Danny Davis is back with his immaculate creation and all of his high flying antics for Peace Park, 2015. Originally from Highland Township, Michigan, has defined himself as one of snowboarding’s true greats, and is one of the most celebrated halfpipe riders of all time.
Davis has also been able to maintain his appeal to core snowboarders by approaching halfpipe and contest snowboarding in a unique way. Not one to throw the same rehearsed run over and over again, Danny seems to approach riding the halfpipe much like a painter approaches a canvas. Flowing, creative, and inspired, he’s one of the few competitive snowboarders who can appeal to both the amplitude hungry masses and the style specific core.
It was with this creative zeal that he approached Peace Park, now in its 4th year. Peace Park brings together some of the world’s most talented snowboarders from many different genres of the sport, allowing for a creative approach to contest riding. The Park itself is built to harness creative lines by integrating unique features, allowing riders to express themselves through their individual approach to each transition, jump and jib.
With a world class group of riders in the mix including Pat Moore, Scotty Lago, Ben Ferguson, Davis, and many more, this year’s Peace Park was mind blowing and luckily for the snowboarding masses all of the high flying action was caught on film and will be airing on ABC’s World of X on Sunday November 29th at 2 p.m. Eastern and will release globally on Mountain Dew’s Youtube channel Monday, November 30th.
I had the pleasure of catching up with Danny Davis as he prepares for the upcoming contest season to talk about FRENDS, training, and the future of Peace Park. As Danny gets ready to embark on his 2015/16 season one thing is clear, the high flying hippie with a heart of gold is dead set on having as much fun as possible while sliding sideways on snow.
Where are you right now?
DD: I’m at home in Tahoe.
Are you guys getting some snow?
DD: We got a little last week and we were supposed to get some more, but I’m going to pretend like I didn’t hear that until it actually happens. There’s a system coming through that looks like it might be productive, which would be pretty sweet because we have a good base right now.
Nice.
DD: Yeah I’m stoked, it definitely feels like winter, I’ve been riding everyday.
How do you get prepared for the season?
DD: Right now I’m just riding as much as I can and getting back on my board. I got hurt in March of last year; I dislocated my shoulder and tore my rotator cuff after the US Open, so I’m just trying to get comfortable on my board again.
I went to Austria for a few weeks, and then when I got home all of the resorts were starting to open, so I kind of nailed it on timing. I’m hyped on that, I’m not trying to get into a halfpipe right away or anything, I’m just trying to do as much snowboarding as possible.
Do you keep your schedule pretty open early season so you can just ride?
DD: I try to keep my travel schedule light because there is a lot of stuff that pops up outside of snowboarding that people want you to do. So I try to let people know that I don’t want to do too much outside of snowboarding in November because I just try to focus on shredding and I go wherever the snow is and ride. I’ve got the Dew Tour coming up in a couple of weeks so everything is starting really quickly.
How do you feel about going into the tour this season?
DD: I mean I feel good, but I haven’t really ridden any halfpipe since March. It will be new, fun, and fresh, so I’ll have a blast riding it. I would love to get in a little bit of halfpipe practice though, so I’m looking forward to getting into some transition.
Surfing has the World Tour; do you feel like snowboarding has an equivalent that people are excited about?
DD: Unfortunately we don’t right now. That’s a big part of the sport being a little lost competitively and having the ability to figure out like who’s world champion. That’s one of the cool things that surfing has that we don’t, like warm beaches. I do think we need a world tour and I think we are working towards that. We need to get our own tour no doubt.
I’m sure that girls in bikinis and tropical drinks would help.
DD: (Laughs) Yeah maybe we need to move it to the springtime.
Is this a pre-qualifier for the Olympics?
DD: No not at all, Dew Tour doesn’t qualify you for the Olympics, which makes them a little more fun and a little looser in my eyes. They’re more enjoyable and just a little less serious. The first stop is always super fun because you get to see all of your friends and the pipe is usually really good, and it has nothing to do with points for the Olympics.
How do you stay motivated to be creative while riding contests, how do you make it interesting?
DD: Well for me to stay in that contest world I need to be creative. It was getting to a point where I would have one run that I did for almost the entire season. I would just work on this one run for the entire contest season, and honestly I just started to get bored. So I just started to have more fun with it and explore different tricks and different combos and now I’m at a point where I can kind of call an audible mid run and change it up if I notice the run is going a certain way. I think halfpipe riding is getting pretty stale anyway, so I just try to change up my own riding to make it more exciting for me personally.
Do you think will we see more feature additions in halfpipe competition, like what’s going on at Peace Park?
DD: Yeah, I mean I think that’s one of the things that events like Peace Pipe or Holy Bowly inspire through their transition parks. Halfpipe is always looked at as sort of the jock side of snowboarding, and what Peace Park has done is kind of made it more about hips, bowls, transitions, which has made it sort of cool again to ride halfpipe. I was getting kind of sick of riding halfpipe and then we started doing these Peace Parks and it has really opened up what’s possible, and I could only hope that we can start to implement it in some of these contests. That’s really the end goal for me, that contests like Dew Tour or X Games will see the possibilities and incorporate hips and other cool transition to change it up a little bit. Snowboarding is about getting creative and being creative on the features your ride.
Was that the driving force behind the inception of Peace Park?
DD: I think the driving force was having Burton and Mountain Dew come to me and ask me what kind of contest I was interested in, and I told them about my ideas and how I have always wanted to add more to the halfpipe and that I thought halfpipe was kind of getting stale. That’s how it really kicked off.
How has it progressed over the years, and how do you keep making it fresh?
DD: It’s just gotten bigger and bigger every year and we really just learn what works and what doesn’t and that helps us improve the event every year. The first year was just a halfpipe with some additional features like hips and rails. Now we have over 1,200 vertical feet of quarterpipes, hips, berms, jumps, rollers and so much more. It’s just evolved every year in not only length and size. There’s even a bowl now at the bottom. When do you ever get to snowboard on a 22-foot bowl? Between SPT, Burton, and Mt. Dew, we just try to get more creative every year.
Has implementing more features allowed you to open up the invite list to riders who aren’t traditionally pipe riders?
DD: Yes, absolutely. I keep saying this to everyone, but Peace Park is a really challenging thing to ride because you can’t just be a good pipe rider or a good jumper. You have to be a good all around snowboarder to ride it. It’s cool because you can have guys who film all year like Pat Moore, who rides backcountry and rails for his video part and then comes and kills it at Peace Park. New riders keep coming and bringing their own creativity, which helps make it what it is.
This is airing on primetime television, is there any challenges with creating an event that can translate to a mainstream audience?
DD: To be honest you would think we would have to keep that in mind, but we don’t really have to do that too much. I mean we really just make what we want and that’s what we get to put out. I mean we definitely try to include some story lines so it’s interesting to everyone, but mostly we just want everyone to understand the meaning behind the event and why it’s important.
Who were the standouts this year?
DD: Oh man Ben Ferguson he destroyed it, that kid is such a sick shredder. Taku Hiraoka from Japan, he came and killed it. Scotty always kills it. Pat Moore is always awesome, every ripped. I was hurt, so I couldn’t ride as well as I wanted to, but that’s just how it goes.
If you could invite any snowboarder past or present to ride Peace Park who would it be?
DD: Craig Kelly.
Anyone you want to thank?
DD: Yeah, everyone who was involved, especially everyone at Burton and Mt. Dew, we have a big team that works on this project. A lot of people think it’s my thing, but I really just think of the features and SPT, Mt. Dew, and Burton really make it happen. It’s awesome and everyone should check it out if they can.
