The Snakeboard was invented in 1989 by James Fisher and Oliver Macleod-Smith and Simon King, who all grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa. All 19 year old college students at the time, they were looking to simulate the sensations of surfing, snowboarding, skiing, skateboarding etc. They built a lot of prototype boards that would break after the first few tries. The first board, had an old piece of plumbing pipe for the cross bar, pieces of an old ping-pong table cut up and used for the footplates and an old roller skate cut in half for the trucks.

As the riders and tricks improved, they added footstraps. The first footstraps were made of string, but then as the boards evolved, they used windsurfer straps(another sport they were involved with). The first boards were called: Cobra Cruiser, Viper Striker, Junior Racer, Pro and Comp. These boards had crossbars and footplates made of a very durable plastic called Zytel ST801 and had metal-sealC3-grade bearings in the wheels and the pivot points.

In 1994, just a short 5 years after its invention, the sport saw its first World Championships in Guernsey(off the coast of England). Jay Beatty was crowned as Snakeboarding's first World Champion. There have been World Championships each year since(except 1998).

1997 saw the introduction of vastly improved boards in the likes of the Stiffy, Skinner and Browser. The only weakness being their shocks, which made the boards wobbly after a lot of use.

Then in 1998 came the Spluge. The absolute best board to date. This board eliminated the shocks, making it the most stable board yet. But this board was distributed in VERY limited quantities(only 52 were sent to the USA!), so you were lucky if you could get your hands on one.

However in September, 1998, James Fisher sold Snakeboard International, along with the Snakeboard patent to MV Sports, a toy company in the UK. This wiped out SnakeboardUK and all the reps/tours/demos in the USA, leaving just Snakeboard USA, itself, as the only remnant of the original company left in the USA.

The sport saw somewhat of a downturn after this event, because of MV Sports' lack of interest in the aggressive aspect of the sport. MV Sports thought they could make money on the toy aspect of the sport. Thus they created 3 toy boards: Sydewynder, Viper and Spacedeck. This basically backfired and made the sport appear to be a 'toy' type thing as opposed to the true aggressive sport it had been built up to be in the years leading up to 1998. After the takeover in 1998, no new aggressive boards had been manufactured until....

Not to be stripped of a sport that had now been around for 10 years, the riders stepped up and took things into their own hands. In 2001, long time rider Kara Guire started Flipside USA retailing the boards and introduced new product and clothing. In 2002, then current world champion, Brinton Gunderson and former pro Alterskater Josh Mick formed Dimension Boards. They worked with MV Sports and obtained the rights to produce their own new board. Their board, the Dimension AS1 introduced the new design standard(briefly referred to as "WSA"). In 2002, Pipo Grosso (South American Champ) and Martin Hernandez Elizalde founded GrossO Boards in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They have been producing boards ever since and selling them in countries where the patent is not in force. This was a new begining for a sport that once teetered on the edge of extinction.

In 2004, Dimension bought the patent and the company "Snakeboard" and it's trademarks from MV Sports, effectively giving control of the sport to the riders. Since then, Dimension has produced boards such as the AS2, the Nomad and the Warlord of War. That same year, Dimension licensed out manufacturing rights to a new company, Highland Streetboards. And in 2005, Highland Streetboards, owned by Scotland's Neil Thomson, introduced it's first board, the Flare 55. In 2006, Highland brought out the CARTEL and the Flare 50 and Dimension brought out it's Warlord of War, Warlord of Money/Power(same board, different bar graphics) and the Nomad-Renegade.

Thanks to the riders, creating such companies as Flipside USA and GrossO Boards and Dimension and Highland, the sport is now growing once again, becoming more popular than ever....[ ]==[ ]