TOM SIMS: Snowboard, Skateboard Pioneer Dead at 62

September 14, 2012 - 9:34 am | Category: Sports

Action sports pioneer Tom Sims died Wednesday of a heart attack. He was 62.

His company was among the first to sell urethane wheels for skateboards with the introduction of his Sims Pure Juice line in the mid-’70s. Long before that, as a seventh grader in 1963, he invented what’s been called the first true snowboard in his school wood shop class.

Sims also competed in both sports becoming a World Champion Skateboarder in 1975 and held a similar title for snowboarding in 1983. He also helped grow the later sport by developing the first snowboarding half pipe, a type of terrain borrowed from the skateboarding world. He also served as a stunt double for Roger Moore in the 1985 film A View to a Kill.