Extreme Travesty

[badmigraine 0]

Isn't this "X-treme" thing just about 20 notches past played-out at this point?

 

Is anyone else as bored and cynical as I am about yet another Mountain Dew - Chevy Truck - PlayStation 2 - ESPN corporate marketing fair that dupes ten or twenty more amazing riders into blowing out their knees, and tells the latest generation of impressionable kids that the "Dude Bro Brah" big air huck-and-spin and rail-riding scene is the ultimae shizz-nit to which they can aspire?

 

I watched a lot of the X Games live net feed and when you see that much of it all at once the whole thing appears as a caricature of itself.

 

You can see the balding, wide-hipped yuppie corporate marketing guys pulling the strings from behind the scenes and even worse, see what they actually believe kids want to watch or think is "cool".

 

You see several young athletes in each event take bad falls and get sledded off with blown knees and/or concussions. Uh...none of this ever makes the news or the final ESPN version.

 

The commentary is dopey and done over 3-4 times with this fake "Dude, that was Sick!" tone, to be imitated by legions of jr. high schoolers across the US.

 

And the events themselves... I mean come on. How many of us are ever going to do a backflip on a motorcycle over a 50-foot gap? How many people actually launch and land 900s over icy big-air jumps? Only very good skiers can qualify for the X Games. So isn't it a bit odd that about 10% of them in the slopestyle prelims would have to be carried off with blown ACLs? These are not sprained ankles, folks.

 

And what is the big deal about rail-riding? Am I the only one who things snowboards on rails looks stupid? Great on a skateboard, ridiculous on a snowboard. It's 100% "LOOK AT ME!" stuff. Don't you think those Chinese Circus Acrobats would be better at that stuff than a bunch of white middle-class suburban teens with $1500 worth of Forum equipment and do-rags blasting gangster rap on battery-powered boom boxes?

 

I'm not getting on a soapbox here or advocating some sort of reform. This is the sports/leisure industry and it feeds off dreams and amazing achievements. And there are benefits flowing down out of this dreamspace to the common rider/skier in terms of money thrown at development of equipment and resort terrain. That's nice.

 

I'm just sitting here thinking how stupid the whole Xtreme phenomenon has become. Isn't it time for a new and better dream? Shaun Palmer's bozo haircut, in-pipe drinking and screw you/screw the Establishment attitude was really something...back in the 80's. He's still an original, but the margin has become the mainstream and having to conform to this schtick in this day and age, having it shoved in our faces by giant corporate image marketing campaigns is a joke and a travesty.

 

You know the freestyle ski jumping event in the Olympics? Where some ponce in a spandex bib skis up a big ramp, then throws a triple axel acrobatic twist that he learned when he was a gymnast in college and practiced all summer long while wearing elastic harnesses and landing in a pool?

 

You know how stupid and far away from real skiing that is?

 

Well I think the X Games are getting just as absurd as that.

 

Time for a new dream.

[barok 0]

I agree with most of what you are saying.

 

As for a high number of injuries, I'd be interested to see the stats, but to say for sure, the X-Games is the Premier Event, so the athletes are definately going to be in hit it or quit it mode. so they will try for the biggest stuff they might be able to pull.

 

COULD also be problems with the course. Colorado is not getting very much snow this year, so the base is probably mostly-man-made and concrete flavored ice.

 

I also gotta say that I love rails - I think that for the most part, if it can be done on a skateboard, it shouldn't be hyped in videos and magazines, but some of these guys are doing rail sets that boggle the mind. Huuuuge sets. and I love the way a boardslide on an S-rail looks. And I love riding the rails and boxes. It is just so different than anything else.

 

But as far as trying to push it in the direction that you are claiming, I agree that it is crap. Riding and skiing is such an individual thing, marketing this or that attitude goes against the point of what we are doing.

 

And finally, these kinds of contests will always be around, but do you ever notice how quickly they change ? People lose interest in this freestyle or that freestyle thing. I think more and more, skiing and boarding is moving in the direction of freeriding - powder, backcountry, etc. it's just alot more fun, and despite the not-so-obvious risks of avalanches, back-country terrain, I think it is much safer overall.

[Ocean11 0]

As an aside to the main point, I get tired of seeing pictures of snowboarders flying. You'd think from the advertising that a snowboard was some sort of mini hangliding wing. Visit a snowboard manufacturer's website, or pick up a catalog, and sure as hell, there'll be some flyboy way up over the trees. "Uh, this is ground control. Come down and ride some snow."

 

There doesn't seem to be any interest in presenting stuff that most people might be able to aspire to. Nor is any responsibility taken for safety. Where are the "Don't try this at home" caveats that you might expect? "Going big" without a helmet, off enormous back country kickers is not without its risks.

[snowboard_freak 0]

 Quote:

Originally posted by badmigraine:

And what is the big deal about rail-riding? Am I the only one who things snowboards on rails looks stupid? Great on a skateboard, ridiculous on a snowboard. It's 100% "LOOK AT ME!" stuff.

Well i reckon thats complete bullsh!t myself. In the very few rails i have riden i have really enjoyed it. That is why i snowboard - because i enjoy it. I don't do it so that people can "LOOK AT ME!". I don't care if people look at me, i'd prefer they didn't actually.

