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In recent years, I’ve watched with great interest the growing popularity of extreme sports.
Although I’m not a sports fan, I took particular interest in the early development of this
combination of human cannonball and America’s Funniest Home Video.
I suppose it was because these modern-day Roman gladiators had supplanted multisport events such
as triathlon in cocktail party talk. One day “X” stood for “cross,” as in cross-training, the next day it stood for “ex,” as in “extreme sport” (or maybe ex-brained athlete). Either way, my sport was derailed by an army of 16-year-old Evil Kneivel wannabes who had their own Olympics (the X-Games), their own network (ESPN 2), and their own language (“that 540 toe-side Ole was so fly!”). How could this be?
What did people find so fascinating about fearless, pubescent, techno-jocks with shocking hair and
shocking attitudes? Didn’t they know that these kids’ careers are over as soon as they reach the age of reason? I didn’t get it. Still, I was fascinated.
Defying gravity
There are a few common threads running through many of these psuedo-sports. The first is gravity.
It’s about falling: snowboarding down a snowy cliff, mountain biking down that same trail when the snow melts, jumping out of an airplane with a 2 x 4 strapped to your feet (sky surfing),
careening down some paved bit of suburbia on a glorified skateboard at speeds formerly reserved
for the drag strip. These are all gravity sports. (What would happen if they exported these
sports to the Moon?) In any case, the goal is to reach a finish line, usually ringed with hay
bales, before your competitors.
The other commonality is air, as in defying gravity. Lots of air. Big air, huge air, limitless
air. The goal with air is to put as much of it between you (including the vehicle which
propelled you) and the earth. This includes hurling bodies and boards from all types of ramps:
snowy moguls, plywood skateboard ramps, concrete BMX platforms, dirt motocross courses, and
plastic water-ski jumps.
What comes up...
Gravity and all the other laws of physics go unnoticed by the competitors, mostly because Physics
101 is not offered until senior year in high school. The faster you hit the ramp, the higher your
altitude, the louder the crowd’s applause, the greater the network’s ratings, the more your sponsors pay you, the more the chicks or dudes dig you, etc. It’s a wonderful cascade of
bennies.
Until you have to land. That’s when the rubber meets the road. It is much easier to place one’s vehicle and attached human mass into the air than it is to land safely and stylishly. Indeed, it is a battle of poetry and practicality versus despair and destruction. To the victor go the spoils. To the hospital go the vanquished. All the same, people stand in line to play this game show of gall.
Natural high?
The whole thing has a very addictive feel. I often wonder if the media is broadcasting subliminal
messages. Sometimes I feel as if I have been secretly hypnotized into wanting to get some
air. I walk down the street and do a little “daffy” (mule kick) off the curb. I drive my car just a little too fast over a speed bump and pull up on the steering wheel to try and lift the front end. And on my bike, everything is designed around wheelies, bunny hops, and my old-guy, pathetic version of “credit card air,” referring to height, not the ability to pay the hospital bill.
In any case, this extreme fascination will end someday because there is no limit to what people
will do to out-extreme each other. With other sports, limits are defined by rules, the
environment, and athletic talent. Extreme sports’ limits, on the other hand, are only in the mind of its athletes: If you can pull it off and walk away, it’s Game. That, my friends, is a vast horizon consisting of first-evers, all-timers, and a shortcut to wheelchair racing. It’s athletic debauchery. It’s sport anarchy. It’s so fly. And it scares me to
death.
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