Athlete profile: Todd Richards

Posted: Tue February 3, 1998 at 5:00 PM ET

Athlete notes

Richards finished the 1997 season as America's top-ranked ISF snowboarder, but it is skateboarding, not snowboarding, that Richards loves the most...he learned to ski as a child in Massachusetts but said, "I was never really good at skiing"...by the time he arrived in high school, he found some friends and at 15 years old, discovered skateboarding..."My sophomore year, all the cool kids in school got snowboards," he remembers. "Winters were so heavy. It was just the natural progression. And that's how I got into it all"...now, however, he no longer looks up to the popular guys; instead, everyone in pipe competition is looking up to him, especially after a stellar 1997..."I won five out of six contests this year and the other one I got second," he listed...one of those first-place finishes was at the US Open, one of the most prestigious events in snowboarding while the second-place finish was at the World Championships..."Honestly, if I had to choose between the two, I'd choose skateboarding," he reveals. "It's harder. I feel like I've accomplished more when I complete a trick. You could consider that my cross-training. That is like my outlet-just strictly for fun"...although he loves skateboarding, Richards does not compete on the circuit...as for the Olympics, "I'm really excited about it. I think it will bring legitimacy to the sport," he says. "It is a real sport. It takes just as much athleticism as figure skating"...Richards feels like he needs to be there..."The first Games is going to be the one that people remember the most"...being that he is an only child, Richards will not have any brothers or sisters to cheer him on at the Olympics but his relatives are his biggest fans...Richards mother, Patricia, is a real estate agent and is dating another agent, John..."Hopefully I'll get them to Nagano"...Richards smiled...