STEVEN E. FRISCHLING/NEWSMAKERS Sixteen-year-old Kelly Clark is among a growing crop of female athletes who are competing in the X-Games.

ELItorial

Not X-rated, but still X-citing

Not all disciplines crave to be recognized as "official" sports, however. As proven by ESPN's recent presentation of the Winter X-Games, some people are content to live outside the realm of traditional sports. In its fifth year of existence, the X-Games are dedicated to showcasing so-called extreme sports—snowboarding, extreme skiing, snocross, and snow mountain-biking, among others in the winter season. No one would argue that these are examples of mainstream sports. It would be exceedingly rare to find a Major League Baseball player who admitted to spending his off-season racing snowmobiles in snocross competitions. But most of the athletes involved in these extreme sports neither care about legitimacy nor would they accept it if it were offered.

The manner in which ESPN presented the Games gives insight into the mentality of both the participants and the organizers. The Games graced major network television for about three hours during their five-day duration, all at times that would not bump any of the network's precious programming from its normal slots. The rest of the Games were aired on ESPN and ESPN2 during primetime hours.

The Games themselves were almost identical to those of years past. Even though this year's Games were much more highly publicized and well-attended—the attendance of 83,500 people smashed previous spectating records—their general tone has remained remarkably unchanged over the years. The jargon thrown around was just as incomprehensible to anyone who didn't grow up in a skate park. There were still numerous commentators roaming the slopes talking about "sick tricks" and how women's snowboarding big air winner Tara Dakides "stomped" the landing on her final jump. The number of teenage boys toting snowboards and skiboards has also not diminished in the least, but one notable shift has been the increasing number of female participants in extreme sports. Nothing really changes at the X-Games from year to year, except perhaps the sponsors. And everyone seems to like it that way.

Most X-Games athletes aren't in it for the money, even though they are all pros. The cash doled out for winning part of the Vans Triple-Crown or the FIS World Cup of Snowboarding isn't exactly mind-boggling when compared to that of a golf tournament, or any other major sport. But their commitment to their sports is no less total than that of more traditional athletes. Imagine waking up every day, climbing on your bike, and riding down a snow-covered hill at 40 miles per hour, taking hairpin turns and jumps over 15-foot gaps before falling, dusting yourself off and starting all over again. Welcome to the life of a snow mountain-biker. You're not going to get millions of dollars from sponsors—you're just going to get a lot of bruises, so if you don't love what you're doing, you'd better quit now. For many of these athletes, calling what they do "mundane" or "normal" would be trivializing their sports.

Very few popular extreme athletes and sports have made the move into mainstream culture. Shaun Palmer may be known as one of the best snowboarders of all time, but he is far from a household name. The closest extreme sports has to a poster boy is Tony Hawk—the first skateboarder ever to land a 900 in competition—who has since appeared in commercials for milk and Disney. Most X-athletes aren't worried about their lack of fame, however. They get enough thrills on the slopes without worrying about league oversight or salary arbitration.

The closest that extreme sports have come to legitimacy has been the inclusion of snowboarding as an Olympic sport. But, perhaps not surprisingly, there was much opposition to the proposal when it first surfaced prior to the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan. What was surprising, though, was that the greatest hostility came from within the snowboarding community itself. Snowboarders around the world were not exactly thrilled at being lumped together with badminton as an Olympic sport, and many of boarding's greatest athletes refused to participate in the Olympics. When respectability was offered to them, they refused it. They were happy enough living outside the bounds of legitimacy.

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