The Torah Bright Interview
Of all the Australian exports in the world, Torah Bright might be the most disarming. One of the winningest women in all of snowboarding, Bright combines a dazzling charm with a technically lethal on-board talent—making her such a potent marketing weapon that honestly you wonder how her sponsors ever did it without her. She traipses back and forth between the Northern and Southern hemispheres following the proverbial endless winter, and when she’s not competing or traveling to compete or thinking about competing, she’s escaping to an empty beach in Costa Rica or Fiji and getting mentally centered. Everyone deserves some me time, right?
The thing about Torah, though, is that she’s an individual. She moves in her own direction and at her very own self-propelled speed. When most other women were polishing their frontside spins, she was going switch backside. And where many other riders focus on making tricks happen, Torah meditates on style. Says Gretchen Bleiler, “When Torah’s at an event, she’s pushing it no matter what the conditions are, because she wouldn’t be satisfied if she didn’t throw down a dynamic, progressive run. She knows her strengths and instead of working on the tricks every other girl was working for, she chose her own unique technical path.”
Although competition is a dominant force in her current career, Ms. Bright’s intrinsic talent dictates that she pretty much can and will master anything she sets out to do. Says photographer and Quiksilver Marketing Manager Brian Craighill about shooting the backcountry and urban jib shots you see here, “Torah stepped it up when faced with something that was pretty foreign to her, and she did it with style. She has the ability to learn things extraordinarily fast—she’s actually kind of a freak of nature.”
Now I’m just speaking for myself here, but whether or not she’s a freak of nature, she’s definitely out of our league. And actually, it’s nice to know that all us normal workaday folk don’t really have to compare ourselves to Torah Bright. That would be disappointing indeed.
What’s the biggest misconception about you?
Probably the Mormon thing. People think we’re crazy, and yeah, some of us are, maybe. But people are always like, “How do you feel about your husband having six wives?” And I’m just like, what? That’s polygamy—that’s a whole different thing.
Yeah, I think people are pretty ill-informed about that religion.
Yeah, lots of false ideas going around about it.
Well let’s talk about your relationship with Mormonism. I think it’s something people are really curious about. Like, how does your faith fit in with snowboarding?
I’ve been asked before, how are you Mormon and you snowboard? I guess people associate snowboarding with this whole party lifestyle, and yeah, it’s like that to some extent. But I don’t know, not everybody’s like that. I think it’s just the way I’ve chosen to live my life. It works perfectly for me. It actually gives me a little more purpose to what I’m doing.
Do you give part of your income to the church?
Yeah. You’re not by any means required, but yeah, I’ve chosen to. I give ten percent of my income to the church.
It’s a personal decision then?
Yeah, yeah. And like people pay a full tithing or just whatever they can. I’m happy to give the money because it’s also like a charity. They do great things with their money, so I’m happy to do that.
So what’s winning like?
I don’t know … it’s kind of just a feeling of self-accomplishment. You’ve done what you set out to do. But I get that feeling when I ride well and I don’t win. Like at the European Open, I was so stoked because in the contest I was like, I’m going to do Cab nines! And I did it, and then I did a switch back five. I came out of that day just so stoked because I did the combo.
Is there a pressure element to winning, like when you win, does that sort of compound the pressure on your shoulders to keep winning?
Yeah, I think the more you win, the more pressure there is. It does feel like you’re just expected to keep winning.
So how do you deal with that?
I just try to flick it off.
That’s all you can do I guess.
Yeah, the more serious you are, the more stressed you are, and the less fun it becomes.
You got fifth in the Torino Winter Games. What are the Olympics really like? Are they just another contest?
When I was going into the Olympics, I was thinking, this really is just another snowboard contest—it’s all the same people and all that. But actually, it’s in another league. I remember standing up at the top of the pipe and looking down on this massive grand-slam kind of crowd.
And I never thought I’d feel as patriotic as I did. I just wanted to be watching everybody else at their events and cheering them on. It was pretty amazing. There were a bunch of friends, like kids I went to school with and a ton of my brother’s friends, who came over to watch. Actually, they decided to take off their shirts and write my name on their chests—that was the highlight of it.
Were you bummed about your result? I mean fifth place at the Olympics is amazing, but some people were claiming you got robbed.
I was disappointed, for sure. I mean right before the Olympics I had an emergency appendectomy—my appendix had been about to burst—and it took me a long time to get back on snow, like pretty much right up until the time of the Olympics. I was working super hard, because I really wanted to be snowboarding well by that time, but it all worked out.
I dislocated my shoulder first run in the finals, so afterwards everyone was just like, “Oh, she hurt herself.” But you know what, no—my second run was pretty good. I don’t know, it was funny coming out of the Olympics and, like, winning all the other contests. What I did in the Olympics, the combos were actually harder than what I’d been doing the last couple years and winning with. But it’s just different judging. Maybe they didn’t know what I was doing, and yeah, it was harder and maybe I went smaller.
Yeah, you have all those really technical trick combos that someone who’s not in the know might score down.
I don’t know—it’d be hard to be a judge, especially at the Olympics. I would never be a judge. And oh well, luck didn’t fall with me that time
When it comes to snowboarding, what makes you tick? Like, do you train a lot back home in Utah or just focus on freeriding?
