EXTREME SPORTS PIONEER

                                                       THE EVOLUTION

 

 

    The oldest extreme sport in the world has to be rodeo.  While all the children of the village were engaged in stick and hoop sports, Ug and Erg wandered off and came across some sort of critter and dared the other to see if he could ride it.  Eventually, the entire village found out what they were up to and told them they were CRAZY DAREDEVILS with A DEATH WISH.  Still they persisted and eventually were able to stay on board.  It didn’t take long before Ug’s sister Huh thought she could manage to stay on the critter.  Ug and Erg looked at each other and said “what the heck” and away she went.  Word of these events traveled beyond the village and the challenges arose.  Things like “ I bet you can’t ride that pterodactyl”.  “Our Brontosaurus is wilder than yours”.  The birth of EXTREME SPORTS was here.  And so it went for several millennia.

 

  

    Utilization of the horse had to be the first high speed form of travel.  It sure beat walking or riding a burro.  The contests were a little different as you went around the globe but the idea was the same.  What type of stunts can you pull off while galloping at breakneck speeds and still stay somewhat in control without falling to the ground.  This was the case for thousands of years and everyone seemed happy. 

 

 

    Enter Hollywood and the western.  They still wanted the tricks and out of control look but now they wanted you to hit the ground and not get hurt.  It was much the same in the Wild West shows but the movies took it to another level.  The stuntman was born.  At first it doesn’t sound much like a sport but upon further examination you’ll find these hearty pioneers to be some of the fittest athletes around. You have to be in pretty good shape to fall to the ground and eventually walk away. They don’t keep score and their games are known as work. 

 

 

 With all the advances in technology the stunts keep getting bigger and have filtered into all types of movies and shows.  Cars and trucks fly unbelievable distances through the air Dukes of Hazard style.  Motorcycles are jumping barbed wire fences trying to escape the Germans in another movie.  Multiple story freefalls are common in today’s movies.  In the early years the actors did their own stunts and got little recognition.  The stunt double never got screen credits until recently and today it has grown into it’s own entity.  The VERY EXTREME STUNTMANS ASSOCIATION with a full list of credits at the end of the movies.  It is about time.

 

 

   Snow skiing at it’s inception had to be considered pretty extreme.  Cross-country skiing was a solution to travel in the snow but downhill had infinite possibilities.  There were rises in the terrain that when hit at speed would lift you airborne. And there you go the first aerials.  The skies went from wood to fiberglass and composites.  The bindings advanced from cables to the ultra trick mechanisms of today.  And the boots went from a leather hiking boot look to the high tech warm and dry boots of today.  Monster moguls and huge ramps launch skiers into the air.  The super steep slopes of the speed skiers allow them to reach speeds over 130 MPH.  Skiing is now VERY EXTREME!!!

 

 

   Ice-skating also started as a mode of transportation.  It probably didn’t take long for the racing aspect to develop.   Centuries ago, who would have foreseen the amazing feats of athleticism in today’s ice arenas?  Triple axels, flips and a host of other skills deemed impossible just a few decades ago are AMAZINGLY EXTREME!!

 

 

 

   Roller skates came out of the ice skating concept and people would go to the rinks and spend hours skating on the wood floors.  Along came the steel wheeled version that would clamp onto the sole of your shoes and off you could go over the pavement and cement.  Who in their right mind could foresee what was about to happen in those crazy 60’s.

 

 

    I’m not sure if it all started in CA and spread across the country or if it could’ve been universal consciousness at work because kids all across America cut their perfectly good skates in two and screwed them to a 2x4 or a piece of shaped plywood and later a laminated wood platform.  The skateboard was born.  We took to the streets and the swimming pools in the USA and eventually around the globe.  The half pipes of today blow the swimming pools away.  Also morphing out of the roller skate was the in line skate.  The first one’s I remember seeing were a large wheeled grass skates in the 1970’s.    The awesome skill of the world’s skateboarders and in line skaters today were never dreamed possible at the inception.  Given the quality of the equipment available back then, we are lucky to be alive to witness the skills of the EXTREME EVENTS today.

 

 

    Surfing started on long, heavy shaped wooden planks developing into the lighter but still long fiberglass boards.  It had to have been considered extreme.  A boat with no sides and you want to stand up on it and do what????  As balance improved the boards changed shape and now they’re surfing 50 foot waves.  VERY EXTREME

 

 

    I’m not sure where the idea came from initially but several of us would take the skags off of the surfboards and take to the snow.  My first experience with this came in the late 60’s up at Frazier Park, CA.  To us it didn’t seem any crazier than getting on a toboggan and heading down a slope or riding the out of control metal saucers we all remember.  The surfboards were just as out of control but tons of fun. Who would have guessed that snowboards would evolve out of a day on the slopes by a bunch of crazy surfers.  And what they can do on them today AWESOME to the EXTREME.

 

 

    We also took surfboards to lake Havasu and lake Mead on the Colorado River and towed them behind the ski boats.  If you had a large boat and cruised at 10 or 15 mph you could ride the wake without the rope but when you wanted speed you could ride the surfboard much like a water ski and jump the wake.  Just one problem we had no straps to hold our feet onto the board and you ended up in the water quite often.  It was 110 degrees or so and you didn’t mind the dunking. Someone eventually solved that problem and the wakeboard was born.  Back in the day who could have dreamed of getting 10 FEET OF AIR AND FLYING THE DISTANCES OF TODAY WITH EXTREME AERIALS.