I do what makes me happy. That can change on any given day. Sometimes i like to ride pow all day, sometimes i like to try doing some jumps, and yes even sometimes i enjoy doing the odd rail.

[mikazooki 0]

ill put a vote in for rails too.

i loved doing rails on a skateboard, and i liked playing in the pipe but that never got further than rock-to-fakie and 50-50 stall. air was out of the question. these things r totally fun and achievable on a snowboard.

 

as for the extremage factor, i always stop for a minute or two to check whatever vid is playing as i pass, but the fun factor comes from doing what u wanna do. i have no aspirations beyond 360 (180would make me happy now), any frsh powder is good powder for me, and if i ever even hit a big kicker ill be stoked. the pros know the game and the kids quickly work out the rules. i dont think anyone will tell u its not fun.

 

having said that marketers r of dubious nature. riders who were helmets (bar shaun white) cant get sponsors and that SUCKS.

[dane 0]

that was a lot to swallow badmigraine... i just wrote up a reply, but when i read it over i realized i had conflicted myself about 10 times. this is too hard to tackle at work.

 

anyway, i will just say that i didn't realize that many injuries were hidden. obviously there will be injuries -- these people are pushing themselves hard. but it there are that many... that said, i find the x-games inspirational. i get a huge rush out of learning new tricks, which is a lot more than conventional skiing has to offer (excluding powdery steeps and powdery trees). i've been skiing for so long that normal skiing isn't really fun for more than a few runs, and the steeps/trees aren't always accessible (especially back home, where they get skiied out in moments). so i watch the x-games for inspiration -- it kind of takes me there (to the park, and i picture myself smoothing out my existing tricks, or learning new ones). i don't really absorb the big business part of it, but yeah, you can see the companies behind the scenese... but, it's not like that will ever change. they have found a good way to make money.

 

for my part, i'm going to keep pushing my limit, and doign what i'm doing. rails, big air etc etc... the more i do it, the more i appreciate that i can hurt myself badly if i'm not careful, so i haven't been hucking like an idiot lately. guess that means i'll never be in the x-games!

[badmigraine 0]

Heh, just trying on an Xtreme opinion for size to generate some discussion and more posts.

 

I don't mind an onslope rail here and there (on a rental board!). I do think riding flatland staircase rails where there is no snow (they bring in a couple buckets of it for the takeoff and landing) looks, well, stupid.

 

After reading Ocean's post I had a look at this month's Snowboarder mag. Sheesh! He's right. Almost every snowboarder is flying...not a little off the ground, but soaring way overhead against a backdrop of sky and clouds. I wonder why nobody has yet sued the manufacturers for misrepresenting that boards come equipped with antigravity drives.

 

Dane, the things the athletes do at the X Games inspire me, too. I'll still watch it, for sure. I mean, I just watched over 20 hours of it on Internet live feed. Then I went into the pipe at my local resort and rode till my knees ached.

 

My personal style of snowboarding is not so much park/pipe... I am 39, have had one knee surgery and may need another, so I'll pass on the Cab 9's to icy runout.

 

In fact, I get more inspiration from FIS World Cup ski racing and the big-mountain/AT stylers than I do from pro snowboarders. Can you believe Hermann Maier came back to win a gold in his first race back after almost losing his leg in a motorcycle accident?

 

I wish there were more fuss made about events for the other types of snowboarders, too (racers, big-mountain freestylers, etc.) And more fun TV stuff about backcountry, cat skiing/heliskiing destinations, riding big lines, pillow drops, high-speed carving, etc. In some sense these kinds of boarding occur as arcane or unworthy of interest in the mass media market melange, and there are no heroes or puffed-up imagemeisters breaking down these styles and approaches for the common rider.

 

On the other hand, maybe it is better that my favorite kinds of rising remain little-known. I saw the "Human Slalom" clip and it was not pretty.

 

Also, in my post, I did not mean to offend Mountain Dew, Chevy Trucks or ESPN. I am available for sponsorship. Mogs and I even figured out that adding Malibu Rum to Mountain Dew opens up a whole new universe of Xtreme territory.

 

[NoFakie 45]

Yo Migraine

 

Aren't rails what you bought all that body armour for?

 

Thirty-nine sounds a bit old for the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles....

[RayInJapan 0]

I like the X games...been watching it all this week.

 

Folks get injured, but its not like someone is forcing them to do this. Most (if not all) of them would do it for free - getting paid to do it is icing on the cake. Dont believe me? Check out the pipes and parks at your local resort - they're usually full of kids trying something and they're doing it cause its fun, not for the money.

 

The only thing that kids might not realize is that the folks on X-games, the Olympics etc are the BEST in the world, and they make it look so easy. Its up to the kids parents to tell their kids that if they aren't smart enough to figure it out for themselves.

 

But hey - if the fear getting hurt stopped folks from doing stuff, it wouldn't be a very interesting world...

 

NO FEAR!!!

[danz 0]

people get hurt in all professional/amatuer sports...some are higher risk than others...and all sports have big corporate sponsors trying to push the image to target groups...I don't think the x-games are different in that respect...

 

also, the high-publicity events really help to push the sport...remember when the x-games first came out??? I think it has definetly made some of those sports more popular, which ultimately helps it grow and become better...

 

danz