Craig Kelly

Well, there's life lessons in all of them, I think, for sure.

Um, but I mean, The Darkest White is, you know, about Craig Kelly, um, who was kind of the, kind of the-

Yeah

... um, Michael Jordan of snowboarding of the-

Yeah, I remember, yeah

... early '90s, that I wanted to become, you know, when I thought of that.

And it was just, uh, like 10, 15 years after, actually 15 years after he was killed that I was in a lift line with my son, and, um, there was some kid in the lift line next to me in Utah w- and I had on my board a sticker that we all- Had kind of gotten after he died, uh, somebody made stickers that said, "Craig Kelly is my co-pilot." Like, you know, back in the old-

Oh, nice.

Mm-hmm.

And I blew my knee out a couple years later and knew I wasn't gonna be Shaun White, at the time, Craig Kelly, you know?

Yeah.

I, and I thought how can I still see the world on someone else's dime? And, um, do this.

It's like you guys started here and had parallel lives because of this amazing moment.

Yeah, and I'm also, I'm going to talk about like Craig Kelly, that he found this place somehow 1990.

And not many people knew about this place, even in Sweden.

I had never heard about it.

And then he came back the next year because he knew this was a special place.

And then I met him here.

That's the reason I got here because I heard it was Craig Kelly camp in Riksgransen.

So then I got to come here in 91 and meet Craig.

This is Ken Achenbach's brother.

It's got a Sims ad featuring Craig Kelly on the back cover.

And this sets up a decades-long tradition of Sims holding that back cover ad space, which is funny because we had just shared about Jake getting the back cover of the ISM.

But I think they eventually went for the two-page spread.

This is what I was talking about earlier when ISM didn't really have that network as much in place where, you know, because of Tracker and Transworld Skateboarding, they had like a pipeline to every skate shop across the world, like even in Japan.

So they were able to like sends snowboard magazines out across the world in this really powerful way through just like kind of was already there for the taking.

And they're helping build up snowboarding's first real stars, like people like Damian Sanders and Sean Palmer and Craig Kelly.

And, you know, it's like you don't have movie stars without the movies and you don't have the movies without the theaters.

Um, the standards at my time.

So I started in 87 and obviously Craig Kelly was a guy like leading the freestyle thing, but I still had, my draw was towards like Palmer and especially kind of like just his, I kind of like styled where I like Craig, but he was definitely very, you know, he's the clean cut guy.

And I like kind of a little bit more of the kind of the guy coming out and just kind

of

I'm going to pipe, and then just kind of cool style, just kind of gravity style, and just kind of riding down.

I was like, dude, I want to ride like that.

Like, there's, like, the Craig Kelly's at the time, like, oh, I'm going to ride like that.

Craig Kelly needs to start seeing shit.

God.

I'm just going to say Craig Kelly because Nikki would be totally okay with that.

He loves Craig Kelly.

He doesn't like snowboarding, but he loves Craig Kelly.

He's a handsome man.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, there's some things I'm allowed to talk about, but no, I'm just kidding.

He texted me the other day a cover from a 1987 issue of International Snowboard Magazine when he was photo editor there.

And the cover is it's got Craig Kelly doing a toe side turn in a white speed suit.

He's got a red helmet on.

It's mid competition.

That's not what it meant.

And, you know, the Golden Crown riders were after was that.

Like, if you think about Craig Kelly back in the day, four-time overall world champion from 86 to 89, like, he was about racing and halfpipe all rolled up together.

Yeah, like it's like when you think about that 1989 Smooth Groove movie that Burton put out, it's like there's a full race training section at Mount Hood.