Lance Mountain

Lance Mountain took first or second place in almost every amateur contest in which he participated. Mountain's first skateboard deck sponsor was Variflex, a company that he joined in 1981; Mountain then moved to the Powell-Peralta team in the following year (1982). It was during his time with Powell-Peralta that he formed a strong friendship with Stacy Peralta, the team manager and director of the Bones Brigade video series—Mountain appears in eight Bones Brigade videos, including the well-known video The Search For Animal Chin (the final video was the 1991 production Eight).[1][2]

Mountain gained further eminence when he won the Upland Turkey Shoot contest at Upland Skatepark in 1983, an event in which fellow team riders Steve Caballero, Mike McGill, and Tony Hawk also competed. This was followed by Mountain's 1984 appearance in skateboarding's first, full-length company video The Bones Brigade Video Show, in which Mountain filmed the segue segments for all of the "vert" (a style of skateboarding that involves skateboarding on a vertical "u"-shaped ramp) and "freestyle" (a style of skateboarding that involves technical skateboarding on flat ground) parts; the segments depict Mountain as he skateboards throughout the streets of Los Angeles, US.[3]

In the early 1990s, the skateboard industry underwent a major transformation; the popularity of street-style skateboarding superseded that of vert skateboarding, thereby diminishing the status of the Bones Brigade while the prominence of the next wave of skaters increased. In 1991, Mountain left Powell-Peralta to cofound his own skateboard company "The Firm" and, together with former Powell-Peralta teammate Ray Barbee, recruited a team of notable skateboarders that included Bob Burnquist and Rodrigo "Tx" Teixeira.[4]

Following the company's further development, The Firm signed a distribution deal with Blitz Distribution. Following four videos[5] and over a decade of existence, Mountain announced the end of The Firm on March 13, 2006.[4]

Following the demise of The Firm, several former team members were recruited by the Flip company—Mountain, Burnquist, and Teixeira (all three skateboarders appeared in the Flip full-length video Extremely Sorry (2009)[6][7][8]). As of March 2013, Mountain and Burnquist continue to be sponsored by Flip.[9] As a team rider for Flip, Mountain is one of the professional skateboarders featured in Tony Hawk's Proving Ground, an appearance that marked Mountain's first appearance in the Tony Hawk series of video games.[10]

As of October 2012, Mountain is sponsored by Flip, Independent Trucks, Spitfire, Nike SB (announced on May 7, 2007), and Stüssy clothing.[11]

In Transworld SKATEboarding's "30 Most Influential Skaters Of All Time" list, Mountain was selected in the eighteenth position and Skin Phillips, the editor-in-chief of the magazine, commended Mountain for his ability to "put a smile" on the faces of skateboarders over four decades of professional skateboarding.[12] At the time that the list was released in December 2011, Mountain stated in response: "I feel like I’ve influenced in the sense that if you want to do it, do it. If you don’t want to do it, don’t do it. But don’t rely on what people are saying you can do or saying what you can’t do."[13]