SHAUN PALMER

LEGENDARY INFO:

DOB: 11/14/1968
Home Mountain: Kirkwood, CA
Stance: Regular

“I am the king!”
-Shaun Palmer

Shaun Palmer created a snowboarding archetype that all kids who hungered to live outside the confines of plastic boots gripped onto. It was a Cadillac hood ornament, the head of a clown, the stock at your liquor store, the flag-emblazoned wardrobe, the grocery-store motorcyclist, the high school dropout gone superstar—all in one iconic madman. Adrenaline was the Pizzalm’s drug of choice, and he never feared an overdose.

Before destroying the egos and images of skiers and bikers by dominating their sports for fun while gleefully injecting them with his own persona, Shaun had been immersed in the pits of snowboarding from the get-go. He was the character from which all others grew. O-Matic owner and Olympic alum Todd Richards attests that “[Palm] has had the rock star’s life within snowboarding.” Most rock stars’ longevity can’t compare to Palmer’s, though. As Jeremy Jones acknowledges, “From mini-shred to making the Olympics at age thirty-seven, Shaun kicks ass at everything he does.” And Palmer also kicked ass in the publishing world as SNOWBOARDER’s inaugural Guest Editor, paving the way in print for greats like Danny Kass, Mikey LeBlanc, Shaun White, and David Benedek.

From an early age, Shaun traveled the world on two bindings, leaving his “F**k you!” mark wherever he strapped in or saddled up. In 1989, Shaun battled the snowboarder’s snowboarder, Craig Kelly, at the 1990 Swatch World Halfpipe Championship event in Breckenridge, Colorado. In a showdown between the two people who made the sport what it is today—its two most dominant personalities—Shaun came out on top.

In the mid-nineties, Palmer started his own eponymous snowboard company that embraced the fast, lunatic brand of riding and living that Shaun is known for. Since then, when Shaun hasn’t been schoolin’ the competition in World Cup and X Games boardercross contests, Palmer team athlete Andy Finch has been teaching the competition a thing or two in the pipe. According to Nagano golden boy Gian Simmen, “Palmer has gas in his veins. He won everything—pipe, motocross, downhill mountain biking, ski cross…”

Palmer ignited snowboarding to the point where its blaze could be seen and hated by people much older and more rigid, creating a circus in which he could comfortably live. His showmanship drew all the photographers at any given contest to his first hit in the pipe. A prime example was the 1993 US Open halfpipe finals, where he dropped in one-footed and did the biggest one-foot lien methods that side of the millennium—further proving that even when he was clowning around, he had a leg up on everyone else.