GOING TO EXTREMES : Keeping an Eye Open : In TV’s Attempt to Humanize Participants in Obscure Sports, 112 Cameras Will Blanket the Event

The inaugural Extreme Games is a rambunctious offspring of necessity, conceived by ESPN2 programming director Ron Semiao as a way to fill the yawning daytime cable hours in the week school lets out.

From the classic thinking-man’s position--slouched on his couch--Semiao came up with the concept:

Bringing a hodgepodge of high-risk, non-traditional and visually exciting hybrids of popular recreational activities to a thrill-infatuated target audience, a generation not-so-subtly marked by the huge X on ESPN’s Extreme Games logo.

Semiao took the idea to a meeting. Two years later, it’s a go.

“Many of these sports were starting to emerge not only in participation but in competitive formats,” Semiao said. “It’s gone from people doing them to people competing in them.

“I saw a need for something bigger. Rather than programming them as individual shows, we could bring them all in under one umbrella.”

How the games play remains to be viewed, but this much is certain: ESPN’s search for the odd, the bizarre and the incredibly cool is giving several 90s-style pursuits a shining moment before the camera.

And how those cameras will roll.

From a broadcast center in Fort Adams State Park in Newport, R.I., ESPN will dispatch 112 cameras, including 31 specialty or point-of-view cameras.

The points from which they’ll view include the helmets of street lugers, in-line skaters, skateboarders, sky surfers and mountain bikers. Other competitors will wear lipstick-sized cameras on their fingers. Cameras, both conventional and robotic, also will be placed above bungee jumpers, on water- ski ramps and on bike frames.

“It’s like our whole company has Extreme Games fever,” Semiao said. “It’s marshaled all the departments at ESPN. And from a production standpoint, we are using all of our best people.

“One of our goals is to humanize the athletes.”

The 350 competitors, ranging in age from 14-year-old in-line skater Matt Mantz to 52-year-old kite skier William Roeseler, will participate in 27 events in nine categories.

The Extreme Games will provide exposure with a capital E. It’s almost too much, too quickly. It’s hard to imagine a sky surfer or street luge racer suffering from overstimulation, and no one is exactly complaining, but obscurity did supply a nice comfort zone that has been invaded.

“I’ve been trying to get this sport some visibility for 10 years and all of a sudden everything is happening at once,” said Bob Pereyra, a Northridge resident who pioneered street luge racing.

Exposure often translates into cash, but the $370,000 in prize money is paltry--averaging out to little more than $1,000 per athlete. On the other hand, all expenses are paid by the network.

“After paying for everything for quite a long time, having ESPN pay for air fare, room and board is a nice surprise,” said Louise Lovelace, a member of the West Hills-based Team Endeavour that will compete in the Eco-challenge portion of the Extreme Games.

Purse for the Extreme Games Eco-challenge is $30,000, but that is not Team Endeavour’s motivation.

“I had no idea there was a purse,” Lovelace said. “I can’t imagine anyone doing any of these sports purely for money.”

Someday soon, that may be the case. If the Extreme Games earn solid ratings, ESPN plans to hold a winter equivalent. As popularity increases, so will the purses.

“We consider this one an investment,” Semiao said. “The prize purse is significant relative to existing prize purses in these sports. We concentrated on getting the best athletes in these sports, and to do that the prize money has to be an incentive.”