THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, June 18, 1995 TAG: 9506180245
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: C3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BOB MOLINARO
LENGTH: Medium: 80 lines
The Extreme Games are proof that some people have too much time on their hands.
Maybe you haven't heard about the Extreme Games, or the cable network, ESPN2, that is palming them off as sport.
If so, consider yourself lucky. Otherwise, you might find yourself in the position of having to explain the nine so-called games that make up this wacko competition.
For starters, I'll tackle the oddest of the odd, the Eco-Challenge.
``Teams of five,'' explains the promotional material, ``must cover 250 miles of terrain by biking, canoeing, climbing, hiking, rafting, orienteering and sailing. Call it an endurance event if you want, but this is more about survival.''
The Eco-Challenge is a sport? A few years ago, this was called ``travel.''
The other eight activities making up the Extreme Games are nearly as esoteric. They are: skysurfing, sport climbing, street luge, in-line skating, mountain bike racing, skateboarding, water sports (windsurfing, kiteskiing), and bungee-jumping.
The tone of ESPN2's advertising suggests that anybody over the age of 25 just wouldn't understand what is euphemistically called ``nontraditional'' sports. I hate to disappoint the whippersnappers, but the concept of extreme sports is not new to anyone who remembers the refrigerator races of the '70s.
In those days, big, burly guys had bigger, burlier fridges strapped to their backs. At the sound of a starter's pistol, they lumbered toward the finish line. Watching at home, you could put your money on the Fridgidaire or the Amana. I don't remember what the winner received, maybe a free hernia repair.
Refrigerator racing never caught on. It was a victim, I think, of bad public relations. It was doomed by the perception that there was something really dumb about guys lugging freezer units across a lawn.
Back then, people called it a trash sport.
Today, that would never happen. The appliance manufacturers and cable networks would get together to market refrigerator racing as the cool, alternative sport of the 21st century. International competitions would spring up. It would become a demonstration sport at the Atlanta Olympics.
Refrigerator racing, in other words, was ahead of its time. It came along before the hype-meisters and cable shills could package it, promote it and sell it to people who have too much time on their hands.
``Call it an endurance event if you want,'' the public relations release could have said, ``but this is more about lower back pain.''
Today, you can give any sort of goofy activity a name and a little structure and it suddenly becomes a bona fide sport, with special equipment and participants who insist on being called athletes.
Once, kids raced downhill on bikes because that's what kids did. It was exercise, not sport.
Now the same activity is called Dual Downhill Bike Slalom. TV cameras record the action, identifying Downhill Slalom superstars. Advertising is sold. A tightly woven universe is created in which racing downhill on a bike is taken extremely seriously.
Many summers ago, a friend and I wrapped masking tape around a pingpong ball. While one of us went to bat with a broom handle, the other threw tantalizing pitches that darted and dipped before smacking into a porch screen.
For days on end, we played this one-on-one game of pingpong baseball. The pitchers' duels were legendary.
Now I see that all we lacked were proper marketing skills. With a little promotion, our backyard game could have gone global. We had invented a sport and didn't even know it.
Years later, others have learned from our mistake. The other day on TV, there was a demonstration of basketball played on in-line skates. Guys were rolling around the court banking in layups. Time was you'd have to be drunk to try something like that.
To my amazement, not once during the TV report were the words ``trash sport'' used.
It made me wonder: How would the in-line skating basketball players look with refrigerators strapped to their backs? by CNB