The Few, the Proud, the Snowboarding Racers

This season I’ve spent some time on NASTAR. It’s a race program that uses a handicap system and age brackets. It is dominated by skiers (after all, the program was started by Ski magazine), but snowboarders can participate.

Here are the sex and age distributions of snowboarding NASTAR participants, according to the latest rankings.

Men:
40 to 44: 133
45 to 49: 122
50 to 54: 56
55 to 59: 34
60 to 64: 18
65 to 69: 8
70 to 74: 2
Total men: 240
Males, all ages:

Women
40 to 44: 36
45 to 49: 24
50 to 54: 10
55 to 59: 9
60 to 64: 3
65 to 69: 1
Total women: 83

Men, all age groups: 2,624
Women, all age groups: 652

That’s a total of 323 snowboarders age 40 and up who have participated in NASTAR–a statistical footnote in the large scope of NASTAR. On the other hand, they make up more than half (56 percent) of all snowboarding participants in NASTAR.

My own ranking in this universe is fairly poor, at about the 30th percentile for all males as well as for my own age group.

On the other hand, if you look at men in my age group who ride in a soft-boot setup and ride duck, then I might be in line for some sort of prize.

Ah, the various ways to slice the universe to stroke the ego.