From Burton to the World: Jake’s Words on the Global Stage

At the 2026 Winter Olympic Games, Burton’s team riders are expected to compete on snowboards carrying the words of the company’s founder, Jake Burton Carpenter. The From Burton to the World collection, a limited-edition line of snowboards, apparel, and accessories, brings Jake’s most enduring statements onto the biggest stage in snowboarding, not as branding slogans, but as belief systems forged long before the sport reached this scale.

For an independent brand that helped fight for snowboarding’s acceptance in its earliest days, the symbolism is deliberate. These are not new messages written for a global audience. They are words that have lived for decades inside Burton catalogues, product meetings, and lift-line conversations; now carried by riders representing snowboarding at its highest-profile moment.

Snowboarding has always been more than tricks, results, or progression charts. Long before it became an Olympic sport, it was a feeling: something intuitive, personal, and deeply communal. Few people understood that better than Jake.

Jake didn’t just build a snowboard company; he helped shape the language of an entire culture. From his early days building boards out of a Vermont barn in the late 1970s, his belief was simple and unwavering: snowboarding should be fun, expressive, and shared. That belief became the foundation on which Burton was built, and it remains central to the sport today.

The From Burton to the World collection doesn’t attempt to summarize Jake’s legacy. Instead, it lets him speak for himself.

When words mattered as much as boards

Jake was unusually vocal for an industry founder. He didn’t hide behind corporate language or technical jargon. His quotes were direct, sometimes playful, sometimes defiant, and reflected how he saw snowboarding: not as an image to be perfected, but as an experience to be felt.

Phrases like “Have as much fun as possible” or “The best thing about snowboarding – it’s not how you look but how you feel” weren’t slogans invented for marketing campaigns. They were guiding principles that shaped how Burton operated, how it supported riders, and how it navigated snowboarding’s transition from fringe activity to global sport.

That philosophy mattered at a time when snowboarding was still fighting for legitimacy, when access to mountains wasn’t guaranteed, and the future of the sport felt uncertain. Jake’s response to those doubts was famously blunt: “Question: Is snowboarding a fad? Answer: Get serious.” 

Long before Jake Burton’s words were condensed into short, declarative statements, they lived inside full pages of text. Burton catalogues were never just seasonal product overviews. They were where Jake articulated his thinking in real time, often at length, and often without polish.

Reading through those catalogues now, what stands out isn’t branding consistency, but ideological consistency. The same ideas appear again and again, written differently depending on the moment, the pressure the sport was under, or the questions Jake felt needed answering.

2009: “Have as much fun as possible”

In the catalogues, fun is never framed as something casual or secondary. Jake repeatedly positions it as the core metric—the thing that determines whether snowboarding is being done right at all. He warns against buying boards for graphics alone, against chasing trends, and against mistaking appearance for experience.

When the quote appears on a snowboard today, it carries the weight of that broader argument. It’s not an encouragement to take things lightly; it’s a reminder that fun requires commitment, curiosity, and time on snow. Fun, in Jake’s world, was earned.

Ridden by: Oliver Martin (USA), Gaon Choi (Korea), Hiroto Ogiwara (Japan), Yiming Su (China), Mitsuki Ono (Japan), Nicola Liviero (Italy), Shaotong Wu (China) and Clemens Millauer (Austria).

1993: “Riding is where the energy comes from & it’s also where it goes”

This line appears in the catalogues surrounded by dense discussion of product development, rider testing, and iteration. Jake describes a feedback loop: riders inform product, product enables riding, riding then reshapes the product again.

Placed on a board now, the quote reads almost poetically, but its origins are practical. It reflects Burton’s long-standing refusal to separate riding from design, or business from time on snow. The energy Jake refers to isn’t abstract motivation; it’s literal mileage, hours logged, and firsthand experience.

Ridden by: Anna Gasser (Austria), Ayumu Hirano (Japan), Hanna Karrer (Austria), Reira Iwabuchi (Japan), Romain Allemand (France), Taiga Hasegawa (Japan) and Jakub Hrones (Czech Republic).

1989: “Here at Burton we take our fun seriously”

In print, this sentence sits among explanations of why Burton focused exclusively on snowboarding when diversification might have been easier, or more profitable. Jake repeatedly makes the case that seriousness doesn’t mean stiffness. It means care.

The catalogues show how deeply Burton resisted becoming a lifestyle brand disconnected from its product. Taking fun seriously meant obsessing over details, listening to riders daily, and staying narrow in focus even as snowboarding exploded globally.

Ridden by: Brock Crouch (USA), Jiayu Liu (China), Jonas Hasler (Switzerland), Leon Vockensperger (Germany), Øyvind Kirkhus (Norway), Telma Sarkipajou (Finland), Dane Menzies (New Zealand), Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (New Zealand).

2000: “The best thing about snowboarding – it’s not how you look but how you feel”

This idea runs through the catalogues almost verbatim, often framed as advice rather than philosophy. Jake urges riders to ignore image, ego, and external validation, and instead learn what actually works for their bodies, terrain, and style.

Seen in its original context, the quote isn’t a slogan, it’s a correction. A pushback against commodification at a time when snowboarding was becoming increasingly visible. On today’s boards, it functions the same way: a quiet refusal to reduce the sport to surface-level aesthetics.

Ridden by: Shuichiro Shigeno (Japan).

1992: “Is snowboarding a fad? Get serious.” / 2010: “Believe in snowboarding” 

These statements emerged during periods when snowboarding was still negotiating access, legitimacy, and longevity. The catalogues capture Jake answering critics directly—sometimes defensively, sometimes impatiently, but always with conviction.

Ridden by: Cam Melville Ives (New Zealand), Clemens Millauer (Austria), Lu Yang (China), Mark McMorris (Canada) and Mari Fukada (Japan).

What’s striking is how little the language has softened over time. Belief, for Jake, wasn’t blind optimism. It was a choice to commit fully to a sport before its future was guaranteed. That belief shaped everything from Burton’s product range to its refusal to chase adjacent markets.

Ridden by: Kaishu Hirano (Japan).

Riders as curators

Rather than assigning quotes from the top down, Burton invited its team riders to choose the words that resonated most with them. The result is a collection shaped by their interpretation of Jake’s words.

Each board carries his voice, but filtered through the lived experience of today’s snowboarders, athletes who grew up in a world Jake helped create, yet continue to push the sport in new directions. The boards become a meeting point between past and present: a reminder that snowboarding’s evolution has always been driven by people.

A living tribute

Jake Burton Carpenter passed away in 2019, but his influence remains deeply embedded in snowboarding’s DNA. The From Burton to the World collection isn’t about nostalgia. It’s about continuity.

These boards aren’t meant to hang on walls. They’re meant to be ridden, scuffed, scratched, and taken into the mountains. In that sense, they reflect Jake’s belief that snowboarding only truly exists when it’s being lived. And this season is a great opportunity for the team riders to take this messaging onto the global stage where they get once again to tell the World what snowboarding is about.