CARSON – The X Games and the 13-foot, U-shaped vert ramp once were made for each other. Tony Hawk flew to stardom on the ramp, sold millions of video games and earned celebrity status.
The X Games became the symbol of action sports.
Today, the skateboarders who perform jaw-dropping tricks above the ramp and X Games officials are bickering. So much so, a question must be raised.
When Carlsbad's Pierre Luc Gagnon earned the gold medal before a packed Home Depot Center crowd late yesterday afternoon, might the vert have been making its X Games farewell appearance?
“Vert's a steppingstone for the megaramp,” Gagnon said. “Vert was one of the first events at the X Games. The Vert made the X Games. It's going to be here. It's here to stay. Is that clear enough?”
Not really.
In April, ESPN announced that the vert, which has been part of the X Games since its 1995 inception, would be dropped this year.
The headline: “The Death of Vert.”
Less than a week later, after skaters threatened to boycott the popular megaramp competition, ESPN pulled a 180, announcing the discipline would be back.
But the ramp for yesterday's competition barely resembled the ones used in the past. It was about half as long, with no special elements other than tall roll-ins, limiting the tricks the skaters could pull off.
“I think it (stinks),” Encinitas' Rob Lorifice said of the ramp. “It's just a portable ramp that we skate on all the time. The X Games really don't care about the vert anymore.”
“It was really basic,” said Encinitas' Bucky Lasek, who finished third. “It didn't really showcase our full potential. It's just not that fun to skate. It's an empty canvas. A real empty canvas.”
Citing declining TV ratings for the vert competition, ESPN originally announced that the vert was going to be replaced by a SuperPark discipline that would combine features of the vert ramp and park skating.
“We're trying to introduce a part of skateboarding to our viewing public that, outside of street skateboarding, is the largest discipline of skateboarding in the world,” said Chris Stiepock, general manager of the X Games. “We feel we have an obligation to show the viewers what they want to see.”
Carlsbad native Shaun White, who finished second yesterday, said the quality of the ramp was “pretty awesome” and that it enabled him to pull off a new, technically challenging 1½ -spin trick.
Many people, skaters and fans, were critical of the ramp.
“I think it's pretty repetitive and pretty redundant, to be honest with you,” said New York photographer Mark Kohlman. “The old ramp, you had more options to interpret your (skating) lines. This is boring. I don't know why they dumbed it down.”
The women who skated earlier in the day weren't happy either.
“I like the old ramp better because they're a lot bigger, they're more fun, they're more exciting,” said Cardiff's Lyn-Z Adams Hawkins, 18. “There's more things to do, more obstacles. There's just more about it.”
Karen Jones, a Brazilian who moved to La Mesa three months ago, won the women's skateboard vert. Adams Hawkins finished second and Encinitas' Mimi Knoop took third.
Stiepock said a decision about the vert ramp's future will depend on more than TV ratings.
“We even take into account spectator traffic, ticket sales,” he said. “You can go out there and see how the crowd is reacting. You can sort of feel (it).”
The men's contest drew a packed crowd.
Stiepock said he thinks the two sides can find a happy medium, saying, “I don't think vert is being phased out.”
Then he added, “We're like a big Italian family that sits down at the dinner table, yells and screams at each other, but loves each other just the same.”
Added Lasek: “It all depends on what they want to capture, and what they want to bring. We have other series, we have other contests if it falls through. They may choose to go a different route and I don't hold that against them. That's their free will.
There was even some sniping among the women vert skaters, who seldom criticize each other.
Unlike the men, who skated one at a time in heats, the women used a jam format, the skaters randomly dropping into the 13-foot-tall ramp. The eight-skater invitational field included El Segundo's Allysha Bergado, who at 12 years and one month became the youngest X Games competitor ever.
Bergado wasn't the least bit intimidated, continually dropping in. Too often, as far as Knoop was concerned.
“You have to learn etiquette,” Knoop said, “and I don't think the younger girls have learned that yet. It's a respect for each other. We're trying to teach them. They have thick skulls, but we're trying to teach them.”
Don Norcross: (619) 293-1803; don.norcross@uniontrib.com
