Snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter dies at 65

By: Eddie Pells, The Associated Press Posted: 9:29 AM CST Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019

Snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter has died at 65.

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Snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter has died at 65.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/11/2019 (2170 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter has died at 65.

Officials from the company he founded, Burton Snowboards, confirmed his death to The Associated Press on Thursday. He emailed his staff this month saying his testicular cancer had returned. He had been diagnosed in 2011 but after several months of therapy had been given a clean bill of health.

Carpenter brought the snowboard to the masses and helped turn the sport into a billion-dollar business. He quit his job in New York in 1977 to form his company. His goal was to advance the rudimentary snowboard, then called a “Snurfer,” which had been invented by Sherman Poppen a dozen years earlier.

FILE - In this March 8, 2002, file photo, Jake Burton Carpenter, owner of Burton Snowboards, shows an early model, right, and one of the newer snowboards, left, in his office in Burlington, Vt. Carpenter, the innovator who brought the snowboard to the masses and helped turn the sport into a billion-dollar business, has died after a recurring bout with cancer. He was 65. Officials from the company he founded, Burton Snowboards, told The Associated Press of his death Thursday, Nov. 21, 2019. (AP Photo/Alden Pellett, File)

It worked, and more than four decades later, snowboarding is a major fixture in the Olympics and snowboards are as common as skis at resorts across the globe.