DAMIEN SANDERS

LEGENDARY INFO:

DOB: Sometime in 1969
Home Mountains: Lake Tahoe, CA
Stance: Goofy


Some pro snowboarders can claim they’ve been in the Grotto at the Playboy Mansion, but how many can say they were in a Penthouse Pet of the Year? One.

On paper, Damian Sanders seemed like your typical “rip the gnar” poser. He had the spandex pants, moussed-up bleached-blonde mop, Vuarnet shades, and hot pink hardboots. Yet once in front of the lens a magnetic persona appeared unlike any other. By dropping insanely huge cliffs and doing tricks that the uninitiated could understand, Damian Sanders was an accessible icon for a growing number of non-hardcore snowboarders in the late eighties. “Nowadays, you might consider Damian’s style and scene wack, but that doesn’t matter. With those signature triple-poke backflips, or just the straight-up laid-out ones off huge cliffs, Damian and his hair kit can’t be fronted on,” declares JP Walker, another rider who isn’t afraid to take risks (ahem…cornrows?) when it comes to follicle fashion.

Riding for his brother Chris’s Tahoe-based brand Avalanche, Damian developed his own agro surf style that quickly took him away from the contest circuit and put him in front of the Fall Line Films cameras. As the star of Snowboarders in Exile, Damian became our sport’s first film pro. Before this point, every sponsored rider was expected to prove their worth on the pro tour. Damian changed all that. His Squaw Valley lines and Mt. Rose booter sessions electrified a sport that was quickly becoming the regimented rat race it was initially pioneered to thwart. Once Snowboarders in Exile broke, Damian blew up and earned himself accolades from coast to coast, appeared in a McDonald’s commercial, and landed some B-list celebrity arm candy in the form of 1992 Penthouse Pet of the Year Brandy Ledford.

Damian’s legend far exceeds his lifespan in snowboarding. Viewers who have dissected Exile swear it contains a quick clip of him throwing a frontside rodeo, and rumors once made the rounds that Damian had a physical altercation with Shawn Farmer in which the Fizz didn’t come out the victor.

After a brief attempt at a soft-booted comeback in the mid-nineties, Damian put his aptitude for living fast to good use. He joined John Huntington in creating Club Rubber, a high-production rave-type celebration of everything hedonistic that has become an institution in Southern California. In other words, Damian’s influence on a host of SoCal riders can still be felt every Saturday night once the Ecstasy kicks in.