Profile: Justin Lamoureux
Event: Halfpipe
Age at 2006 Olympics: 29
Years with National Team: Six years (non-consecutive)
What’s your biggest trick?
Hopefully landing – that’s what I’m working on. I just work on a fairly big bag of tricks, and my biggest goal for all of them is to land them all the time, regardless of what I’m doing.
How do you get ready for a competition?
I wake up, eat, warm up, stretch, get myself together and to the hill, scrape my boards, and make sure everything is good to go. At the contest itself it’s generally like another day of snowboarding really. I talk to my friends, joke around a bit, listen to music.
The biggest difference, when it comes down to a few minutes before my run, that’s when I start to really think about just my run and that’s all. I’ll go over it in my head, do a few breathing exercises or whatnot to get everything centered and focused on what I’m doing. Just tune everything out.
Do you listen to music when riding, and what are you listening to?
I’ve been listening to music before I go riding, then I was kind of fooling around with it at the last World Cup and had my earphones in the whole time while I was riding. It was pretty good overall. I’d like to figure out a better earphone system, but overall I was pretty happy with it.
When I’m riding it’s usually Misfits, Slagwagon, Social Distortion, and a couple of other punk bands. Those are probably the three main ones. I’ve got my iPod Shuffle for riding and have a little playlist on there and just put it on shuffle. I don’t have a song I just have to listen to or anything, whatever comes up at the moment is fine.
Do you remember your first snowboard?
Kemper Mini Rampage, Christmas 1988. I still have it. I skied since I was two, but once I saw my friends had boards, I was like ‘that makes way more sense than skiing does right now’ because I was deeply into skateboarding and surfing at the time.
What is your worst injury?
Probably when I broke my leg last spring. I had six screws and a plate put in, it was my fib where it connects to my ankle. I’m still waiting for the (airport) detector to go off one day, but it hasn’t. I’m a little disappointed actually.
What do you like about halfpipe?
Just the floatiness and how smooth it is, the speed involved, and how much air you can get for the length of your run – there’s not many other places where you can get six tricks in a hundred metres. I always try and ride whatever is best on the mountain, whether it’s powder, the park or the pipe, and when I got to a good ski area that had a halfpipe, I was always interested in riding it. But if the park was good and the pipe wasn’t I’d ride the park; if the pipe was no good I’d ride the park, and if both are good I might ride the pipe – just better value, six tricks as opposed to the one jump.
Any advice for kids starting out?
Just go out and enjoy it and have fun, it’s the best thing in the world. I coach at the Glacier Snowboard Camp in the summertime, and it’s so much fun seeing kids come in one week where they can barely do an air in the pipe, and by the next week they’re doing 3s and 5s and way bigger airs. Pipe’s a little more technical to ride – you have to land tricks in good position, pick a good line, make sure you’re pumping. It’s definitely helpful to have a coach in the pipe when you’re just starting out because it knocks out a lot of the bad habits right away.
Who were your role models growing up, and who do you look up to now?
I always looked up to the athletes that push their sport, regardless of what sport they’re in. Obviously superstars like Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Kelly Slater, Tony Hawk, and in snowboarding it was guys like Terje (Haakonsen) and Todd Richards. There are so many in snowboarding and skateboarding and surfing I looked up to.
Today it would come from skateboarding probably. Definitely Bob Burnquist, because he’s always thinking outside the box. In snowboarding it’s a lot tougher because a lot of the best guys in the world are my friends, and just watching them ride is inspiring to me and makes me push myself and want to learn more from them, and learn more in general.
What motivates you these days?
I get to go snowboarding every day. It’s the best thing in the world. I think I still have lots to learn, and lot’s to do. There’s a lot of places to go snowboarding I haven’t been.
Where do you see yourself in five years?
I don’t know. I seriously don’t know. I can’t say I’ve ever looked that far forward in my life. Personally, I’ve got a lot of interests everywhere – I could see myself going back to school and getting a Master’s degree, I could see myself as an engineer in the snowboard industry, I could see myself doing something completely different. Whatever pops into my head I want to do, so I really have to keep it to one thing at a time and just focus on the big things and the next thing I know about.
Sponsors: Ripzone, Whistler Blackcomb, Reef, Spy Optics, Cheetah Factory Racing, Rude Boys Snowboard Shop
