These days they are called “action” sports. But when the X Games first debuted in 1995 as the ESPN Extreme Games, they were just as likely to be known as “alternative” sports.
Indeed, the original X Games – the name was changed a year later – were often referred to as the alternative Olympics, featuring competition in unconventional events such as skateboarding, sky surfing, street luge, bungy jumping and “eco-challenge.” Even mountain biking, part of those original X Games, had yet to become a sanctioned Olympic competition.
The alternative label was derived as much from the lifestyle surrounding the sports as from the sports themselves. Skaters and sky surfers had about as much in common with so-called “traditional” sports such as football or baseball as Hunter S. Thompson had with Bill O’Reilly. The opportunity to perform before an audience, live and televised, was something new to these athletes, yet the lack of attention had hardly hindered their development. Nearly 200,000 people showed up in Rhode Island of all places to see for themselves.
Over time, the X Games have evolved and the sports featured in the summer version have been distilled down to BMX stunt biking, motocross, skateboarding, wakeboarding and, for the past two years, surfing. When X Games 11 kicks off in Los Angeles on Thursday, more than 150 top athletes will compete in sports that these days are anything but unusual. Remarkable, yes, but according to the National Sporting Goods Association, skateboarding and BMX are among the fastest-growing sports in the nation during the past five years.
In some ways, the growth of these sports – and the X Games influence upon it – parallels that of the original alternative action sport: surfing. Although the roots of surfing have been traced back thousands of years, it wasn’t until the movie “Gidget” first introduced the lifestyle of the surfing subculture to the masses in 1959 that the sport took off. Oddly, it was as much the lifestyle as the activity itself that attracted the new disciples.
Surfing, like the other X Games activities, was more than something people did. It was something people became, a statement of who they are. People “play” basketball. But only kids with active imaginations “play” surfing. Then they grow up and become surfers. Or skaters, or wakeboarders or bikers.
The truly devoted adopt a life that most of the world can only dream of, built around a passion for their pastime that supercedes all else. Like those early beach bums riding waves into the sunset, modern skaters spend entire days on the ramp or in the park, often pursuing their passion in the face of society’s expectations. The same can be said for any of the X Games disciplines, summer or winter, as the devoted attempt to discover and develop the deepest sense of who they are.
The X Games have shown the world that the dream actually is an attainable reality. The athletes and the lifestyle they represent in interviews televised the world over are as responsible for the explosion of these sports as Sandra Dee’s Gidget was to the California surf craze, only not as cheesy. Ironically, it was surfing – the last sport added to competition – that ultimately inspired the X Games success, pioneering a lifestyle in addition to cornerstone sports such as skateboarding and snowboarding.
Although you won’t see it televised until Saturday, surfing competition actually kicks off X Games 11 today. The event was moved from “Surf City” at Huntington Beach, Calif., down to the “Mexican Pipeline” near Puerto Escondido, a traditional Mexican fishing village long ago discovered by surfers looking to challenge themselves on the fast, hollow waves creating giant tubes similar to Hawaii’s famed “Banzai Pipeline.”
Bolstered by its new venue and original ideals, surfing is destined to become a marquee event at the X Games, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see a corresponding spike in participation. But whether or not that prediction comes to fruition won’t matter much when the remainder of the X Games kicks off Thursday. Not to the surfers, and probably not to the other athletes, either. They’ll continue to do what they love, riding that unpredictable wave through time, whether the world is watching or otherwise.
Staff writer Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
