Comments on: Paddy Mortimer responds to Jamie Nicholls swearing incident

By: aviator

aviator — Sun, 13 Jan 2013 00:33:49 +0000

nowhere does his response apologise for being completely tactless in tweeting in PUBLIC! it suggests he has no knowledge or understanding of social media, or of being professional. speaking to jamie in private would be professional, all he has done is publicise it far more than necessary. and ffs, “F***” could spell out any four letter word beginning with F, why did he have to assume it was the worst one? :-)

By: PY

PY — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 18:21:51 +0000

Would seem that Paddy still has a way to go in understanding snowboarding. He talks about the nuances of mainstream media of the middle classes but yet seems to forget that most snowboarders just by the inherent cost of being a snowboarder in the UK come from middle class backgrounds.
Should the best snowboarders change who they are because sometime in the future the elite riders or more specifically the governing bodies may or may not get more funding?

Surely actions speak far louder than words in sport. A swear word? Brother please. Look at other sports where National captains are shagging their team mates wives. Let’s get some perspective and let the youth live a little. In reality it’ll probably help increase the participation.

Let’s not forget the undisputed legends of the sport who have shunned the Olympics for what it stands for and the plain fact the the reason snowboarding was bought into the Olympics was to attract a younger and broader audience who had little or no interest in watching ski slalom. Let the young learn by their mistakes but please don’t stifle their obvious brilliance by a public slap when a private ‘word to the wise’ would suffice.

By: snowboard historian

snowboard historian — Fri, 11 Jan 2013 07:03:14 +0000

how the word sport and snowboarding ever end up in the same article bafffle me. And anyone who has anything to do with people who “scoot” should definitely have nothing to do with snowboarding.

By: Rob

Rob — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 16:24:29 +0000

Fair play – we all make mistakes. It is good that he “manned up” and apologised many people nowadays do not have the balls to do this. Also the fact that he took time to give a fully considered reply rather than just a blase “sorry” counts highly in his favor in my book. Now he is in a position to be judged by his results. For all the elite athletes sakes lets how he make a success of it.

By: Colin Holden

Colin Holden — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 00:03:10 +0000

my facebook post looked like this … I’m happy to extend the debate :

“I get all the comments and where certain people are coming from … I understand that there is a huge part of the British snowboarding culture that doesn’t see competitive snowboarding as a good thing and I can understand that. I therefore accept why there is a fair amount of venom out there. What I can say is that I have worked closely with Paddy and still do – doing the things behind the scenes that help get the funding in for those riders who want to compete and get to the Olympics and also try to keep the funding partners happy with how we progress and how we spend what is essentially government money (our taxes). The article shows where Paddy has fronted up and accepted that his approach was incorrect. I can tell you that he is he is not the sort of person who wants to be seen as “the big man” as suggested above. He is not a power-hungry bully as being made out in some comments across FB and twitter … He is in fact the complete opposite to that. I accept what it looked like and I accept that everyone has a right to say what they feel. A lesson learnt. Passion for snowboarding is a good thing but let’s try and channel it positively whether we agree with competitive snowboarding, the Olympics or whether we feel it has no place. There is at least some common ground – snowboarding.”

Thanks to Matt and Whitleines for opening this out … it’s been good.

By: Dubzie

Dubzie — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 22:49:47 +0000

“(funding agencies) are the people that pay their taxes. The middle classes, and they’re not comfortable with this unfortunately.”

Oh saweet. It’s the middle classes that pay all the tax nowadays. I’ll remember that when Im filling out my SA100 in april.

By: Russ Shea

Russ Shea — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:09:45 +0000

Good to hear that after all these years of the BSA and people working for nothing etc etc at last the snowboarders are getting some funding.

By: Truck Jucubsonn

Truck Jucubsonn — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:52:35 +0000

was digging this until he said his kids scoot

By: Mike Thatcher

Mike Thatcher — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 16:45:45 +0000

Fair play to the guy I say, the apologies for the way in which he conducted himself and that takes balls. I can see the argument from both sides and it’s a tricky situation. As snowboarding becomes more popular it’s also going to be more visible to the twats that are tabloid newspapers hawk eyeing for their next villain. If the sport/riders are made to look bad then it can only harm the progression of boarding in the UK.

I’m sided with Jamie on the picture and the words he used, the guy was having fun and no one got hurt so there’s no major problem. Again both sides have valid points but i suppose if all involved learn from it then that’s all that matters.