Kevin Pearce in Men's Fitness

MEN’S FITNESS Outdoor Editor, Noah Johnson, has profiled Kevin’s weight room work out in the December issue. Noah was originally offered the opportunity to check out Kevin’s private halfpipe training session in Mammoth, but since he was unable to make the trip, we re-focused the pitch and convinced him to cover Kevin’s off-snow training instead.

The two-page profile includes an action shot and a portrait of Kevin, focusing on the three areas that snowboarders should target when training for the winter season – balance, core, and agility. Highlighting moves from Kevin’s workout, the article also acknowledges that time in the weight room is an integral part of his training , keeping him ahead of the pack. Kevin recognizes that with a bigger, 22ft halfpipe, the stakes have been raised, stating that “the guys who stand out this year will be the ones who put the time and the work in. It’s gonna show”.

In addition to the profile on Kevin, the [ak] 15L Pack was also highlighted in the magazine’s holiday gift guide for “The Outdoorsmen”.

MEN’S FITNESS has a circulation of 706,483 readers.

Thanks MFA!

NY Times Mentions Burton Riders in Olympic Training Article

Spring Training For Snowboarders

New York Times

05/03/2009

Great painters never see a blank canvas, only the possibilities.

That same principle holds for athletes. And for a snowboarder, there is no stage more suited for pushing the realms of possibility than the 500-foot-long superpipe at Buttermilk Mountain outside Aspen. It is snowboarding's Mecca, given the crowds it attracts each year for the Winter X Games and the reverence with which some of the world's best halfpipe riders view it. Which is why, less than a year from the 2010 Vancouver Winter Olympics, U.S. Snowboarding officials worked out a deal with the Aspen Skiing Company to hold an exclusive two-week camp for top riders last month after the lifts had stopped running for the season. There were no TV cameras, crowds or bright lights, only a blank canvas for experimentation. The early feedback was promising. Gretchen Bleiler, a silver medalist in the halfpipe at the 2006 Olympics, worked tirelessly one day on a combination that had never been done before in women's halfpipe competition. The series of tricks, an inverted 720-degree spin known as a 720 crippler followed by a cab 720 off the opposite wall of the pipe, is the realization of years of progression. To Bleiler, the process of getting the combination down felt like one long headache. ''With any new trick, I'm always frustrated because it takes a lot more energy to do it than an easier, simpler trick,'' she said. ''It's frustrating in a good way, though, because I am pushing myself.'' She added, ''This is when you kind of just need to keep going, keep plugging away, keep pushing past your boundaries and then all of the sudden it's just natural.'' That line of thinking is prevalent among snowboarders during the spring. Once the competitive season winds down and the temperature begins to rise, the race heats up among the sport's elite athletes to come up with the next wave of tricks. To facilitate that process, Mike Jankowski, U.S. Snowboarding's halfpipe coach, said the team camp was the obvious next step. At Buttermilk, the riders not only had the huge pipe to themselves, but also the services of two snowmobile drivers to ferry them up the mountain. There were also staff members on site to salt the snow when it got too soft or to add blue dye when the lighting was flat, as well as to recut the walls of the halfpipe each night. Although the setting was ideal, Jankowski said advances in the sport were fostered not by the pipe but by the riders. Already motivated individually, they also pushed each other to do more. Riders got as many as 25 runs a day during the camp. Among those filtering in and out of the daily sessions included Steve Fisher, a two-time Winter X Games champion, and Kevin Pearce. Both have beaten the sport's star, Shaun White, in competition. And to keep up with White, both were hard at work on tricks that were once seemingly pipe dreams before edifices like the one at Buttermilk came into being. One trick Jankowski said to watch for next winter was a double-corked 1260, a spin cycle of three and a half rotations and two off-axis flips. The last two Olympic champions in women's halfpipe, Hannah Teter and Kelly Clark, were also training in Aspen, leaving White as the only noticeable absentee, despite invitations from the United States team. He certainly had a good excuse. While his competition was trying to keep in step, White was reportedly taking a break after his camp at perhaps the only pipe in the world that could rival Buttermilk's: a private halfpipe built on the backside of remote Silverton Mountain in Colorado. Red Bull reportedly contributed $500,000 to the halfpipe's construction. Among other things, the pipe was reportedly accessible only via helicopter or snowmobile and featured a foam pit at the base of one end to allow White to try whatever new tricks he could dream up. Jankowski did not want to speculate about what those were, but he did say tricks like the double-corked 1260 would probably be much more prevalent during next winter's Olympic qualifying Grand Prix, much the way back-to-back 1080s were the must-have combination before the 2006 Winter Olympics. Although the addition of another revolution showcases evolution, Jankowski said the real progress was in the subtle way tricks were refined to look natural. It is not about the spinning so much as how it looks. And to get it down perfect, it takes a lot of practice and snowmobile trips back up the mountain. ''There's the obvious progression from a 10 to a 12 or from a 12 to a 14, but one of the key things our guys and girls have done is make sure that we're not upping the ante and we're not upping the rotation level unless we're grabbing and it's smooth and it looks good,'' Jankowski said. Jankowski said he hoped the effort would pay off. The United States took four of the six medals in halfpipe at the last Olympics in Turin, Italy, but Jankowski said he expected stiffer competition next winter in Vancouver. ''We don't take anybody lightly, but we definitely want to maintain our position as the ones to beat, as the ones who set the bar,'' he said. ''We don't want to be playing catch-up.''

