daddies, the 197, the 202. I like to make the same movements as I would on a smaller board, but do it when I'm going say, 40 (mph) or faster - aggressive, powerful leaning-in moves, but hauling ass.

BOL: I've heard your wife Sky is making some all-woman surf and snowboard movies, how's that going?

MF: Very well, very well. She was quite busy last year filming and editing. Her first movie was called Emperess, and her second movie is with XX-Productions (I'm assuming that's a reference to chromosomes, get your mind out of the gutter! -ed) and it's called Our Turn. It's going great, as a matter of fact I just drove her to the airport, she's going to Fiji to do some filming with the top five female surfers in the world. I'm jealous as hell, I wish I was going.

BOL: How long do you plan on staying competitive?

MF: Definitely past this next Olympics. I feel great, I don't feel any different than when I was 21! I'll only be 29 this year, but I've been around for a long time so people think I'm 45 or something (laughter). But yeah I've got a bunch of good years left in me for sure.

BOL: Do you have any idea what you'll do after snowboarding?

MF: Something relating to snowboarding...

BOL: Coaching maybe?

MF: Mmmmaybe. Yeah. That's a tough one mentally, it really sucks a lot of energy out of you. I wouldn't be opposed to doing some traveling clinics or something like that, trying to inject some more growth into carving, I think I could help out in that respect. That would be fun for me, and the carving community too. I've got all sorts of things I could do but I don't want to give myself a headache thinking about it right now.

BOL: What do you think of the current state of the whole sport of snowboarding in general?

MF: Well the sport's doing fantastic. The industry is... ehhh, I think it's finally come down to a level that the ski industry has been experiencing for the last forty years. I mean there was such a boom in the sport for the first twelve years of it's big existence... not even, I mean I think it started booming in '86 or '87, probably most people wouldn't say that until maybe '91 or '92. Everyone's seen consolidation; now there's only a few players where there used to be three hundred, and there's only a few actually making money. That's too bad to see that. But in order to build a snowboard to last one run down a hill, the equipment ends up lasting for three or four years and it still works well... at least well enough for joe schmuck out there, so lots of people never buy new stuff. I don't think you can look at board sales statistics in order to determine how many people are actually snowboarding each year. It's kind of a tough situation to figure out. But everyone's enjoying it, the mountains have obviously seen that snowboarding is their savior. The average age of a snowboarder always increases by one every year, nobody quits. I mean it used to be what, 15? And now it's like 23? So that's good to see. Like I said with the mountains, they're cooperating, building amazing pipes and parks and stuff. Ten years ago if there was a three-foot roller somewhere in an inconspicuous place, they'd have bamboo all over the thing. Now I've seen some heeuuge massive gap jumps, open to the public, at Squaw and I just look at them and think my god, some kid is going to splat so bad on that, but they seem to have gotten around the liability somehow, so it's good to see.

BOL: What's your advice for an aspiring racer?

MF: Hoo boy! Let's see... try and get a lot of snow time. Having a good sparring partner is the best thing, someone who can really push you.

BOL: Who gets your deepest gratitude?

MF: Definitely my parents. I mean, most parents would probably look at this silly sport, especially back in 1988, and say no way, but I told them that I really wanted to go at this, and that I really thought I could do something with it, and I didn't go to college, and they were very supportive the whole way through. It seems a little far-fetched even to me, but they said to just go for it, and if it happens, great, and if not, well, you tried. And then there's my wife putting up with me being gone for months on end. We've only been married a little over a year, but we've been together for five years. I think if you added up all the days we've actually been with each other it would come out to about two and a half years (laughter). So she's been very patient and supportive. Then there's the financial contributors, the people who make it possible for me to even do the tour, Hard Corps clothing, Burton of course my new sponsor, Briko goggles and helmets, Da-Kine, they've all been a big help and it's important, I really appreciate it. And if I get to give a big bird up to someone, basically it's Sport Canada for all the nothing they've done for me, f*&% you guys. (laughter) I'm yet another story of a Canadian athlete not supported. For how big or how popular or how wealthy or however you want to scale Canada in the western world, we are right in there with third world countries for athletic support. It's really too bad. The more I think about it lately I think man, I ought to write a book. Everyone can write a book, everyone has incredible tales, but I just look at my list of shit that we've done and gone through and places we've slept... it would make Cool Runnings look like luxury! Half the time I wouldn't even realize it at the time, but looking back on it I can't believe it. Like the time I spent in Winter Park in the back of my friggin' camper, minus thirty nights, poaching electricity from someone's condo that we climbed up two stories with an extension cord, and that was for a number of weeks, and I didn't think anything of it. That was the fall before the Olympics! Hostetter was in his old old Toyota Dolphin, and I was in my camper, you know, that goes on the back of a pick-up... it's pretty classic. I have a million stories just like that. We're not the spoiled rich pro's that people might think. The money that we do bring in goes straight to the expenses. There were a couple years where I did quite well, I had a good Sims contract and another with Fila. I was able to save up enough to put a down payment on this place in Tahoe, but now it's like a friggin' fraternity, I've got so many people living here just so I can keep up with the mortgage! (laughter) But man, if you're Canadian, don't expect any help from the government or the taxes that your parents pay that are supposed to go towards this sort of stuff. It's funny because the population is very supportive, I get a lot of letters from people telling me they're proud. Canadians are very proud of their athletes, they love to watch their athletes, but no one's putting into it. I mean we may as well be some religious fundamentalist country that doesn't give a shit about sports and doesn't put any money into it at all! It's really frustrating. Sometimes I say what the f... I mean I'm doing it 'cause I love it but this is ridiculous. Last year I was in the hole. I'm still trying to pay off the credit cards for last year. And that's the story for most of the guys on the tour. I've been kinda one of the top guys on the tour; I won two world cup events last year and I still ended up in the hole. But I still do it 'cause I just love it so much.

Mark went on to talk about his new addiction, "Kite Boarding" (think windsurfing with a parachute instead of a sail). Finally he had to get off the phone to meet a friend, but not without telling me to call back if I had any other questions. After I hung up the phone, I was reminded of the fact that snowboarders don't just meet on the hill and become friends anymore, but carvers, being the smallest minority on snow, still have that brotherhood. To talk with Mark, you wouldn't detect that he's a famous professional snowboard racer, you'd think he was just one alpine snowboarder glad to meet another, and a really nice guy.