Wolfgang is the 2008 Rider of the Year

Stoked congratulates Wolle Nyvelt on winning 2008 Rider of the Year. It’s been a great year for the Stoked roster. Check out the full interview in this month’s December issue of Transworld Snowboarding!

… Snowboarding seems very focused on the next young kid, yet you won this award at 30 years old. What do you think about the age factor?
The bar is getting raised all the time, but snowboarding has so many different paths. There are so many ways to ride what the mountain offers to you. I guess I started snowboarding when I was 15 or 16 and started with kids who were 5 or 6 years younger than me. I just saw footage from Mark Schultz, this guy who is our guide for sledding. His kid is one-and-a-half and he has his first filmed run already. Look at Terje—he is breaking world records. How old is he? That air obviously woke people up. You have guys like Shin Campos in Whistler; maybe some guys get lost in the backcountry—you don’t see what they are doing, but it’s going on.

They don’t call that guy the Wizard for no reason. You have to put in a lot of time in a place as big as Whistler to know the terrain, like that. Look at surfing, guys like Mark Occhilupo, guys like Danny Way. These guys prove you can you can step it up after 30. No problem. But the creativity, the whole movement of snowboarding depends on the youth. Its so cool now to see kids like Kevin [Pearce] and Scotty [Lago] coming up to AK—its really sick to see them ride and see the flavor they bring into snowboarding. The best heat ever this year, was watching Danny [Davis] and Kevin at the Air & Style riding together. Such good friends, throwing down back-to-back frontside 10s and then chest-bumping in the landing. It’s rad, man.
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