X Games Offer Rush of Risk and Profits

The organizers, advertisers, fans, psychologists and sociologists all have erudite descriptions of the phenomenon called the X Games, billed as the fastest-growing television sports event in this sports-obsessed nation.

To some learned observers, it’s a joyous bursting forth of the American spirit of individuality, of a genetic craving to take risks. To others, it’s a sign of the growing cultural clout of the Walt Disney Co. and an example of youthful defiance harnessed for mass entertainment and profit.

And then there is the explanation provided by X Games athlete Curtis Tischler, 26, of Tahoe City, Calif., who is prepared to ski down a 110-foot-tall, snow-packed ramp and perform a series of gravity-averse flips, spins and twists in the “big air” competition.

“X Games is where you take a select group of people who excel at something and they push themselves way beyond what a normal person would call crazy,” Tischler said. “X Games is adrenaline, it’s fun, it’s the next level.”

Tischler is among more than 450 athletes--most of them young, Anglo and suburban-bred--who will compete for medals, cash ($750,000 total) and acclaim in the fourth annual X Games, which start today in San Diego and run for 10 days as a kind of Olympics of alternative sports.

Sports traditionalists get a lot of mileage out of historian Jacques Barzun’s observation that to know America, you must know baseball. Here’s a modest corollary: to understand modern America, you might want to take a squint at the X Games.

Audience Is Large, Affluent

To truly understand the X Games, its lexicon and its lure, it helps to be male, between 12 and 34. That’s the target audience that ESPN, the Disney-owned sports television network that conceived, arranged and franchised the X Games, is aiming at. And indications are that the X Games are right on target.

“X Games are extreme, not bogus at all,” said Duane Hartson, 17, of San Diego, a skateboarder and X Games fan. “It’s not some Elvis thing [translation: a cultural event whose time has passed]. It’s huge.”

In the three years since the first Extreme Games were held in Rhode Island, the event has gathered a large, loyal, affluent television audience (14 million households in 1998, double the 1997 total). On a per-day basis, the 1997 X Games brought the network a larger audience than National Hockey League games or the current World Cup soccer championships.

X Games also have become a good buy for national advertisers, including Marine Corps recruiters. The national and international exposure afforded by ESPN’s coverage has contributed to the explosive growth of the industries associated with “extreme” sports.

Fran Richards, general manager of Skateboarding and Warp magazines, which are owned by Times Mirror Co., estimates that the skateboarding and snowboarding industries easily exceed $1 billion a year in worldwide sales, when clothing, equipment and other “hard goods” are counted. And that figure should increase--by one estimate the number of U.S. skateboarders jumped 22% last year to 8.2 million.

“The X Games legitimized our sports like nothing else had,” Richards said.

It is not unusual for an X Game athlete to pick up $20,000 to $25,000 in endorsements from a variety of companies, with stars making much more. Along the way, X Games also have outlasted the purists who initially derided the affair as nothing but “trash sport.”

“We had to overcome the thought that we were some kind of animal act or circus,” said cigar-chomping Jack Wienert, the X Games’ executive producer.

This year’s summer games (there is also a winter equivalent) will feature 28 events in nine sports that until recently got scant coverage on the sports pages or TV: in-line skating, bicycle stunts, skateboarding, skysurfing, snowboarding, sportclimbing, street luge, barefoot water skiing and wakeboarding.

No less a sports and culture watcher than writer George Plimpton, while noting that X Games are not his kind of entertainment, thinks that the games have captured something of the derring-do of youth.

There is even a strain of academic thought that the X Games and the sports it showcases are the distillation of pure Americana.

Cult Sports Go Mainstream

“I’m one of those who believes that the extreme sports, the adventure sports, the thrill-seeking sports are more in tune with what America is all about than the traditional three Bs [of] basketball, baseball and bowling,” said Frank Farley, a psychologist at Temple University and past president of the American Psychological Assn.

The new sports, Farley said, are more individualistic, riskier and allow for greater creativity than the highly structured and repetitive traditional sports. “All great human activity is based on risk taking,” he said.

The individual sports existed before the X Games, and, indeed, there are numerous competitions, some quite lucrative, for each sport. But X Games gathered the sports together and presented them with state-of-the-art television techniques (for which the event has gathered four Emmys).

“X Games have taken cult-status sports and made them into nationally recognized sports,” said sports agent Bob Evans, who represents several X Games athletes. “It’s almost ludicrous to even consider these alternative sports anymore.”

ESPN hires sport-specific consultants to run the individual contests, pick the competitors and establish the courses, but the games are held where and when the network wants. Athletes are expected to be available for post-competition, heat-of-the-moment interviews.

In a recent edition of Daily Bread, a hard-edged, heavy-attitude magazine for in-line skaters, X Game skater Shawn Robertson expressed annoyance at being asked last year to wear a microphone during competition and submit to interviews afterward. He left the games in a huff--although he still rates X Games as “pretty whack” (a compliment) and plans to return this year.

