Don’t get me wrong: I’m stoked I get to go to
X Games again this year. The X Games are sheer spectacle and a ton of fun, and X Games 13 promises plenty of action. I don’t think you’d find many FMX guys asking, “Are the X Games good for FMX?†Of course they are. Ditto, maybe, for BMX, although Jamie Bestwick and others have been known to voice complaints. And there’s really very little question that the X Games are also good for skateboarding: Of course they are. Still, the love-hate relationship between skateboarding and this marquee event is worth exploring.
Let’s set the vert guys aside for this discussion: The X Games have probably single-handedly kept vert skateboarding alive for well-nigh 13 years past what might have been its expiration date, and there are at least two or three dozen deserving guys who wouldn’t have the careers they do without it. Vert skateboarding is well-suited to the mainstream media treatment, easy to follow for armchair neophytes, and plenty cool enough to deserve an ESPN spotlight. It really does belong in the Olympics, for precisely these reasons. Vert is dead. Long live vert. Let’s also set aside the
Megaramp freaks for now: There are only a dozen guys in the world, plus Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins, who will even go near this thing, and they deserve whatever three-ring circus surrounds them. The Megaramp is moving indoors this year, and I’m sure the Staples Center fans and everyone watching at home will get a kick out of it: Somebody will do something spectacular, somebody will get hurt spectacularly, and the Megaramp is therefore pretty much guaranteed to serve up all the spectacle of its promise. Bob Burnquist has one in his backyard, pioneer Danny Way is out with injuries, and Bucky Lasek probably doesn’t want to blow his new knee out on it so… more power to you Bob: Show us something cool and we will raise our organic Sambazon Acai Smoothies in your honor.
Over on the street course, or the park course, or whatever they’re calling it this year, the question is quite a bit murkier. Are the X Games good for skateboarding? The short answer is… yes. The long answer is… probably not so much. Confused? Consider:
Chris Cole won the event last year. Cole is hands-down one of the greatest skaters of all time (
tre flip at Wallenberg, anyone?), and he was probably stoked on the prize money and the extra play he got from his sponsors for showing up and throwing down. But this is also true: Chris Cole does not give a toss about the X Games. His winning run could best be described as “tongue-in-cheek,†and yet his own mockery of himself and the event itself stood up for X Games gold.
The rest of his competitors broke ranks in last year’s contest to mess around jumping off a bank and over the fence onto the venue’s velodrome track, to the consternation of judges and security guards alike, marking perhaps the first time the X Games ever captured the true essence of street skateboarding: These are not the fierce, competing gladiators ESPN is used to showcasing. Skateboarders are goofs. They like to push each other, not compete against each other. They’d rather play around on something weird than on stuff specifically designed for them. Many of the best guys in the biz don’t go near these big events, and the super-technical tricks that drive judges and hardcore skaters wild don’t necessarily translate well for mainstream consumption.
The crazy speed, insane drops, 20-stair rails, and creative interpretation of urban landscapes that make street skating psycho and awesome are hard to replicate within the boundaries of a velodrome-ringed “street†course. In other words, ESPN’s cameramen and its television viewing audience would have a better time if they just followed Chris Cole and his cohorts around Los Angeles for a day and let them go nuts.
The Skatepark of Tampa runs better contests. The DC King of New York and King of LA amateur events were better contests. Even the éS
Game of S-K-A-T-E and
Red Bull Manny Mania events are arguably better contests, for what they are. At the X Games, real skateboarding, street skateboarding, the kind practiced by 80 or 90 percent of the skateboarding public, is reduced to mere circus sideshow. Still, it’s awfully fun watching the freaks, and where would the X Games, “action sports," or anything “extreme†be without them? Another very good question.
