GARRETT WAIT
Sports Editor
I love the hype of this week’s best sporting event. The people flocking to a town for one thing and one thing only. Reporters lining up to cover it. The athletes putting themselves on the national stage. The camaraderie, the pageantry, the constant coverage on ESPN. The Super Bowl? No way, the Winter X Games.
I am an extreme-sports fiend. I love the purity of it. I’m tired of the major professional sports leagues alienating their fan bases with ridiculous ticket prices, rampant steroid use, criminals on the court, excessive commercialization and never-ending lockouts. I like sports because of the competition, not because the athletes are celebrities.
The X Games just seem pure to me. I know there’s still tons of corporate sponsorship despite the fact that the Games are designed to look like a big middle finger to The Man and all his money and greed. They’re still just far enough from the mainstream that I can enjoy knowing that only a select few people saw what I saw last night on ESPN.
I love commentators who are on TV for two sporting events in a calendar year. Honestly, what does Sal Masekela do between the Summer and Winter X Games? I picture him cryogenically frozen in a tube with a tape of hot new slang words being played over and over again until ESPN needs him to come on camera and say something hip.
I love the fact that there’s a new hot story every year. This year it was whether slopestyle skier Tanner Hall could pull off the first four-peat in Winter X history. Of course, he fell short, getting the silver. But did Hall cry or ask for a revote or glare at the judges like other pro athletes would? No, as a matter of fact, he was the first one there to hug the guy who beat him.
These athletes compete so hard against each other, but they never lose sight of the whole point of the X Games ,which is to celebrate the youth of the world who needed some sort of channel to exercise their incredible gifts.
I have actually been to two Summer X Games, including the one this summer in Los Angeles. They were by far the greatest summer trips my family has ever taken. The tickets were free to the first one I went to in 1997 and the events I went to this year cost no more than $10 per day. For three days of quality sports entertainment, that’s not bad.
The Games have really been a cultural phenomenon. Think about it, without the X Games, would skate shoes and clothing be half as popular as they are today? The entire skateboard industry may have gone up in flames without the help of guys like Tony Hawk, Steve Caballero and Andy MacDonald.
The Winter Games are just as cool as their summer counterpart in my mind. I love the snowboarding, the skiing and the most-insane-thing-ever-devised (also known as freestyle motocross on snow). I can’t get enough. But I long for the glory days, when downhill biking was an event or when downhill snow-shovel racing threatened to take the lives of both athletes and fans.
I’m as giddy as a schoolgirl when I see Shaun White pop off the wall of the snowboard halfpipe, launching himself into orbit as dozens of pre-teens look on in amazement from just a few feet away.
Those kids will never forget the image of a short, red-haired 18-year-old flipping and spinning 20 feet above their heads. Some may even be inspired to do what he does. The next generation of extreme athlete is standing no more than 20 feet from the people who provided the motivation for them to become something even greater.
The X Games always provide a flair for the dramatic that is often missing in most of today’s professional sports. I suppose this could be because many of the judges have impaired short-term memories, but the gold medal always seems to go down to the final run. The last guy to go almost always gets on the podium, unless he falls or pelts a judge with a snowball or something like that.
Also, what event gives you as much unintentional comedy as the X Games? The interviews are so incredibly painful they’re actually entertaining. It’s like watching Bill and Ted run loose on the slopes with a microphone on the camera. There’s no way the commentators talk like that in real life. Most of the kids can barely understand what they’re saying.
Yes, the X Games have it all. There’s fierce competition, unwavering camaraderie, an international flavor, the guarantee of seeing something you’ve never seen before and a whole slew of inept “dudes” and “chicks” running around with microphones and cameras making up new slang.
So this week, as you’re all inundated with Super Bowl hype, remember what sports are all about. Find some highlights from the Winter X Games and just sit back and marvel at the incredible things these guys and girls do.
Meanwhile, I’m going to go on a search for Sal Masekela’s cryogenic tube. See you at Summer X.
02-03-2005
