Snowboarder Magazine

One-on-One with Mitch Allan

Tuesday, 05 May 2009 00:00

Growing up as the youngest of the three Allan brothers was never going to be an easy path for Mitch Allan. You see the brothers Allan have been a name synomonous with junior snowboarding talent in Australia for an eternity and the expectations that have weighed upon their shoulders is a weight heavy enough to break the strongest of men. But yet the Allans are no ordinary family and this sort of pressure only seems to motivate and fuel their ambitions further. Born of enthusiastically supportive parents who had them strapped on boards not long after they could walk, the Allans are a testament to the adage that practice makes perfect. With each generation of Allan that emerges into the spotlight the bar is raised even further in terms of riding ability, and at only 18 years of age, Mitch is still to reach his full potential. Humble yet confident, stylishly talented and exciting to watch, Mitch Allan has definitely emerged out of the shadows.

Good friend and mentor Andrew Burton caught up with Mitch for a chat…

Where are you now?
In San Francisco with Clint just being a mad tourist about to go on a tour of Alcatraz.

Where were you last week?
Italy for the Olympic Games.

Where will you be next week?
In Moscow, Russia smashing shots of vodka and trying to find a mail-order bride.

You just competed in the Olympics tell us about that?
Yeah, it was awesome, it was such a good experience to be there and compete at that level. There was a lot of good riding, partying and groupies too…

This was your first shot at the Olympics and you placed a very credible 30th out of an international field of some of the biggest names in snowboarding. You seemed pretty elated with yourself at the end of your first run. Had you just conquered any personal goals you had set yourself for the event?
Yeah, I guess I didn’t really have any goals going into the Games because my goal was merely just to get there, so anything else I achieved after that was a bonus. But I really wanted to ride the best that I could while competing and I was so stoked to do it on both of my comp runs.

Will Mitch Allan be returning to make another assault on the 2010 Winter Olympics in Whistler, Canada?
I haven’t really thought about the 2010 Olympics yet. At the moment I am going to have a break from the team and just ride for myself.

Can you give people a basic idea of the preparation that goes into competing in such a prestigious event?
Going into the 2006 Olympics I did a lot of off snow training in the gym. We did so many back-to-back events in the lead-up it was really important not to get injured.

What are your plans now the Olympics are over?
Just take it easy I guess. I really want to get some good shots and focus more on slopestyle.

You’re a surfer turned snowboarder, what do you miss most about the summer?
Bikinis, beer, BBQs and spending some quality time in the green room.

If you had one day to live what would you do?
Scuba dive, sky dive, hire a Ferrari, have a Penthouse party and set fire to my money. Try a threesome in the back of a Commodore with a bottle of Cadbury chocolate body sauce. Steal a postie's motorbike, and a whole bunch of other shit.

If you had one day to live who would you do?
The entire Victoria Secret lineup.

Is Burto as buffed and ripped as everyone says?
Well he’s 31, and now that the Olympics is just a faded memory he has started to fill out in the mid region. It won't be long before we find him shopping at men’s “Big and Tall” stores around Newcastle.

Not only are you a pipe rider but you seem to be in the final and usually top three for every slopestyle in Oz. Do you find the transition easy?
Um, I guess. I never really got to ride jumps because of my pipe training, but it did always come quite easy, so I’m looking forward to the next few months when I can really ride some booters.

Despite your outstanding slopestyle results, as a well-established halfpipe rider are you wary of being perhaps pigeonholed and labelled by the skeptics as merely a pipe rider. Does this only add fuel to the fire to do well and progress stronger in other areas of your riding?
I really don’t care what anybody labels me as. At the moment I’m just having fun and trying to progress my snowboarding as much as possible.

Growing up as the youngest of the Allan brothers do you find people always make comparisons of your riding ability in relation to that of your older brothers Clint and Jamie. Did this bother you at times to have to be relegated to living in their shadow?
Not at all. I have never felt like I have been in their shadows, it's just the way the magazines have portrayed it since we were young, especially with me being the youngest.

How big an influence have your brothers been on your riding? Do you find they have helped push your riding to the current level it’s at now?
They have both been a massive influence on my riding and still are today, we are always shredding together when we can and always pushing each other.

What do you do in your down season?
Whenever I’m not snowboarding I’m surfing, I’ve just booked a boat trip to Northern Sumatra right before our Australian season, with a bunch of other snowboarders including my brother Clint, Burto, Damo Liddy, Benny Wordsworth and more.

You just turned 18, do you plan to ride this winter at all?
I’ll ride whenever it’s good, but I’ll also party whenever it’s good.

Explain the stitches in your face right now?
Ha-ha yeah, celebrating after the Olympics me and Benny Bright were both pretty loose and we were spraying bottles of champagne everywhere and he clipped me above the eye with it. I ended up getting five stitches above my eye and one in my nose.

Tell me a short story about any and all of the following places:

Japan
Cancelled World Cup event and a good karaoke bar, where Bob, Ben Mates and myself where letting skyrockets off in the middle of the bar. Good times.

USA
After a World Cup event in Whistler, Canada, my brother Clint convinced me to drive down to Mammoth in California with him. This wouldn’t be so bad if Clint’s truck was a little more roadworthy. It’s a big Ford F250 with the sled on the back and snow tyres. The snow tyres weren’t ideal for the highways, as we could only go 90km/h the whole way. Making the trip 26 hours of driving in total. Just to complicate things even more Clint had just bought the truck and as we were crossing the border we noticed that there was some tobacco and weed on the floor. Luckily for us it was 4 am and there were no sniffer dogs around.

Italy
Last year at a World Cup event I suffered some serious food poisoning and spent the whole week with my head in the toilet. I still managed to compete in the comp, but had to get heli-lifted out after being knocked out, breaking my wrist and tearing the cartilage off my ribs. I awoke the next morning to find Burto and Benny Wordsworth coming back from the hospital after a night on the town. They got in a fight with some bouncers and Burto was stabbed in the neck and Benny Wordsworth had a broken elbow. The next day Benny Bright separated his shoulder, so it wasn’t the best week for the Aussies in Italy.

Switzerland
Crushed a Bulgarian, it was electric.

Canada
Clint managed to fill his Shakespeare’s card out in two days (this means eating 10 pies in two days), that’s impressive!!

Austria
Traveling to the World Cup we lost all our bags and the airline had no idea where they were. Myself and Matesy (Ben Mates) competed on comp day in all borrowed gear. I was riding a 152 and as my heat started I asked a random guy in the crowd what size boots he had and he was a 10, so I took them off his feet and competed in them. I stuck my runs with no training at all, but they were very loose. Not surprisingly we both placed way down in the field.

Chile
Wicked POW! We were there for the World Cup but didn’t do the first few days of training because we had one metre of fresh POW. It was some insane riding. Also went heli boarding after the comp. Not as good as the earlier free riding though. Had some good partying with Meathound, our physio, in Santiago.

New Zealand
If you ever go to the Four Seasons resort at Wanaka you will see a tennis court named after Mitch and Burto and two brass statues at either end. Together we dominated this court all week; we left new opponents stunned every day with our phenomenal baseline drives, slices and lob shots.

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