I think my brother Ben inspires me a little bit, because I don’t have so much confidence in my ability, but he really does. He knows that I can do things, and suddenly I’m like, okay, maybe I can. And actually, we really don’t spend much time in Utah at all. I barely ever ride there unless it’s a contest. I think this season I haven’t actually trained pipe outside of a contest.
That seems crazy to me.
I’ve done a lot of contests, though.
That’s true. So can you just show up to a contest and learn a new trick there, like during practice?
Well that’s what happened with my switch backside seven. I was just doing my switch backside fives at the X-Games and I was like, I’m feeling a seven—I’m going to do this. And I learned it.
What’s it like having your brother as a coach?
Benny and I, we definitely work well together. He knows how things work in my mind and how things need to be done. It’s funny, because I used to call Benny my riding buddy—we wouldn’t let the word coach get in there. But he doesn’t even snowboard anymore! [Laughter.] And I’m like, “Hey, coach!”
You took correspondence courses to finish high school while you were traveling for snowboarding. Do you ever feel like you missed out on a normal childhood or high school experience?
Yeah, sometimes. Like, at the time, doing correspondence was the hardest thing. You’ve got to be so motivated to sit yourself down and do your schoolwork. And I wished a lot that I could be at home with my friends, but I don’t know, I don’t really spend too much time looking at what it could’ve been. You know, this is what I’m doing, and this is how it is.
So I heard you’re seriously down with karaoke. What’s your favorite song?
Well, in Japan, [Burton Women’s Team Manager] Susi Floros and I—we karaoked our hearts out, and we came out of the trip saying “Survivor” was our favorite.
It’s funny because I’ve always associated karaoke with dumb drunk people, but I bet it’s really fun just to sing.
Yeah, well I assure you that everyone around me was drunk. I was just singing away. I don’t know what it is—I seem to just vibe off of everybody else. Some people say to me that I was the drunkest one at the party.
Yeah, like a second-hand drunk.
Yeah, and everyone thinks you have to be drunk do dance or whatever.
I guess it’s kind of sad that that’s the mentality. So you’ve never even had a drink?
No, I’ve never had a drink.
Are you ever kind of curious about it?
Well, when I don’t like the smell of something, I just can’t touch it, and I don’t really like the smell of alcohol, so I’ve never been tempted to try it. I was tricked once, actually. It was Claire Bevilaqua, one of the surfers. I was sitting by the pool in Fiji and she was like, “Torah, try some of my coconut milk, it’s so good!” It was in the afternoon after surfing. I had a little sip and I was like, “That’s not coconut milk!”
What about the rest of your family? Haven’t I seen your little sister Abby out raging?
Yeah, probably. My older sister Rowena and I are the only ones who’ve chosen this lifestyle. And I mean mum and dad just brought us up this way because they thought it was good, but everyone picks their own path.
So is there anything in snowboarding that doesn’t come naturally to you—that you feel like you struggle with?
I’m kind of really bad at rails. I’m not very good at buttering either, I see everybody having so much fun buttering and I’m like, I need to practice that, I need to get good at that. But I mean really I feel like I have to work pretty hard at everything.
Style is a key component to your riding. Do you consciously work at it, or is it totally innate?
Style should be there naturally, but when you’re learning tricks, sometimes it takes time. Like, you’ve got to learn the trick, learn the rotation, and then work out where to bone it or whatever. Sometimes you have to add the style afterwards.
I saw your X-Games finals run online, and honestly, when I was watching it I couldn’t even tell that you were a girl.
That’s awesome.
But I hate saying that—because it implies that riding like a girl is bad. Do you think there’s a huge difference between guys and girls style-wise?
I think so. I think it’s just mannerisms of the person more than anything. But I don’t know, I like it when people say, “Oh, you’re riding like one of the guys.”
Does it ever bother you that physical appearance seems to be such a huge part of marketing women in sports, or have you just made peace with it?
When I first started snowboarding and coming over to the U.S., getting taken on by Roxy and Burton and all that, someone made a comment to me—they said, “Oh, they just like you because you’re cute.” Because I wasn’t that good—I was just doing 360s and stuff. And I just kind of thought, “Is that how it is?” So ever since then, I feel like I don’t deserve what I get. But now I’m at peace with it. I mean it does suck—the marketing aspect of it—but at the end of the day, your ability and talent should speak for itself.
Do you see any equivalent in how guys are marketed?
I mean, we don’t see any of the male snowboarders with their shirts off like David Beckham or whatever. And I don’t know, there are totally double standards just in mainstream media judging a girl who poses in her underwear as opposed to a guy all sweaty, no shirt … but I don’t know. I wouldn’t do anything like that to further my career anyway.
So what’s up for the future? Got any big plans?
I don’t know. I just have to take it one step at a time. I think I’ve decided that I’m going to the next Olympics. It took me a while after the last ones because it wasn’t really that fun. There’re so many rules and regulations. I remember standing up at the top of the pipe and there were all these people whose job it was to size everybody’s logos—they were looking at our outfits and sizing our logos, making sure there weren’t more than three logos on us at a time. I was just like, “Is it really worth it?” But I think I’ll go—I mean, why not?
Yeah … why not?
Feature story, Transworld Snowboarding, March 2009
