MegaRamp: The Future of Skateboarding

What’s nine stories high, longer than a football field, and could take Mothra in a fight? Watching the footage of Danny Way’s launches over the Great Wall of China last summer, one thing impressed me even more than the main event stunts on the MegaRamp: for five consecutive runs, the guy took the stairs! On a bum ankle! No wonder he’s landing record-setting 79-foot long-jumps over the gap and bomb drops off the neck of the guitar at Hard Rock Hotel. He ought to add Stairmaster to his list of sponsors.

 

X Games promoters tried to level the playing field for the Big Air contest last summer by installing a MegaRamp elevator, figuring maybe Pierre-Luc Gagnon, Andy MacDonald, Bucky Lasek, Rob Lorifice, or Bob Burnquist would stand a chance if they didn’t have to huff it all the way up, but no dice: Way’s frontside 360 on Run 4 was unbeatable. Nonetheless, last summer proved that kite surfers, sky boarders, and big mountain snowboarders no longer hold exclusive rights to massive hang time with their boards. After dropping in on a massive roll-in tower and launching 50, 60, or 70-foot gaps, the real fun is in following that trajectory back up the other side, where the skaters are launching nearly 30 feet above the lip of 25 foot quarter-pipe. 

 

Only about a dozen freaks are currently in the business of skating these structures, but MegaRamp action is starting to become more than a circus sideshow attraction. This Spring, a MegaRamp contest at the Xtreme Universe festival near Mexico City drew over 75,000 spectators to witness some truly death-defying stunts; Mr. Stairmaster hucked a backflip rocket air over the 60-foot gap; Burnquist threw a frontflip, making sure to show off the “Flip” logo on his board for the inverted photo op, and later dropped in on the beast switch for a backside 180. You got that, right? Switch. Lorifice, all of 18 years old, stamped out a frontside 360 kickflip indie, and BMXer Chad Kagy got in on the action with a backflip tail whip.

 

While Danny Way and some of his amigos are collecting Guinness World Records, X Games medals, and gnarly knee surgery videos, there is plenty of debate in the skateboarding world regarding the true merits of these impressive stunts and their value in progressing the cause of skateboarding. Will super-sizing and mega-sizing action sports for public consumption end as badly as super-sizing anything usually does? For his part, Danny Way himself seems to have a pretty healthy attitude about his feats, stressing that he’s only out to push himself, create opportunities for his peers to expand the limits of possibility on a skateboard, and keep the sport front and center in the public eye in ways both positive and mind-blowing. Still, it’s one thing to jump Springfield Gorge, and another thing altogether to jump the shark. In the immortal words of Richie Cunningham, “One little slip and… chomp! Chomp! Chomp!”