Kevin Pearce in Sports Business Journal

Shaun and Kevin featured in USA Today for their performance at X Games!

Kevin’s win at the BEO is featured on LA Times.com!

Pete Thomas talks about the competition between Shaun, Kevin and Danny and to look forward to some high scores at X Games next week.

Latimes.com receives 4.6 million views per month.

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/outposts/2009/01/once-upon-a-t-1.html

Kevin’s feature story in ESPN Magazine’s X Games Preview is on stands!

The print edition is a six page spread along with a full page picture of Kevin in the Contents page. We also learned that there will be another sidebar on Kevin on ESPN.com that will include Jake’s quotes from Alyssa Roenigk’s interview.

Hannah, Danny, and Luke are also included in the issue in a piece entitled ‘Comeback Kids,’ a story on Winter X Games athletes that are coming back this year after injury. Hannah talks about how her injury enlightened her to think up additional ways to fund Hannah’s Gold including donating all of her contest winnings to the cause. Danny and Luke are pictured and talk about their excitement for the season.

ESPN The Magazine has a circulation of 2 million.

Kevin and Hannah featured on ESPN The Magazine's new blog!

The first installment includes highlights from Kevin Pearce’s 21^st birthday celebration and is complete with a photo of Kevin, Danny Davis and friends in their 80’s skier Halloween costumes. There is also an undercover call out to Shaun White’s 21^st birthday Vegas celebration. Representing the Burton women, Hannah Teter’s recent trip to Kenya and her charity Hannah’s Gold also received mention in this new weekly blog.

For full coverage, please see the link below:

http://sports.espn.go.com/espnmag/story?id=3684171

The ESPN website network receives 32 million hits a day.

SHAUN WHITE AND KEVIN PEARCE IN THE NEW YORK TIMES

The January 25th issue of the New York Times includes a piece on how quickly tricks and moves advance in the snowboarding and skiing world. Entitled ‘One-Upmanship Is a Trend in High Places,’ journalist Matt Higgins interviews Kevin Pearce on his technique for learning new tricks. Kevin states, “I think it’s a lot easier on the jumps because if you fall, it’s not as big of a consequence. I’ve definitely learned a lot of tricks on jumps and been like, ‘Oh, I could try that in the halfpipe." Higgins describes how Pearce has been working on a cab 1260 and to be on the lookout for him during X Games. Shaun also included, pictured in the photo accompanying the piece. The New York Times has a circulation of over 1 million.