 

 

    And speaking of water skiis, I have several friends whose parents remember skiing on wooden slats with shoes attached.  Either that’s how it all started or they just did what they could afford.  Either way I’m sure it was going on across the country.  From wood to fiberglass to composites the evolution of the water ski and their bindings have allowed these EXTREME athletes to go bigger and faster and definitely higher than ever before.

    The bicycle is a mode of transportation for millions of people around the globe today.  Up until the 1960’s they all were very similar.  They had large wheels and you bent over to grab the handlebars.  Then came the Schwinn “stingray”.  It had a banana seat, smaller wheels and upswept handlebars.  These bikes were more agile and it didn’t take us long to start jumping them.  Eventually the wheels would bend and we would break spokes.  We got stronger rims and heavier guage spokes.  That should do it we thought.  Now we bent the forks.  Straight-legged forks came along and we were set.  We headed into the hills above Chatsworth CA and raced down the horse trails all over the place.  I have friends who built rear suspended BMX bikes out of stingray’s in the early 1970’s The first BMX track I remember was in Chatsworth Park south above the skeet range.  In it’s day it was considered very EXTREME.

 

 

    When we wanted more speed we would take our ten-speed Schwinn “continental’s and flip the handlebars upside down and take to the hills.  The first time I taco’ed a rim was at Chatsworth Park South going downhill on the grass at speed then pitching the bike sideways into a slide.  The wheels folded under and I launched.  We got Gary Bang to make us heavier spokes and bought beefier AJAY rims.  In 1984 we built a twin triangle fully suspended mountain bike.  I researched it and found out it had already been done back in the late 1800’s. It was a wooden bike with leaf springs for the suspension.  I’ll bet they never envisioned us bonzaiing down a ski run or jumping them the way we do today let alone the heel clickers and back flips.  These skilled athletes of today are going EXTREME to the max.

 

 

    I couldn’t afford a taco 44 or a taco 22 for that matter so I built one in 1964 or 65.  I took some old galvanized pipe and welded the twin loop frame. Then I found some wheels and a neighbor let me have the Briggs off of an old lawnmower.  I think I pushed it more than I rode it but it was still a lot of fun.  On a good day it would get me up and over Baden Hill to my friends horse ranch.  Scott had go-carts and motorcycles.  We would go all over the place.  I was hooked.  I had been raised riding horses.  I did a little rodeoing in Colorado and some Gymkhana but there was something drawing me to motorcycling as well.  The dirt bikes of the day were Triumphs, BSA’s and Honda four strokes.  They all started off as street bikes.  Then the Europeans came over in 1967 and really showed us how much fun a motocross bike could be. They were riding bikes with all new unfamiliar names.  CZ’s, Husky’s, Bultaco’s, Ossa’s , Rickman, Sachs and Montesa just to name a few.  The riders’ names seemed just as strange.   Torsten Hallman, Joel Robert, Roger Decoster, Harry Everts, John Banks, Bengt Aberg were just a few of my new found heroes.  The Americans countered with Preston Petty, Sonny Nutter, John Rice, Gene Cannady, John DeSoto, Brad Lackey, John Moroney and a host of others.  From the first times I watched this (new to America) sport at Westlake and Hopetown I was hooked.  Jumping, wheelying and flying motorcycles over natural terrain and man-maid obstacles is VERY EXTREME.  I had to become part of this movement

 

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    The dirt bikes had to be dealt with much in the same way as the BMX bikes.  They needed better rims heavier spokes and some welding to get them to hold up to the punishment of the Motocross tracks.  Then the motors needed improvement as well as the exhaust systems.  The early expansion chambers had no silencers and my ears would ring after a Grand Prix.  You had to be a mechanic back then just to be able to ride much at all.  People new to the sport today have no idea how nice the new machines are.  They are pretty much bulletproof by comparison. In the beginning the suspension was a short 2 to 3 inches of travel.   During the 1960’s 4 to 6 inches seemed to be the ultimate ride.  Oils got better and technology advanced so that by the late 70’s we got 9 inches of travel and then finally 12 inches on all the bikes by 1980.  As the suspension got better the jumps got bigger.  It’s pretty insane to see what we’re doing on the motocross tracks today compared to Hopetown in 1967.  And then there’s freestyle   VERY VERY EXTREME

 

 

    Almost all of the motorized sports have advanced to the EXTREME level.  The drag race between model A’s have morphed into 300 plus MPH events.  Open wheeled racers go well over 200 MPH .  At the salt flats in Bonneville they broke the sound barrier.  Natural gas cars are exceeding 323 MPH.  Snowmobiles go over the century mark and attack motocross courses in the snow.  Jet skies are very high performance.  All forms of motorcycle racing are extreme and went through the same transformations as the motocross equipment.  By now you get the idea.  All of these sports developed out of necessity or just for fun. From Kite-surfing, hang-gliding and paragliding to some of the fastest aircraft in the world performing unbelievable technical skills we are still evolving and getting MORE EXTREME.

 

 

 

    I still race today.  Constantly, I am being told by people (who don’t know any better) THAT I MUST HAVE A DEATHWISH AND AM SOME KIND OF A DAREDEVIL.  We spend thousands of hours honing our skills.  Our sports are not the game of chance that so many believe them to be.  It has been a long uphill battle and it feels good to see that a lot of the sports I was participating in at their inception have gained credibility and are now put on the same plane as the Olympic games just as they deserve.  So to all of you young pioneering athletes with adventure in your heart, keep looking for the next sport, the next trick, the next fun thing to do.  Who knows where it will go.  The possibilities are endless.   GO BIG, GO EXTREME, BE A PIONEER!!!!!!!