Action-Sports Athletes Explore Union Option

When motocross rider Kenny Bartram crashed and ruptured a blood vessel in his brain 12 years ago, his father’s health insurance helped cushion the fall by paying the hefty medical tab.

Now that he’s 26, Bartram must pay big bucks -- around $650 a month, he says -- to ensure that he will be covered if he suffers another serious injury. His policy paid for a broken leg suffered at the 2002 Summer X Games and a broken hip socket suffered in the fall of 2003.

“The rates have gone through the roof,” Bartram said, “but they’re still covering me.”

Some action-sports athletes avoid high insurance premiums by neglecting to tell their carriers that their profession involves hurtling their bodies dozens of feet into the air. Others claim their injuries were the result of -- how should they put this? -- household accidents.

“A lot of them have fallen off curbs and hurt themselves,” deadpanned skateboarder Biker Sherlock.

Affordable health insurance for those who acknowledge their risky business may seem as elusive as a perfect score in a best-trick competition, but a fledgling action-sports athletes’ union is trying to change that.

Pro Riders Organization, which comprises more than 100 motocross riders, skateboarders and BMX riders, is seeking to obtain a group-rate policy that would provide discounted insurance. More important, perhaps, PRO executives hope to subsidize their members’ insurance costs through a new credit- and debit-card venture affiliated with MasterCard and six major banks. PRO will receive a kickback from each sale.

“This is the way to get our insurance,” said skateboarder Chris Gentry, one of four members who founded PRO in November 2003.

PRO executives could not provide projected revenue from the venture but are dreaming big.

“We’re trying to get endless zeroes on it,” Gentry said.

Health insurance is not the only pressing issue for PRO. The organization also wants more input on judging and course design in events such as this week’s X Games. There is also the matter of prize distribution.

Tony Magnusson, executive director of skateboarding for PRO, said he had made a strong push to distribute the purses more evenly among top-10 finishers in each event.

“They might have miscalculated a little bit on what kind of return a guy who gets eighth, ninth and 10th place gets from being in the X Games,” Magnusson said of officials from ESPN, which runs the X Games. “It’s just not enough money for them to come to the X Games and pay for their expenses.”

Said Sherlock: “If you show up at the X Games and take 10th, you’re potentially spending money to be there.”

ESPN spokeswoman Melissa Gullotti declined to comment on the cable network’s relationship with PRO, which Magnusson described as “rather strained” when he came on board in December.

ESPN had banned founding member Gentry after he put PRO stickers on a skateboarding ramp and rattled the nerves of competitors who did not want to wear the organization’s logo at last summer’s X Games. PRO recently leveled its own sanctions against Gentry, asking him not to speak to the media on behalf of the organization for three months, according to Magnusson.

“PRO has had a very passionate and tumultuous start, but there hasn’t been the kind of infrastructure and relationship-building you need to be really effective,” Magnusson said. “It’s one thing to make a whole lot of noise, it’s another to get results.”

The in-your-face tactics of some PRO constituents is one reason Bartram and other nonmembers are taking a wait-and-see approach before signing up.

“Some of the attitudes of some of the members, I disagree with,” Bartram said. “I want to see them do it professionally and get along with promoters.”