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WHAT IS THE HISTORY OF THE DIRTSURFER ?
The Dirtsurfer was invented by Graeme Attey in Perth, Western Australia, one of the most remote cities in the world. While this can have a lot of advantages, Perth lacks surf in summer and never has any snow. In fact, the nearest snow-field is 5000 km away ! Being a surfer and skier, Graeme therefore had a need to
develop a land-based alternative.
Surfing and snowboarding both have the common characteristic of that great
fluid-turning motion and so from the outset, Graeme determined that to re-create that feeling on land, the board would need to be a two-wheeled in-line design. With three or four wheels, he believed it would never be possible to truly re-create such fluent turning characteristics.
Initial attempts were unsuccessful but with
persistence, a breakthrough steering geometry was developed and the product showed enough promise to warrant more serious development.
1998 was a part-time development phase with design refinements were made throughout the year. By May 1999 the company set up to commercialise the product (Design Science Pty Ltd) finalized the design of the first production model and tooling was commenced to initiate production. By November 1st, 1999 the first commercial sales to retail shops took place in Perth.
By mid 2001, sales had expanded to shops all around Australia and distributors had been appointed in Japan, the UK, France, USA, The Netherlands, Switzerland/Austria, Spain, Bali & Singapore. Also, team riders Cahn Mitchell and Toby Bellegarde expanded the riding applications from just downhill off-road to also include high-speed downhill road, around town transport and use with kites and sails.
In November 2001 the world's largest sports production company (TWI) released a half-hour TV documentary on the Dirtsurfer throughout 60 countries.
Malaysians kindly correspond with
MATBoardz for ordering;)
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