It’s 1985. Snowboarding is a little-known pastime practiced by skaters, surfers, and a few hardcore practitioners like Jake Burton Carpenter. Then out comes the fourteenth James Bond film, A View to a Kill.
Roger Moore, playing Bond for the seventh and final time, is on a snowmobile when the machine is destroyed. One of the snowmobile skis is ripped off the sled. Bond jumps on it and shreds his enemies. Mainstream audiences are suddenly alerted to a new way to ride snow, one that would eventually change snowsports forever – many would say for the better.
Of course it wasn’t actually Moore riding the board. It was Burton rival Tom Sims, the Santa Barbara, Calif.-based skater and surfer who was also important in the development of sliding on snow sideways, eventually creating Sims Snowboards. The board that Sims rode as the stunt double for Moore is now on display in Vail, Colorado at the Colorado Snowsports Museum. And it still looks rideable.
