Chris Moran

Chris Moran, 36, is from Manchester, England. He learned to snowboard in the 1980s, went on to become one of the first UK riders to be ride for Burton Snowboards' European team and was recently named as one of the UK's 20 Most Influential Snowboarders in Whitelines Magazine. Inspired by the wealth of experience he gathered during his riding career, he co-founded ACM in 1999. Today, his main focus is his research into the origins of surfing – the root of all board cultures. The resulting book, Sideways History, has taken him from Greenland to Hawaii and made him one of the world’s most authoritative voices on the subject. As well as pulling off this exciting crossover project, Chris has spent the last few years acting as chaperone to the Nike 6.0 team, and also found the time to write Footprint's successful Mountain Biking Europe guidebook. He is currently in the middle of writing the follow-up, Mountain Biking Britain, a project which should keep him busy for the first few months of 2009.