An Olympic champ's grandma, a lawn mowing job and Jake Burton are all part of snowboarding's roots

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — There might not be snowboarding at the Olympics — or snowboards at all — if it weren’t for an entrepreneur named Jake Burton.

And, in what feels like more than your garden-variety twist of fate, the grandmother of one of the sport’s best riders at the Milan Cortina Games played a small role. Decades ago and a world away from the mountain, she hired Burton to mow her lawn.

Defending slopestyle champion Zoi Sadowski-Synnott's grandma lived on Long Island in the 1970s and saw a flier offering “outdoor improvement” — everything from a complete overhaul of the backyard to a weekly lawn trimming. That business Burton ran as a teenager was one of the first flickers of an entrepreneurial spirit that ran deep and eventually created a sports behemoth — the Burton snowboard company.

“When I met him, he was pretty lonely,” said Burton's wife and business partner, Donna Carpenter, the owner of Burton who is in Livigno for the Olympics. “Nobody believed in him. Everyone thought he was crazy. He was working 11- 12-hour days by himself in the back of a barn. He was lonely, but he was pretty damn determined. He used to always say ‘Success is the best revenge.’”

Not long after Sadowski-Synnott signed with Burton, the families started comparing notes and the connection was made. Burton, by then known as Jake Burton Carpenter, passed away in 2019. This is the second Winter Olympics without him. But it's hard to overstate his importance in this sport.

“I only met Jake once, at a Burton U.S. Open, right after I signed with Burton,” Sadowski-Synnott said. “It was special. Without him, we wouldn't have snowboarding.”

Burton went from mowing lawns to New York University, where he graduated with a degree in economics, and then to Wall Street.

In the late 1970s, he gave that up and moved back to Vermont to take a gamble. He wanted to see how far the “Snurfer,” a pair of skis bolted together that was invented by Sherman Poppen a decade earlier, might take him.

“I had a vision there was a sport there,” Burton Carpenter said in a 2010 interview with The Associated Press.

He spent years, if not decades, elbowing out room at resorts that wanted nothing to do with snowboarding, deeming both the contraption and their riders too rough, too grungy and too dangerous for the elite crowds they sought.

By 1998, not only were resorts accepting snowboards, but the Olympics — worried about an aging fan base and the growing popularity of the X Games — “unilaterally decided snowboarding would be an Olympic sport,” Donna Carpenter said.

“I was thinking about it this week, and they need us in a way,” Carpenter said. “They need that new culture of snowboarding and snowboarding brands and kind of allowing us to promote it in our own way.”

That might help explain why brand names and company logos that are virtually forbidden on the Olympic field of play are very much a part of snowboarding at the Games.

It's hard to miss the name “Burton” stamped in massive font on the bottoms of more than half the snowboards flying high in that sport's five events.

“Everywhere we go around here, we see his legacy,” said two-time Olympic champion Anna Gasser, a Burton rider.

It was not a smooth road.

One of the classic stories Carpenter likes to tell is how, in the early days, her husband went on the road to sell snowboards to local stores. He left his house with 30 and came back with 35 “because some guy said, ‘We don’t want this crap,'” she said.

That “crap” is now a billion-dollar-plus industry. According to the most recent industry surveys, snowboarders now make up between 30-40% of activity on the mountain.

Gasser, a product of ski-centric Austria, is among the dozens who, with Burton's backing, bucked convention and made it big on a snowboard.

This week, her board is adorned with a sticker that carries one of Burton's mottos: “At Burton, we take our fun seriously.”

One of Jake’s closest friends, Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris, placed a “Ride on Jake” sticker on the top of his binding.

Asked for one of her favorite memories of the industry icon, Gasser recalled him taking a handful of Olympians — her, McMorris, Ayumu Hirano and others — on a helicopter trip to ride powder in the wilds of Canada after the Olympics one time.

“There were no cameras, no pressure,” Gasser said. “He wanted to remind us why we got into this. He said ‘After the Olympics, you just go snowboarding because you love it.'”

AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics

FILE - A wooden sign honoring snowboard pioneer Jake Burton Carpenter sits at the entranceway to a parking lot at Stowe Mountain Resort, Nov. 22, 2019, in Stowe, Vt. (AP Photo/Lisa Rathke, File)

Japan's Ayumu Hirano practices before the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

New Zealand's Campbell Melville Ives competes during the men's snowboarding halfpipe finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)

FILE - Jake Burton Carpenter, owner of Burton Snowboards, shows an early model, right, and one of the newer snowboards, left, in his office in Burlington, Vt., March 8, 2002. (AP Photo/Alden Pellett, File)

Austria's Hanna Karrer competes during the women's snowboarding big air finals at the 2026 Winter Olympics, in Livigno, Italy, Monday, Feb. 9, 2026. (AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson)

Lawmakers and the White House offered no signs of compromise over the holiday weekend in their battle over oversight of federal immigration officers that has led to a pause in funding for the Department of Homeland Security. A partial government shutdown began Saturday after congressional Democrats and President Donald Trump ’s team failed to reach a deal on legislation to fund the department through September.

Democrats are demanding changes to how immigration operations are conducted after the fatal shootings of U.S. citizens Alex Pretti and Renee Good by federal officers in Minneapolis last month.

