Big Air Means Big Spills at X Games
Wed Aug 4, 6:35 PM ET
By RYAN PEARSON, Associated Press Writer
LOS ANGELES - One by one, the world's top daredevil skateboarders fling themselves from a nine-story tower down a ski jump-style ramp. They soar across a heart-stopping, 50-foot gap to the wooden slope below.
Oops.
Brightly colored, duct-taped skate shoes smash against the ramp as wobbly boards spin away out of control. Slightly dazed skaters cry out in agony and frustration, slide for several seconds on padded knees and elbows, then pick themselves up to do it again.
Big air equals big spills for even the best pro skaters on the looming new mega ramp at Staples Center parking lot.
Bob Burnquist crashed several times before letting out an exuberant "Whoop!" when he finally leaped the monster gap and landed atop his board during a recent practice run.
"You're always scared," he said, eyeing the ramp as another fallen skater skidded across the wood. "Everyone's intimidated. No one's kidding anyone."
Over time, skateboarders searching their cities for new obstacles to jump, grind and ollie have discovered curbs and stair rails, empty backyard swimming pools and massive industrial pipes. All the surfaces were eventually incorporated into competition.
The big air ramp at the X Games, which open Thursday in and around Los Angeles, takes the sport to a bruising and spectacular next level. It is one of two new events at this year's action sports competition.
"We just needed to expand the boundaries of the environments we skate in," said skater Danny Way, who created the ramp. "It's knocking down the walls and the fences and saying all right, now we can go ballistic with it."
Way set skateboard world records for longest (75 feet) and highest (23 1/2 feet) jumps on a single run in June 2003, at a mega ramp in the Southern California desert. He plans to break his distance record in Los Angeles on Sunday.
Made of lumber and covered in a smooth Masonite-like surface called Skatelite, the 335-foot-long mega ramp includes three major stages.
Crouched skaters initially roll down a 45-foot nearly vertical wall. They reach speeds up to 40 mph and fly across a 50-foot gap. The ramps are like those in snowboarding and ski jumping, except there's no snow to cushion the frequent, awkward falls.
If they land the jump, skaters head right up a 27-foot quarter pipe to perform tricks like the Christ Air or McTwist.
To catch even bigger air, contestants can climb to a 60-foot platform for takeoff, then try to clear a 70-foot gap.
Only about a dozen of the world's best skaters have ever tried such a ramp. There is only one other, built last year into a hillside at the Point X Camp for action sports near Temecula. A handful of the athletes will compete at the big air finals Sunday, including Burnquist, Way and Andy Macdonald.
John Tyson, whose company built both the Point X ramp and the new Staples ramp, said he was terrified of skating either one.
"After building it and looking over the edge, there's nothing in my blood that'd make me want to do it," said Tyson.
Way admits his body takes "a lot of abuse" from the ramp. Burnquist switched gloves after just three days of skating at Point X because of wear from friction after falling.
He rummaged through hockey and baseball sections of sporting goods stores to find the right safety equipment, and eventually gave up, constructing his own protective body suit for the X Games. A fall on the hot surface thinned a section of the suit on his lower back after several practice runs Friday.
"You're sliding so far that if you touch the Masonite it's going to burn," he said. "It'll give you pretty deep burns deep down."
The X Games have hosted and then tossed out several events, ranging from barefoot jumping to speed climbing. Event general manager Chris Stiepock predicts skateboard big air will stick around.
Despite the limited number of qualified competitors this year, he expects an "intense battle" for next year's slots as teens cross over between skateboarding and snowboarding, where such massive leaps are already common.
"This is the next thing," he said, standing beneath the ramp as one falling body after another slammed into the wood above.
NOTES
Thursday night's skateboard vert finals features an all-Southern California lineup, including 17-year-old skateboarder-snowboarder Shaun White, Macdonald, Burnquist, Bucky Lasek and Pierre-Luc Gagnon. Moto X best trick finals follow, with Nate Adams, Brian Deegan, Kenny Bartram and Niki Danielson.
