Putting Their Lives On The Line For Your Viewing Pleasure

Aug 06 2006 / Los Angeles, CA

Skateboarding has moved into the realm of sports such as FMX & Snowboarding with the level of risk-to-your-life that you need to calculate while doing it. The roll ins on the mega-ramp at this year's X Games are 60 & 80 feet high. The gaps are 50 and 70 feet long, and the quarterpipe is 27 feet high.  All of those numbers equal ramps that are high enough to kill you if you mess up on them.

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When you add to this the fact that people are doing backflips over these gaps, that makes the risks slightly higher.  Even after perfect landings, the skaters are still going so fast that anything could happen.  Speed wobbles are never fun, and that's when the landings are...landed.

When things go wrong in the air they have to take it to their knees (and this is the best case scenario).  Can you imagine being thrown over a 50 foot gap and landing square on your knees & ankles?

These guys seem to have control over themselves most of the time, and avoid truly horrible situations with grace & courage, but nonetheless the possibilities are frightening.  Danny Way did take a page out of the risk-taking-sports' books when he started with all of this mega-ramp business, but with that come the penalties of not performing up to the par that the ramp has set.  Everyone's been handling themselves fine in practice thus far at this year's X Games, but as finals near, the stakes rise higher and so do the risks.  So they'll all go out there and try their hardest to stay in control and on the right track, but on a structure this big, the ramp itself has as much say in what happens as any of the skaters.