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Graham 1996

BEST COPY The Edmonton Journal, Sunday, December 15, 1996 AVAILABLE Sports in the extreme It's the athletic phenomenon of the decade. It's rebellious, anarchic and self-destructive. And it's getting to be huge IAN HAYSOM Southam Newspapers Vancouver has its own language, complete with such highaction words as juice, rage, energy, radical and epic. It has its own fashion, from skin-tight rainbow bicycle suits to voluminous snowboarding coats. Most importantly, it has its own anarchic, independent, almost selfdestructive philosophy: get as close to the edge as you can; then go one step farther. It's called "extreme sports." It has become the sports phenomenon of the decade, the youthful alternative to such mainstream team sports as hockey and baseball. An increasing number of athletes are risking their necks in a variety of daredevil activities that all fall under the "extreme sports" umbrella. They include snowboarding over the edge of cliffs, windsurfing in near hurricanes, climbing g perilous mountains of ice, skateboarding over bruising obstacles, mountainbiking down treacherous slopes, inline skating down near-vertical inclines and acrobatic bungy jumping. "Extreme sports is a statement. It smacks of James Dean rebellion says against Paul the Graham, sporting status television quo," producer with The Sports Network. He is overseeing TSN's coverage of the Winter X-Games, which are to be held in Big Bear Lake, Calif. from Jan 30 to Feb. 2. Extreme sports are "loner sports, the polar opposite of team games, Graham says. "Extreme sports started as a low-money, almost urban alternative to expensive sports. A kid without too much money could jump on a bike or a skateboard and start doing tricks. Now it's evolved into a highly specialized phenomenon, with sophisticated equipment and increasingly intricate skill levels." The Winter X-Games, which will include snow mountain biking, ice climbing, modified snow-shovel racing and snowboarding, is a winter Olympics for Generation X. *It follows ESPN's Extreme Games, held in Rhode Island last summer, which featured acrobatic skateboarding down rails and pipes, bungy jumping, daredevil bike riding and sky surfing, with competitors jumping from aircraft with surfboards strapped to their feet. etractors called them the games for people who couldn't get a job. The U.S. sports network says it got its highest-ever teenage ratings. ESPN, TSN and MTV, the rockmusic station, are all beginning to carry extreme sports programming. And some advertisers, aiming for a teenage niche, are heavily backing the phenomenon. Gabrielle "Gabby" Reece, the model and volleyball star who hosts a half-hour show on ESPN called The Extremists, calls extreme sports "organized chaos." What differentiates extreme sports from mainstream sports, she adds, is that participants "die if they screw up." extreme sports is becoming increasingly mainstream, particularly in British Columbia and California. OVER popular. It's suddenly become possible.' Israelson says the growth of extreme sports is accompanied by the development of highly sophisticated equipment. "People can climb more difficult mountains the to or have greater the The bike equipment equipment everything. edge always thrill, risks." tougher is as allows says "People wanted allowing possible. trails them to Israelson, want get to. them because Now, to as is to People come close better the take outdoors and do something challenging without an urban safety net. I was on a panel the other. week, talking about the risk adventure sports. One commercial tour operator said his clients didn't want him to minimize the risk. They wanted him to optimize it. "The fact is, most people know what they're doing. I haven't seen the accident rate move up over the past 25 years. Most of our accidents are still mom and dad having problems on a trail." Extreme sports fanatics do, however, try to push themselves to the limit, and Israelson gets worried about snowboarders. "They're not content back with the ski hills, so they trek off looking for a cliff to jump off. Snowboarding's still very new. The codes, the safety levels, are still being developed." The extreme sports is spawning a whole new industry, from snowboard and sailboard manufacturing to adventure sports. One company in B.C.'s Okanagan is offering a "true Extreme Mountain Adventure." Participants are taken by helicopter into a remote mountain area where they have to hike with air rifles into "combat zones" and splatter the enemy with paint. nother Vancouver company is offering an "X-treme" sports vacation, including skydiving, rock climbing, whitewater rafting, sea kayaking, paragliding, bungy jumping and paintball fighting. Some, like TSN's Graham, wonder if extreme sports is a passing fad or will increasingly become mainstream, with half-pipe bicycle trick riding even skateboarding eventually becoming Olympic events. Beach volleyball and mountain biking have all reached the Olympics. Will barefoot waterskiing be far behind? Will a downhill snowboard event overtake downhill skiing prestige? pard "Right now, extreme sports doesn't get the ratings of the Blue Jays or NHL hockey, but you never know," says Graham. "These sports shout independence and romance. It's individualism. And it's new and fresh and young. "It's pretty huge now. Its potential is incredible.' Southam News This is the X-File, your guide to extreme sports: - Extreme sports: Also called alternative sports. Usually dangerous, usually sports most sane people wouldn't want to do. Snowboarding: Snowboarding will be featured in the next Winter Olympics in Japan (slalom and halfpipe). Extreme purists say on-hill snowboarding has become too mainstream and tame. Extreme