#2 – Jamie Nicholls

It’s amazing to think that Jamie Nicholls is still only 22 years old. It feels like he’s been dominating the UK scene forever, and in truth he’s already been in the spotlight for over a decade.

The backstory of this precocious grom-turned-world-class-talent is the stuff of legend. Raised just down the road from Halifax dryslope, Jamie sessioned its plastic kicker every night after school. Under the watchful gaze of local legend Wayne Taylor – the Mr Miyagi to Jamie’s Daniel-san – he was soon being talked of in hushed tones as the future of British snowboarding. “Watching him ride,” Brits organiser Spencer Claridge said at the time, “he makes the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.”

By the time he was fourteen Jamie had featured in the David Benedek film In Short, with reports emerging that audiences at screenings as far away as Japan were blown away by this tiny English kid pulling 9s on a weird carpeted hillside. From that moment on, Jamie has in some way belonged to all of us: he the ‘chosen one’ – destined to be the ambassador for UK snowboarding – and us the proud parents.

It’s a burden he’s shouldered as casually as he throws down rail tricks. Potential is one thing, reaching it is another, but Nicholls is now firmly established in the big leagues – winning the prestigious Tokyo Rail Days, making the final of the Olympic slopestyle in Sochi and just this month topping the podium at the Snow Jam World Cup.

While these days he flits from continent to continent, Jamie’s incredible board control still owes much to the countless hours spent lapping Halifax and the indoor slope at Castleford, which cemented the fundamentals of kicker and rail riding. Even his eye for a creative line (Jamie is the king of top-to-bottoms) must have its roots in finding new ways to ride the limited Snowflex back home. All that makes him seem somehow more authentically British – not to mention his simple northern outlook on life that verges on the Karl Pilkington!

A child of the internet generation, lately Jamie has been masterminding viral vids (see Hemel Runs 1 & 2) and generally upping his social media output to keep up with his prolific peers in Scandiland and the States.

He might be playing the pro snowboarder game, but like everything else he does, the style is quintessentially made in Yorkshire.

“Jamie is really excellent at a lot of different areas of snowboarding, and that’s not easy to do these days!” – Gary Greenshields, rider

I have never seen anyone with such board control and enthusiasm. He’ll ride a tiny back garden rail or a stadium kicker, it doesn’t matter as long as it’s snowboarding” – Chris Chatt, rider

“He can do everything and with a lot of style, and over the past tewn years or so he’s the one that’s pushed UK riding the most” – Andy Nudds, rider