Xtreme
Don't be scared. The Summer X Games are coming to Philadelphia

By KEVIN TRESOLINI
Staff Reporter
07/04/2001

To many, the Summer X Games have simply been background noise, as in the clickety-clack of skateboard wheels, on an already-crowded sports scene.

To others, they've been a curiosity, worth a look and a "Wow, how'd he do that?" before moving on to something else with the TV remote.

To some, predominantly young males, they've been an absolute fascination, the thrills, chills and spills providing an irresistible, please-DO-try-this-at-home lure.

This year, those Summer X Games are coming to a city near you.

Philadelphia, as a matter of fact, that bastion of tradition and history, will host the 2001 event in August and the 2002 Summer X Games as well. If you didn't know the new millenium had arrived before, this youthful gathering will make it vividly apparent.

What would Benjamin Franklin think? Probably that it's all part of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness and, by the way, where's the thunderstorm-kite-flying competition?

This made-for-TV extravaganza, dreamed up by ESPN2 director of programming Ron Semiao and still an ESPN production, has found a comfortable, profitable niche.

In the process, the Summer X Games will also move a little closer to general acceptance, their unkempt image a little more brushed up, the tone not so radical. While by their very nature they'll always be fringe sports -- that noncomformity is the draw, after all -- the fringe is becoming more crowded and more mainstream.

So here come the skateboarders and sky surfers, the street lugers and stunt bikers, the in-line skaters and wakeboarders.

Get ready for the Caballerial, Crooked Grind and Stalefish Air (skateboarding tricks), the Avalanche, Galean and Henhouse Surprise (sky surfing moves) and the Tailwhip, Toboggan and even the dreaded Nose Pick (bicycle stunts).

Football, basketball or baseball it is not, which is the whole idea. It's actually closer to

figure skating and rhythmic gymnastics. The X Games, and the sports that comprise them, are fruit for the forlorn, sugar for the shunned.

"No coach, no team, no nothing," gushed Matt Avital of Long Island during the Tony Hawk Gigantic Skatepark Tour's recent stop in Elizabeth, N.J. "You can do whatever you want to do.

"I'm skipping camp and going to the X Games to see skateboarding. It means everything. It'll be crazy."

It's also free in that it costs nothing to attend the Summer X Games. No admission is charged for any event. Last summer's X Games in San Francisco drew 200,000 spectators, and perhaps as many were turned away -- or turned off -- by the long lines and dreadful waits going into some events.

"We don't know what to expect," said Chris Stiepock, general manager of Event Creation and Management for ESPN and, therefore, the head of the Summer X Games effort. "It's very hard to organize an event when you don't know what to expect, because you're free [and there are no tickets to count].

" We're one of the country's best free events, very family friendly. So we're expecting

people from all over -- New York City, Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, etc. -- to come here. All we do know is what we've done in the past. In San Francisco we had a really small venue. We had 25,000 to 30,000 people a day with a two-hour line to get in. So, based on that, we're expecting a ton of people."

The hub of the 2001 Summer X Games is the First Union Center and its parking lots.

An estimated 130,000 fans saw the initial Summer Extreme Games in 1995, with the name subsequently changed to X Games for a clearer link with its Generation X audience.

This year's attendance in Philadelphia is expected to easily surpass 250,000 over the six days, with some weekend crowds perhaps swelling to 75,000 daily.

It'll be made up of kids who know that a "manual" in skateboarding is a wheelie and that a half-pipe is not drug paraphernalia.

"The audience is the skaters themselves and kids that are curious, but it's expanding," said Tony Hawk, a skateboarder with numerous victories to his credit. "For the first time, we have actual fans of skating who don't necessarily skate themselves.

"People keep saying skating can't continue to grow at this rate, but it does. There's too much support now. Cities are building $100,000 or $200,000 skatepark facilities and they don't consider them temporary investments. So it just seems like there's a better foundation for extreme sports."

Extreme -- or thrill or action -- sports were born from individuality with a touch of eccentricity, creative flair, fearlessness and a thirst for adventure. Being different is the whole idea.

Surfing is believed to have spawned the whole genre. Skateboarding was surfing's offseason, dry-land replacement, and it led to snowboarding (an Olympic event now) and sky surfing.

The idea of street luge was hatched by skateboarders who enjoyed sitting instead of standing. The ramps and jumps that made vertical and street skateboarding so delightfully daring turned out to be havens for the wheels on bicycles and in-line skates as well.

"We're all surfers," street luger Biker Sherlock says in "Way Inside ESPN's X Games."

The Summer X Games came along on that wave, beginning in 1995 and being held annually since (twice each in Rhode Island, San Diego and San Francisco). The Winter X Games came along in 1997.

Each year, the Summer X Games have grown in terms of participants, TV viewers, spectators and, of course, dollars. More than $1 million in prize money is at stake in Philadelphia, four times the total of the inaugural event, with more than 350 athletes in the hunt.

"People have been talking about it for months," said Bam Margera, a pro skateboarder from West Chester, Pa., who'll go from being a competitor to a TV personality this year.

"I think a lot of people will check it out just to see what it's all about. I think it'll be pretty crowded. But you do have a lot of random dudes not knowing anything about it just trying to get into the scene."

Extreme sports have become more widely followed because of the X Games.

Matt Wilhelm, a 22-year-old BMX flatland stunt biker from Chicago, has observed this

evolution with profound satisfaction. He has a college degree in marketing with a minor in music, but he is able to work professionally by competing and performing exhibitions with his bicycle.

"I've been doing these tricks for like nine years," Wilhelm said. "You get heckled in a

parking lot, put up with a lot of people throwing rocks at you. Now it's really turned around. People are willing to watch you ride and cheer for you and watch you win.

"The X Games have definitely helped legitimize all the action sports. Instead of the

police kicking me out of their parking lots, they say 'Let me see some of your best moves' or 'You trying out for the X Games?' ''

Ready or not, here they come.

Reach Kevin Tresolini at 324-2807 or [email protected].