Legend's Legacy

By Mike Horn

Legend’s Legacy

Let It Ride: The Craig Kelly Story

($28.95; allyvideo.com)

Let It Ride is a snowboard film—yes, a film, not just another punk-ass park and powder flick. Created by Jacques Russo, this documentary-style biography of iconic snowboarder Craig Kelly dispels the notion that snowboarding has no soul.

When he died tragically in an avalanche in 2003 while training to be a Canadian Mountain Guide, the culmination of Craig’s achievements came to light, from winning World Championships to driving snowboarding’s evolution from the halfpipe to the backcountry. This film captures all the championship glory, but also sheds a soft light on the reflective side of a reluctant leader who sought solace far from the reach of halfpipes and Mountain Dew commercials.

Russo filmed with Craig for over 10 years, resulting in a generous mix of on-snow footage and intelligent one-on-one interludes. Shred scenes aside, the most compelling aspect of this movie is the copious interview footage with the snowboarder often referred to simply as, “The Man.” Some moments prove so thoughtful (especially in light of the impending tragedy and astronomical growth of the sport) that they threaten to usurp the scenes where Craig demonstrates his legendary riding style and skill.

Still, the sport’s rock-and-roll roots do get their due. Adding a heavy-metal edge, Metallica’s James Hetfield narrates (waiting for him to burst into a primal scream to accentuate one of Craig’s riding sequences is an unfulfilled urge) and music from Metallica, The Doors and Johnny Cash, among others, compile a soundtrack worthy of a rockumentary.

But it is Kelly’s clear-eyed ruminations on the reality of a sport that he more than any other athlete — even Olympic gold-medalist guy Shaun White, the sport’s current darling — helped define that shines through. When told snowboarding is an escape from the harshness of reality, he responds, “To me, rather than an exit from something else, it’s really an entrance to where everybody should feel with their life; you’re really in tune with the person you want to be, and you’re comfortable with who you are and your position in the environment and the world, and everything that defines you, it seems to be all lined up where it should be.”

There is a secondary story here, chronicling a kind of peoples’ history of snowboarding that includes some funny moments and maybe a tad too much emphasis on the business battles between the two original snowboard giants, Vermont’s Burton and California’s Sims. Kelly’s move from original sponsor Sims to arch-rival Burton proved to be a critical moment in the evolution of the sport helping to unleash an entire lifestyle of halfpipes, Game Boys and X Games. But his own disdain for the distractions of organized competition set the stage for Kelly’s next objective (as well as the next quantum in the sport’s rapid development)—freeriding.

“Freeriding, and getting out there and riding a big slope is your chance to be free of all societies little rules and free of expectations that other people have of you,” Craig said. “You just look at the mountain and interpret it however you want and just snowboard down it.”

Kelly, who would have been just 42 this year, would of course die in the deep backcountry that he so willingly ran to. But as Let it Ride makes clear, that elusive fruit he chased remains; the purity of the perfect turn, the golden silence of the mountains and the clarity of pursuing a passion where life and death became the stakes in whether you win or lose.

–Mike Horn