snowboarders head for deep powder or try cliff-jumping, a perilous pastime that has already claimed a number of lives in North America. Half -pipes: The U-shaped ramps in a variety of extreme sports, including skateboarding, bike riding and snowboarding. Sailboarding: Extremists | head for 20-metre waves on Hawaii's Waikiki or Maui, doing front-flips and rolls. Speedsters head for the Gorge in Oregon or Squamish in B.C., where high winds mean breakneck speeds. Extreme skiing: Basically, you head down the steepest hill possible. An extreme ski event is held each year at Blackcomb's Sudan Couloir run in Whistler, B.C. Mountain biking: It's extreme when it's on the side of a steep mountain, such as B.C.'s Whistler or Blackcomb, where races are held from peak to valley. Street bikers do flips and turns on half- pipes. Street luge: Riders lie on lightweight aluminum luges with wheels - essentially elongated skateboards - and head down steep slopes. The sport has become popular in San Francisco, where street lugers race down city streets. - Skateboarding: Extreme skateboarders do flips on half-pipes, ride along rails, do somersaults and break lots of bones. - Bungy jumping: Participants do twists and forward and back rolls. Canadians are great at the sport, winning most organized international events. Go figure. Speed skiing: Like extreme skiing, but usually held at Les Arces in France, where skiers wear super-long skis, aerodynamic helmets and race at speeds of up to 200 km-h. Les Arces now also features speed mountain biking. Rock climbing: Extreme climbers find the toughest vertical face possible and push themselves to the limit. Indoor climbers test themselves on tough overhangs. Ice climbing: A quintessentially Canadian extreme sport, popular in the Rockies and B.C. Sky surfing: You jump out of a plane with either a snowboard or surfboard strapped to your feet and do an aerial ballet. Some extreme skysurfers land on the top of a ski run and then snowboard over the edge of a cliff. * Water-skiing: Extreme skiers don't use skis, but head over jumps barefoot. Their activities include somersaults and 360-degree turns, and usually end in a big splash. Modified snow-shovel racing: Started by ski lift attendants as a cool way of getting down hill. Modified boards have skis on the base and head down hills like bullets while participants sit on them and steer with the handle and their butts. - Vernacular: Pure extremists use appropriately hip lingo, including such words as sane, rush, charge, gnarly, pure juice, rage, energy, stoked, radical, and epic. If you're over 25 and use these words you will be looked upon as pitiful, pathetic and very, very old. The Associated Press Ice climbing: a quintessentially Canadian extreme sport Mountain Region, based in Banff, says ice-climbing, back-country snowboarding and extreme mountain biking are becoming hugely popular in the Rockies. "Last Sunday I went ice-climbing at a place called of Vapors. Two years ago it had never been climbed. There were two people there Sunday. It's suddenly become Canadian Press Snow boarding: now that it's made the Olympics it's almost too tame The X-File At Grouse Mountain, a ski hill overlooking Vancouver, the snowboarders are beginning to outnumber the skiers, a trend repeated at ski hills across Canada. John Thompson, a 15-year-old who has been snowboarding for three years, says few of his friends bother to ski any more. people, "Skiing for is the okay, fogeys," but it's he for says. older, gets pretty boring after a while. Snowboards are better for jumps, for doing tricks. Most hills have half-pipes and special areas now. Skiing's just boring." nowboarding, a sport that hardly existed a decade ago, is now looking for more mainstream recognition. It has pushed successfully for inclusion in the next Winter Olympics and is viewed as the next wave after freestyle skiing. Like surfing in the 1960s, it has its own language. "Fab" has been replaced by "sick," an expression used to describe something exceptionally good. "Hang Ten" is now "720 Air (a.k.a. seven)," a manoeuvre in which the snowboarder rotates 720 degrees - or complete revolutions - in the and lands riding forward. two, Meanwhile, tens of thousands of thrill-seeking windsurfers head every year to the mecca of the sport, the Gorge, two hours east of Portland, Ore, on the Columbia River. Bob Patterson, a 22-year-old Seattle waiter, says he spends every spare moment on the Columbia, where high prevailing winds can push boards along at speeds of more than 80 km-h. "Once you do windsurfing at this level, it's impossible to go back to lakes where you just bob along in the breeze," he says. "The Gorge is a rush. That's why we all try to break our necks here. Our motto is, 'There's no tomorrow.' While an increasing number of young people are defining themselves by their energy and dedicat: on to extreme sports, the trend is no confined to the under20 crowd. Simon Hall, a 35-year-old Vancouver computer programmer, snowboards, windsurfs and mountain bikes "because I still like the thrill." Every Sunday morning, he and a group of friends ride down mountains at breakneck speeds on bikes that cost up to $2,000. "What was wild a decade ago is now mainstream today," says Hall, who rides : a Kona bike with frontsuspensions and Panrace "Smoke" tires, the Ferrari of the sport. "We ride down trails it's impossible to walk down. Sure, we get injured now and then, but not as much now. Taking risks is a big part of the appeal. You just want to test yourself. To see how far and how fast you can go." Clair Israelson, public safety specialist for Parks Canada for the

Article from 15 Dec 1996Edmonton Journal(Edmonton, Alberta, Canada)

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