Russia (bbabo.net), - A former stoker from the Arkhangelsk village of Pinega made a snowboard from improvised materials and goes freestyle in any frost - videos with his virtuoso jumps, sharp turns and bounces from pine trees on an ordinary plywood board collect tens of thousands of views in social networks.

The Pinega Mountains are low. But 68-year-old Pavel Konev built a five-meter launch pad on a karst landscape a few kilometers from Pinega, cleared a kilometer-long winding descent between the fir trees and ... only the wind whistles in his ears.

Compatriots call him the first snowboarder in the world: although this sport officially originated in Michigan in 1965, the self-taught Pinezhsky began to ride much earlier - in 1960. The correspondent found Pavel Ilyich right on the mountain:

- At school I got my first skis. Then one broke - the boots got stuck in the springboard. Since the new parents did not buy, I rode one ski - very well. And then I made a board out of plywood. Easy at first, then harder. Now my board is almost like a real snowboard.

Konev makes snowboards from birch plywood: he soaks it, bends it, puts it under a press, and dries it. For fastenings, he takes old car tires, naval belts, and locks on them with the key to the nightstand.

- What he saw - from that he did. The main thing is to have hands and consideration, - says the freestyler.

He became interested in jumping "on plywood" forty years ago, and today even from other regions come to him for a freestyle master class.

What about falls and injuries?

- He who does not fall does not improve. Injuries happened, I went through them. And I learned all the tricks on TV, tried to ride the same way as athletes. The ability to keep balance was given by water skiing - I trained on them in the summer, drove along the Pinega River behind a boat. Then I learned to do a lot of figures, for example, stepping over a halyard.

And recently, Pavel Ilyich received a package - one of the brightest snowboarders of the Southern Urals, a member of the Russian Alpine Skiing Federation, Vyacheslav Zinoviev, sent Konev a snowboard and all the equipment. He accompanied the gift with a message: "How such people inspire!" Now the freestyler rides on two boards.

- I recently compared: what is factory, what is mine - they slide the same way, - Pavel Ilyich admits. - The fact is that I covered my board with enamel and silicone at the same time. It turned out a "cake" - very, very slippery. Well, it seems that he told everything - I still have to walk six kilometers to the house, but it's already getting dark, it's time ...

By the way

Before retirement, snowboarder Konev worked as a stoker. Pinezhans also know Pavel Ilyich as an excellent stove-maker, in many houses of the village it is warm precisely because of his work.

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