Unlike the record 43-day shutdown last fall, the closures are narrowly confined, affecting only agencies under the DHS umbrella, including the Transportation Security Administration, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. But the work of ICE and CBP will mostly continue unabated, thanks to billions in funding from Trump’s 2025 tax and spending cut law.

The latest:

The partial government shutdown began Saturday, with Congress scheduled to be out of Washington until Feb. 23, as Democrats and the White House remain dug in over funding for DHS.

Late Monday, Senate Democrats delivered their latest counteroffer to the White House and Republicans, according to a spokesperson for Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer. No additional details were released.

The move follows a White House counterproposal earlier this month that Schumer dismissed as not being serious, offered in response to Democrats’ own 10-point plan outlining their priorities for a funding agreement.

The pledges will be formally announced when board members gather in Washington on Thursday for their first meeting, he said.

He did not detail which member nations were making the pledges for reconstruction or would contribute personnel to the stabilization force.

Rebuilding the Palestinian territory will be a daunting endeavor. The United Nations, World Bank and European Union estimate that reconstruction of the territory will cost $70 billion. Few places in the Gaza Strip were left unscathed by more than two years of Israeli bombardment.

The ceasefire deal calls for an armed international stabilization force to keep security and ensure disarmament of the militant Hamas group, a key demand of Israel. Thus far, few countries have expressed interest in taking part in the proposed force.

The Oct. 10 U.S.-brokered ceasefire deal attempted to halt a more than 2-year war between Israel and Hamas. While the heaviest fighting has subsided, Israeli forces have carried out repeated airstrikes and frequently fired on Palestinians near military-held zones.

It is not clear how many of the more than 20 members of the Board of Peace will attend the first meeting.

▶ Read more about the Board of Peace and its upcoming meeting

It was the first time Iran has announced the closure of the key international waterway, through which 20% of the world’s oil passes, since the U.S. began threatening Iran and rushing military assets to the region. It marks a further escalation in a weekslong standoff that could ignite another war in the Middle East.

As the talks began, Iran’s state media announced that it had fired live missiles toward the Strait and would close it for several hours for “safety and maritime concerns.”

Iranian state TV later said the talks wrapped up after almost three hours.

Iranian state TV reported earlier that negotiations would be indirect and would focus only on Iran’s nuclear program and not domestic policies.

U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly threatened to use force to compel Iran to agree to constrain its nuclear program. Iran has said it would respond with an attack of its own. Trump has also threatened Iran over the killing of protesters.

▶ Read more about the talks between Iran and the US

The partial shutdown began Saturday after congressional Democrats and the White House failed to reach a deal on legislation to fund DHS through September.

Congress is on recess until Feb. 23, and both sides appear dug into their positions. The impasse affects agencies such as the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, U.S. Coast Guard, the Secret Service, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

Democrats want changes to how immigration operations are conducted after the fatal shootings of two U.S. citizens by federal officers last month. They also want to require immigration agents to wear body cameras and mandate judicial warrants for arrests on private property.

White House border czar Tom Homan said the administration was unwilling to agree to Democrats’ demands that federal officers clearly identify themselves, remove masks during operations and display unique ID numbers.

The work at ICE and CBP goes on unabated because Trump’s tax and spending cut law from 2025 provided billions more to those agencies that can be tapped for deportation operations.

▶ Read more about what’s happening with the shutdown

Trump remembered Jackson in a social media post, calling him a “good man, with lots of personality, grit, and ‘street smarts.’”

The Republican president also described Jackson as “very gregarious -Someone who truly loved people!”

“He loved his family greatly, and to them I send my deepest sympathies and condolences. Jesse will be missed! Trump wrote.

It’s up to each federal agency to designate which of its employees are “essential” or “excepted,” both of which mean the same thing in this case. They keep working during a shutdown, typically without being paid until government funding is restored.

Some examples of “essential” employees are military personnel, airport security screeners and law enforcement officers. There can be a wide range, from positions deemed critical for public safety to those authorized by law to continue even without new funding.

Most of the more than 270,000 people employed by DHS are deemed essential, meaning that they stay on the job even during a shutdown. For the fall 2025 shutdown, more than 258,000 DHS employees were in that category, and about 22,000 — or 5% of the agency’s total employee base — were furloughed.

Other agencies affected are the Secret Service and the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The vast majority of employees at the Secret Service and U.S. Coast Guard will continue their work, though they could miss a paycheck depending on the shutdown’s length.

At FEMA, the shutdown will disrupt the agency’s ability to reimburse states for disaster relief costs. Some workers will be furloughed, limiting the agency’s ability to coordinate with state and local partners. Training for first responders at the National Disaster and Emergency Management University in Maryland will be disrupted.

Essentially, it’s because Trump acquiesced to Democrats’ request that Homeland Security funding be stripped from a broader spending package to allow more time for negotiation over demands for changes to immigration enforcement, such as a code of conduct for federal agents and a requirement that officers show identification. DHS was temporarily funded only through Friday.

The rest of the federal government is funded through Sept. 30. That means most federal programs are unaffected by the latest shutdown, including food assistance, and pay for most federal workers and for service members will continue uninterrupted.

The U.S. Capitol is seen Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Mariam Zuhaib)