The snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter is dead. Carpenter died on Thursday night at the age of 65 years, said a spokeswoman for the company he founded the German Press Agency. The cause of death was a cancer, according to John Lacy, who runs the business with Carpenter's wife Donna. "He was the founder, the soul of snowboarding, the one who gave us the sport we all love so much."
Born in 1954, Carpenter had started skiing early and then discovered, developed, produced and marketed preforms for the snowboard. In the 1970's he founded his own snowboard company in Vermont.
It's with great sadness as we all mourn the loss of snowboard pioneer, Jake Burton Carpenter. Thank you for all that you've done for our athletes and for shaping the sport of snowboarding into what it is today. Your legacy wants live on forever! #RideonJake pic.twitter.com/DRLQlymBTG
- US Ski & Snowboard Team (@usskiteam) November 21, 2019At the age of 14, he got his first snurfer , a kind of surfboard for snow. In 1977 he founded his own company Burton and built his own own boards by hand. Burton grew into a large company that is represented worldwide today. Amongst others, Burton sponsors snowboard pro Shaun White, the triple Olympic gold medalist from the USA.
The Vermont Sports Hall of Fame hosted Carpenter in 2012. At that time it was said that the entrepreneur had "made many of the most important decisions of his company from the chairlift and not from the desk". For example, Carpenter ensured that ski slopes in the US also allowed snowboarders. In 1982, he helped to host the first US championship in snowboarding.