Even at the age of 16, when he counted other extraordinarily-talented snowboarders such as Chris Moran, Justin Allison, Danny Wheeler and Simon Smith as his peers, he stood out. He went bigger than anybody else. He had more pop than everybody else. He was more progressive than anybody else. He tweaked harder than anybody else. Ultimately, he just made it look easier than everybody else.

But how? Where did this innate ability come from? This is something that I’ve always wondered about. In the last few years a pop cultural theory has been doing the rounds, popularised by Malcolm Gladwell in his book Outliers, that reckons it takes around 10,000 hours of obsessive practice to unleash natural ability and truly master any chosen discipline. The Beatles, Bill Gates, concert pianists: all examples of this theory.

“I guess my progression might have come from a drive to not be afraid. To keep on trying, to push yourself until you get it, and not be worried about hurting yourself”

So just how did a kid who grew up in the Lancashire mill town of Bury in the 1980s end up as one of the most progressive European snowboarders of his era? Was it a case of pure natural talent? Or just a lot of practise? For Ste, in what will become a theme of his career, it was definitely the latter.

“How did I get so good? Ha ha, well it was just a lot of practise I think. We had a crew around Bury, and from the age of about nine I spent literally every minute skateboarding. That’s all we did. And I guess my progression might have come from a drive to not be afraid. To keep on trying, to push yourself until you get it, and not be worried about hurting yourself. I always had a lot of determination. But most of it was down to practise rather than natural ability.”

These early years saw Ste get a job at Mancunian skate mecca Split Sports in Manchester where he met another young boardsports obsessive: Chris Moran. When Split ordered in a load of snowboards, something clicked with the young pair. They both bought boards and began heading up to the nearest dryslope, Rossendale in Lancashire.

“It was the same with snowboarding. In those early days Chris and I just spent every available second up at Rossendale. I remember thinking it was easy compared to skateboarding. The thing’s attached to your feet, so jumps and stuff were second nature. It felt amazing; going bigger and bigger, faster and faster. It was in the era when people didn’t really do any spins, just straight airs really. It was only a few years in that we started doing rotations. And that was a whole new realm.”

“Just good times really. We had a good laugh, we did whatever we wanted. We travelled a lot. We just had a great time”

Soon, the duo began to compete at dryslope contests across the north of England, where they met other members of the UK’s nascent snowboarding scene. Getting third place in his first comp at Ackers Trust was an eye-opener. “I’d only been snowboarding eighteen months, and I remember thinking that if I could get third I could get first. Suddenly it was on. Chris and I said we’d try and get first and second the next season, which we did.”

To aid their progression, the pair obsessively pored over videos, painstakingly working out how they could do tricks and bring the effortless style of Chris Roach and Terje Haakonsen to the North of England dryslope scene.

By the end of their second dryslope season, Ste and Chris were winning most contests that they entered and had picked up sponsorship from Burton. It’s a time Ste remembers fondly as “just good times really. We had a good laugh, we did whatever we wanted. We travelled a lot. We just had a great time.”

And still Ste continued to get better and better. By this stage he was a freakishly consistent snowboarder who was able, as he puts it, to do “almost every single trick almost every single time. I mean, there were a lot of good snowboarders around, but I think I was just more consistent than everyone else. I could land all of my tricks every time. How? Just through practicing them. All the time.”

As Chris Moran remembers it, it wasn’t just that Steve was more consistent than everybody else. More that he was in a different league altogether.

“Ste was doing these beautiful McTwists on Dendix. In time, other plastic milestones would follow, including the first 900 on dryslope”

“The thing about Ste was that he worked tricks out before anybody else and he did most of them first go. I remember in 1994 we went to Rikgransen and saw Peter Line doing corked spins. Ste tried one and did it first go, because he’d already been doing tucked knee indie 5s on dryslope and had worked out if he dropped a shoulder it would increase the spin. And that’s exactly what Peter Line was doing. Ste was that far ahead.”

Nick Hamilton, who as former Whitelines Photo Editor and current Creative Director of Transworld Snowboarding knows a thing or two about snowboarding talent, agrees. “He was just light years ahead of the pack. He paved the way for everybody.”

At the heart of Ste’s ability was his legendary pop, something much commented upon by his peers at the time. “Well, Ste always had the strength to weight ratio of a climber or a cyclist” remembers Chris. “He was really light, really strong and he could just pop better than anyone else.”

Other theories did the rounds: for Pete Turvey, who did a season in a Chamonix caravan with Chris during the winter of 1993/94, Ste’s outlandishly large big toes helped explain why he got so much extra ollie power.

Wider recognition was beckoning. Chris remembers the summers of ’94 and ’95 as the time “when it all really began to come together. We’d made a decision to give snowboarding a proper go, and were getting really good on snow. Then during that summer the management at Rossendale changed, and they let us build kickers and a quarter pipe. Pretty soon Ste was doing these beautiful McTwists on dendix. Amazing really”. In time, other plastic milestones would follow, including the first 900 on dryslope.

“Other cultures came into snowboarding and wanted a piece, and as the two best riders at the time, Chris and I got most of the deals. It was a life-changing time”

Bigger contest wins followed, too – Ste remembers winning the first British Championships on snow in Avoriaz as a particular highlight – and the boys seemed to have no trouble transferring their plastic skills to the mountain at a time when this could be a real problem for Brit riders.

“Yeah, well I had my tricks down on dryslope so once I got used to the fact that the take-off changed every time on snow – which took about a month – I found it pretty easy. And you were less likely to hurt yourself. Well, so I thought at the time”.

Seasons in Chamonix and time spent “ragging around the Alps visiting different resorts” with Chris saw yet more stratospheric progression. Still, the duo put the same amount of energy and obsessiveness into their passion. “Back then we went riding every single day” says Ste. “Which helped. More practise.”

For many (Ste included) these mid-1990s years were the glory era, a time when snowboarding was the new boardsport on the block and was regarded as a genuinely rebellious sub-culture. Money soon began to pour in, and Steve and Chris saw the benefits. As Steve puts it, “…other cultures came into snowboarding and wanted a piece, and as the two best riders at the time, Chris and I got most of the deals. It was a life-changing time, really. We met a hell of a lot of people, and as with most things in life, it’s who you know that really changes things.”