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By Deb Murphy
Register Correspondent
2-16-2010 Pete del Giudice lives off the grid, both literally and figuratively. The 2002 Olympic Coach of the Year who swept the freestyle snowboard podium at Salt Lake City lives at the top of Chipmunk Canyon south of Bishop enjoying the fresh air and working on his art and photography.
As the 2010 Winter Olympics play out in Vancouver, del Giudice doesn’t miss the airports and cities his seven-year coaching tenure required even if those airports led to the U.S. dominance of the men’s snowboard medals, the first time a U.S. team swept a Winter Olympic event since 1956.
In the official coaching award announcement issued eight years ago, the U.S. Olympic Committee noted del Giudice’s ability to relate to “the independent athletes.” That rapport probably wasn’t that tough for del Giudice to develop. If the snowboarders in the late 1990s were considered del Giudice pretty much holds the gold in that category.
He grew up a surfer dude in Long Beach/Orange County, heading to the Sierra to ski, hunt and fish. He opted out of Southern California and into a lifestyle that included mountains, snow and the kind of employment that made room for both. His introduction to the primitive days of snowboarding came in the late 1960s when he was working on June Mountain’s ski patrol. Hanging out in the rental shop, del Giudice noticed pieces of plywood hung on the wall that looked vaguely like a surfboard with straps. The plywood was a snowboard, or at least an experimental version of what was to become a snowboard. Del Giudice tossed the board out the shop window and took it for a ride down the face of June. “I could make turns in the powder just like you’d do on a surfboard,” he said, “but when I took it out on hard pack, it died; it was impossible.” When he got back to the shop, he told experimenter Jake Burton to keep working on it and he’d eventually get it right.
Del Giudice started coaching skiers in the 1970s. By the early 1990s, he’d switched to snowboarders, working with some of the first hotshot at Mammoth, including the Anderson brothers. The Olympic alpine sports organization asked him to head up to Mt. Bachelor, Ore. for the first American World Cup as a Technical Delegate in 1994 along with Bruce Lella and Gary Taylor, the heads of Mammoth’s race department. The big thing that year was a Danish boarder traveling with the American team. He was standing at the top of the slalom event when he ripped out his bindings. He’d popped the screws out, had only a short time to get to the starting gate or get disqualified and was panicked. “I got a screwdriver, took drywall screws, screwed the bindings back on the board and filed ’em off. The kid got to the gate in time and won the race. The American coaches were standing around and said, ‘Dude, we need you.’” Del Giudice resisted.
The following spring, his son Dustin, a member of the American World Cup snowboard team from 1995 to 1997, was riding shotgun with the team coach on a Nike tour. “The coach was saying we needed a new freestyle coach. The guy we had sucked. I told him my dad had always wanted to help and he said he’d give him a call.”
It took a few calls and a rearrangement of del Giudice’s work schedule, but in 1995, he was onboard. In 1998, snowboarding made its debut as an Olympic event and Ross Powers took the bronze in the halfpipe, behind the Swiss and the Norwegians. To gear up for Salt Lake, del Giudice went out on his own. “There was an anti-Olympic attitude with snowboarders,” he said. “The kids were making too much money and the top boarders’ sponsors weren’t sponsoring the Olympic effort. I turned into a talent scout. I gave the head coaches five names and said these are the kids I need to work with and this is how they’ll finish.” The names were Powers, Danny Kass and J.J. Thomas, and that’s how they finished.
One of the girls del Giudice needed for the women’s team was Kelly Clark. He spotted her at the Nationals. “She couldn’t do the tricks the others could do,” he remembered. “What she did that the others didn’t was go fast and go big. When I was surfing, you’d see big 10-foot waves coming and there were guys who’d go out, wouldn’t think twice. Those are the ones you look for. They have a mind set, they don’t question themselves. You have to trust what you’ve got. If you have to stop and think about it, you’re in trouble.” Clark took the gold in the women’s division in 2002.
Del Giudice reintroduced his team to edging and balance. “Ninety percent of snowboarders think it’s about sliding, they use a skateboard technique. It’s not. I taught them how to go fast, edge, balance, glide.”
Step two and three: gymnastics and nutrition. He sent his team to a gymnastics school in Pennsylvania. “When I first got into this, they were doing 530s, 720s, twist flips, that’s all there was. The sport has really changed.” The gymnastic training helped the team push the envelope.
“The one thing I did for our kids,” he said, “I beat ’em up, hired a trainer and made them eat right. You can only ride on your youth until you’re 18 or 19.”
Eight years ago, at Salt Lake City, the big question del Giudice had to deal with was “how many more medals would the U.S. team get than in ’98?”
“I’d never stoop to that,” he said. “It’s not my job to guess. I would guarantee two or three medals, but I wasn’t going to jinx myself. You can be an optimist, a pessimist or a realist. I’m a realist, I see things how they should come out, that’s what makes you successful. I’m a great goal setter but I don’t set goals I can’t achieve. That’s a realist. When we won, I was super happy. It was a highlight. All your life you strive to be strong, smart, consistent. You can’t back down, you have to be upfront. What’s black is black; what’s white is white. It all worked.”
On the 2010 snowboard Olympic team’s chances: “The sport’s gone up a good 15 percent or better over 2002. The team is almost equal, in a way, They’ve lost focus on what I was coaching but this is a new era and the kid’s will figure it out.”
On the danger of extreme sports: “It’s your ability that pushes you. Just because you’re riding the halfpipe doesn’t mean you’re sticking your neck out. The only way to stay safe is to work hard at the sport. You know what, that’s why the kids do what they do. It’s exciting; it’s thrilling. There’s more to life than playing video games.”
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