Aspen – The X Games are the ultimate revenge of the misfits.
The new king of extreme sports is a 19-year-old pipsqueak. He looks like Carrot Top and is built like Pee-wee Herman. His nickname is “The Flying Tomato.” Shaun White is the baddest shredder on the planet, whether riding a board in a skate park or nailing a trick on snow. But nobody mistakes White for NFL quarterback Tom Brady.
And that’s the beauty of it.
White describes his sport of choice as “gnarly.” Rough around the edges. Unorthodox to the core.
The X Games takes the archetype of the U.S. athletic hero, turns all your preconceived notions inside out, then blows those tall, bulky and handsome stereotypes to smithereens.
And that’s a good thing.
During a preliminary round of the superpipe competition Sunday night, fans dressed in band uniforms and tooted their brass horns for White. His father routinely receives high-fives from the crowd. White plays a sport where the fear factor is off the charts and the best moves are an act of rebellion against gravity.
Maybe you’ve never heard of White, who has grown up at the X Games. Ask your son. Or daughter.
Still not old enough to drink champagne on the winner’s podium, White rules the worlds of skateboarding and snowboarding. He is extreme squared.
White seems the logical heir to the Tony Hawk empire, built on the radical idea that you don’t have to throw a baseball 98 mph or be MVP of the Super Bowl for an athlete to see all his Disney World dreams come true.
More stunning than the 900-degree spins of White is the revolution he’s leading in how we look at sports.
A week that will end with millions of TV viewers tuned to the Super Bowl will begin tonight with White starring in the superpipe final, on the same prime-time, ESPN stage that will be reserved next autumn for Big Ben Roethlisberger and “Monday Night Football.” That’s huge.
Nonetheless, snowboard rival Travis Rice calls White a “little pipsqueak.” It’s a term of endearment. I think.
White proves that people who don’t dig football need a hero, too.
The NFL championship is a super bowl of jumbo prawns munched by CEOs. The X Games are a superpipe stoked with adolescent yearning.
Pro football has grown so big biggie big that it can be used as a tool of urban renewal to knock off the rust and brighten the gray economic skies of Detroit. By contrast, the X Games are used to dress down the diamonds and mountain chic of Aspen.
While the Super Bowl is private jets and cocktail parties, admission to the X Games remains free, allowing the unwashed masses to happily storm the gates. Bill Shirley, a longtime resident of this valley, mused from a lift at Snowmass Ski Resort that most of these fans won’t be back to purchase $3 million homes.
The violence that has made football a religion is replaced by the inherent danger of extreme sports. The object is not to put a hurting on a foe. The adrenaline rush is daring to put your body at risk.
“When you’re approaching a jump, there’s no turning back. There’s no ‘Oh, I don’t want to do it!’ allowed,” White said. “Once you go, you’re gone.”
At age 10, the X Games have been embraced by the hooks of corporate America, with companies from Fender guitars to the U.S. Navy setting up booths on the event grounds, trying to recruit a young demographic.
In all the ways that really matter, however, this event is the antithesis of the Super Bowl.
So long as the X Games can keep the renegade vibe, it will give a voice for new reasons to cheer.
Here is one sporting venue where every man not only feels at home in the audience, but a guy like White, who could have sat behind you in algebra class, can take home the gold.
Listen to Mark Kiszla at 12:15 p.m. today on 1060 AM and the Radio Colorado Network. He can be reached at 303-820-5438 or mkiszla@denverpost.com.
