VAIL — Mark Sample, you just won the 2008 Bacardi World Pond Skimming Championships. What are you going to do now?
“Huh. That’s a tough question,” Sample said. “Maybe start preparing for next year?”
OK, good plan. Clearly, Sample still has a lot of work to do on his delivery, at least in the post-pond-skim interview department. (Hint: insert any derivative of the word “Disney” above.)
But who can blame him? As the newly crowned champ from Boulder points out:
“This is the hardest sport in the world. You only get to practice once a year.”
Right. Again, perhaps a bit of a stretch. But as anyone who has ever witnessed the seemingly ubiquitous end-of-season Colorado ski resort ritual that launches skiers and snowboarders from a ramp of snow into a pool of frigid ice-water can tell you, riding it out it ain’t easy. And it certainly isn’t for the meek.
“You’re heart is pumping. It’s commit or quit,” said Brian Armento of Denver, wearing little more than a homemade “skim if you dare” cape despite temperatures in the 30s, strong winds and intermittent snowfall at the Vail event Saturday. “It’s all in the abs.”
Ah, but that’s just it. While the core obviously constitutes a significant portion of pond-skimming prowess, there is so much more. Take Sample, for example.
Concealing a self-described beer brewer’s belly beneath a yellow Coors Field vendor’s jersey and carrying a tray of 30 or so prop suds down the mountain, “Beer Man,” as he was known to the crowd, had already outlasted such pond skimming notables as Elvis, Austin Powers, Uncle Sam, Smokey Bear, Mr. Incredible and the freaky new Burger King to advance to a sudden-death final skim-off in the 100-foot pool.
There, the competition was stiff, a virtual who’s who of pond skimmers that included “Duff Man” from the Simpsons, “Viking Man” (who skimmed with the advantage of an ark around his waist), local ringer “Natron” Smith (who claims pond-skimming perfection over the course of five years), “Skim if you dare” Armento and some Argentinian dude in a wedding dress. Of the original 100 skimmers, 94 swam their way into the hot tub bracket.
If in doubt, close your eyes
“Going into the finals, I was thinking that I needed to do something different. Then I just put that right out of my head because I didn’t want to get wet. I’ve gotten wet enough today and in the past few years,” Sample said. “I jumped way before the actual lip of the jump and then closed my eyes, so I don’t really know what happened. Really professional athletes close their eyes when they’re doing their business.”
What happened was that Sample ditched his beer tray, stomped a float-plane-like landing on the Liberty skis he won two years ago for “Best Crash” and surfed to a $1,000 payday as the 2008 Bacardi World Pond Skimming Championships champion just ahead of Armento and John “Duff Man” Vaught.
“This is my fifth year of pond skimming, my fourth time in Vail, and it’s the first time I actually made it across the pond,” Sample said. “Well, I keep making it across on my stomach, and now I finally made it across on my skis.”
Indeed, Sample drew the biggest gasp from the slopeside crowd of some 3,000 when he nearly cleared the 100-foot pool in the air on his first attempt, violently ejecting from his skis upon splashdown and flopping across the finish line like a beer-swilling manatee with bruised ribs.
“When he came down, we were with a bunch of friends and they said, ‘He may be hurt!’ And I said: ‘It doesn’t matter. He made it across the pond,’ ” said Sample’s mother, Diane. “I think the secret is genetics.”
It is better to look good . . .
And so the debate over the key to pond skimming rages ever onward. Beer, abs, eyes, air, genes — some even argue showmanship, right along with balance, speed and nerves of steel.
“I’m already wearing girls’ shorts,” said Vaught, adding that he credits his success to determination, persistence and America. “You have to look real good on the pond when you’re wearing girls’ shorts. You don’t want to go out there and look like a fool.”
Among those buying into Vaught’s showmanship argument is Olympic freestyle skiing gold medalist Jonny “Big Air” Moseley, who works the pond-skimming circuit from Steamboat Springs to Vail now that a full decade has passed since he wowed the world with a 360-mute grab at the Nagano Games. Moseley put down the emcee’s mike briefly to put on a skimming exhibition between runs that included a spectacular backflip to face plant he dubbed “Acorn on a Fir Coat” in his first-ever attempt at the sport.
“I had to live up to my reputation. I couldn’t just skim the pond,” said Moseley, who claims to have ice water running through his veins. “Besides, I can do backflips with my eyes closed. I honestly don’t know what happened.”
A little-known reality of Moseley’s mid-1990s competitive prime included multiple World Cup titles as a “Freestyle Combined” skier, where the Californian born in Puerto Rico dominated the now-defunct trifecta of moguls, aerials and ski ballet. In some ways, Moseley said, he sees a parallel to the spectacle of pond skimming to that all-around “hotdog” competition that showcased such a variety of frivolous skills on skis.
“This is the culmination of years, the reincarnation of hotdog skiing,” Moseley said in a moment of seriousness. “It’s in the spring when it’s sunny and people are having a good time, and crowd involvement is key — which is the first tenet of freestyle skiing. Basically, that’s what needs to come back into some of these (World Cup) contests, this type of spirit. This is what it’s all about, the real representation of skiing. That’s why I like coming here.”
