Todd Richards is legend in professional snowboarding and took the world by storm in the 1990s championing the underground sport into the mainstream culture.  He cemented its legitimacy as a professional sport in the Winter Olympics in 1998 and paved the way for Shawn White and so many other elite professional athletes who have taken the sport to an entirely different level.  Today the professional snowboarding and action sports industry looks very different with children growing up as fans watching their favorite professional snowboarders, surfers and skaters on TV like the other major professional sports.  Snow/surf culture has grown globally and influenced fashion, music, sports and the modern lifestyle.  This was not the case in the 1980s and 1990s when pioneers of the sport like Todd Richards introduced the “skate style” and pushed snowboarding to new heights which forced the world to take notice.  

  Todd has won countess World championships including multiple US open halfpipe titles, X Games Gold Medals and was a member of the 1998 US Olympic halfpipe team in Nagano, Japan. He is the subject of a documentary entitled “Me, Myself and I” and published an autobiography P3: Parks, Pipes and Powder.  He produces a series called Podcasts for Quicksilver and has been NBC’s official color announcer for snowboarding where he has covered the Olympic Games in Torino, Vancouver, Sochi and Pyongchang.  He currently hosts a popular podcast called “The Monday Mass” (https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/monday-m-s-s-chris-coté-todd-richards-april-27-2020/id1212143289?i=1000472838147) which covers action sports news and inside scoops and spends his free time with his wife and children surfing in Encinitas.     In this episode we lament on the early days of skate and snowboarding, coming up in the game and pushing the envelope and creating a foundation and legacy for generations of athletes to come.  We also discuss the challenges of parenting young athletes and encouraging and nurturing them without burning them out and taking the fun out of it. Todd and his wife Lindsay are good friends and wonderful, down to earth people.  I assure I will paddle out with Todd a few times this summer in Encinitas!   @btoddrichards @dannybrownla @thedealpod www.thedealpod.com