Compromises Are Expected

Tony Hawk of Carlsbad, a skateboarding superstar and, at age 30, the elder statesman of the sport, counsels Robertson and others that certain compromises have to be expected during the X Games. But the advantages to individual competitors, he said, are enormous in terms of gaining sponsors, endorsements and other business opportunities.

Hawk will soon be photographed for a “milk-mustache” advertisement for the milk industry, which will pay him handsomely. “I wouldn’t have had that opportunity without the X Games,” he said.

There have been accommodations on both sides. Organizers insist that athletes not ride their bikes, skateboards and skates in the venue, which this year is at Mariners Point on Mission Bay. About 220,000 spectators attended last year’s event; more are expected to attend this year.

The games are dressed in the style of the Olympics, with medals bestowed and athletes identified by country. Most of the athletes are American, but there are a handful of Russians, Europeans, Japanese and South Americans. Most competitors are male, but the number of women is increasing.

“Girls have to be daring too,” said Tara Hamilton, 16, of Lantana, Fla., last year’s women’s gold medal winner in wakeboarding.

Some scientists suggest that the need to be daring that Hamilton and others experience is genetic in origin. A research paper by geneticists at the National Institutes of Health and a research facility in Israel posited the theory that certain people have genetic predispositions to the enjoyment of strenuous, risk-taking sports.

“It would be interesting to do some blood samples of X Game athletes and look at their DNA,” said Michael J. Dougherty, a molecular and cellular biologist with the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study research project in Colorado. “My guess is that a lot of them have to engage in these extreme sports in order to feel good about themselves, to feel as good as people with different brain chemistry.”

Outlaw Nature Is Part of Allure

For the youthful television audience, part of the allure is the outlaw nature of these sports. Few towns lack ordinances restricting X Games mainstays: boards, blades (in-line skating) and bikes.

ESPN capitalizes on this rebellious attitude. The network’s commercial for this year’s X Games has Hawk fleeing for his life from a CIA death squad.

There are limits, though. ESPN has two unbreakable rules for the venue and the participants: no alcohol, no live music. “We are sports, we are not MTV,” Wienert said.

If X Games represent rebellion, said Dan Cady, adjunct professor of American studies at Cal State Fullerton, it is rebellion bred of comfort. “These are sports of affluence, of space, played by kids with enough money for the gear and nice cul-de-sacs to practice in,” Cady said. “These are kids who want to feel extreme and dangerous, but yet still be pretty safe.”

Although its audience is still small by Super Bowl or World Series standards, X Games viewers include a higher percentage of youthful males per household than those venerable sporting events. The result is that X Games are catnip to sponsors, including Adidas, Taco Bell, AT&T;, Sony and Chevrolet.

“People sometimes say the X Games are one long Mountain Dew commercial,” said John Harris, a spokesman for Pepsi-Cola, which sells Mountain Dew. “We like to associate our brand with things that are edgy, bold and exciting.”

In fact, X Games are getting the full Disney treatment. ABC’s “Wide World of Sports” (ABC is owned by Capital Cities, which is owned by Disney) did one hour of X Games coverage last year and will do two hours this year. ESPN, owned 80% by ABC and 20% by the Hearst Corp., will air 36.5 hours of coverage in this country and 25.6 hours on ESPN International.

Disney entities also are putting out an X Games compact disc, an X Games book, an X Games video game, and a series of kids’ mystery books set at the X Games.

“We have captured lightning in a bottle and we’re trying to capitalize on it,” said Jeff Ruhe, an ESPN senior vice president.

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The X Games

More than 450 alternative sports athletes will compete in the X Games over the next 11 days. It’s the fourth anniversary of the summer event and its second consecutive year in San Diego, where games officials say more than 220,000 fans watched the 1997 competition. One-third of the athletes are from Southern California. Among the nine categories:

Skysurfing

The sport: Skysurfer jumps from plane with board strapped to feet and does maneuvers, which are filmed by another parachutist.

Top performers: Oliver Furrier, Christian Schmidt, Olav Zipser, Eric Fradet

****

Skateboarding

The sport: Boarder performs maneuvers on street obstacle course and halfpipe.

Top performers: Tony Hawk, Bob Burnquist, Andy McDonald

****

In-Line Skating

The sport: Skaters compete on street obstacle course, halfpipe and downhill course.

Top performers: Keith Turner, Brian Bell, Fabiola DeSilva, Tash Hodgeson

****

Bicycle Stunt Riding

The sport: Riders do tricks on course and flatland areas.

Top performers: David Voelker, Dave Mirra, Dennis McCoy

****

Wake boarding

The sport: Similar to waterskiing, but tricks are performed on a special board.

Top performers: Darren Shapiro, Jeremy Kovak, Tara Hamilton, Sonja Scheffler

****

Other sports:

* Big-air snowboarding

* Street luge

* Sport climbing

* Barefoot water-skiing