Have you had that feeling recently that snowboarding may be stalling a little? That the hype has died down a touch? Well, the New York Times has an article up today saying exactly that, snowboarding is in decline.

Titled ‘Has Snowboarding Lost Its Edge?’, Christopher Solomon writes that after nearly two decades of constant growth, the trend has reversed quite quickly into decline over the last two years. And it’s not just that less people are trying snowboarding, it has to do with skiing adopting much of the fashion, technology and overall aesthetic that snowboarding has created, and using it to attract new participants. Female participation is an issue, with stats showing that it’s roughly an even male/female split that start in snowboarding but that there is a significant drop off in female participation as time progresses. Programs to make entry into the sport easier and to bring kids in at an earlier age aren’t having the desired effect at the moment either. The article doesn’t mention it, but I’d hazard a guess that the economic situation isn’t helping – you can blame anything on that, right?

I don’t disagree with anything in the article really but for those that have been in surfing, skating and snowboarding for a while, you know that these ups and downs are a pretty regular feature of the industry. Surfing has lost its way (and its cool) in regular intervals since the early 90’s, skateboarding is just coming back out of a dire slump that many people predicted would be its demise (similar to the one in the 90’s). Snowboarding is a young sport and it doesn’t have the wide adoption that skate and surf have, so it may have been a little insulated until now. It will travel through a small down turn for a season or two until a new crop of riders come up and generate a new hype for the sport… And it will come out fresher and at a new level of progression too.

The article is well worth a read. Check it out over here.