Fabiola da Silva is a pretty, quiet-spoken 27 year-old built on the lines of a ballet dancer. To meet her, you would have trouble even coming close to guessing how she makes her living. You would almost certainly not guess that she is the world’s best female Aggressive In Line (AIL) skater and much given to pushing herself to physical extremes that simply take one’s breath away. The overriding impression after meeting the 20 athletes in the lineup for the 2006 X Games in Dubai this year was that these were very normal young men and a woman. In many ways they are; what makes them different is their approach to life and how they put that into action.
Sponsors have been swift to see the beneficial effects of extreme sports on young people, apart from the obvious marketing aspect. Commenting at the macro level, Ahmed Abdel-Karim, Marketing Manager at Pepsico International — which co-sponsored the Dubai event with ESPN — said that it was a true celebration of action sports in the region. “Mountain Dew is keen to stress its role in promoting action sports as a new sport for the region’s youth,” he said. “The sports enable participants to channel their energy into a competitive activity and show off their skills.”
At the micro level, what these very energetic and courageous young people do is travel the world staging displays to promote their forms of extreme sports. Courageous is not too strong a word; a very young motorcyclist who was asked how he practiced his specialty aerial reverse somersault before he attempted the trick shrugged his shoulders and said; “I didn’t. It can’t be practiced, you just have to go for it.”
Moto X champions Cameron Sinclair, Joel Balchin, Steve Mini, Jake Bowen and Rhys Hiller who dazzled the 14,000 strong crowd that packed the Dubai Creek Park for the second year’s games showed exactly how far ‘going for it’ could take them.
Teaming up with sponsors works for both athletes and sponsors. By adding value to the massive sports industry that already exists worldwide, Mountain Dew wants to raise action sports to the same level as other competitive events and establish the X Games as an internationally recognized competition that rivals the popularity of mainstream sports. The athletes are encouraged to push the boundaries and left to do it their way.
Spectacular for certain and now with a very wide television audience built through ESPN channel in the US, extreme sports carry an element of danger, which is part of their attraction to athletes and audience alike. One day of this year’s spectacle was cancelled due to high winds and rain which made the half-pipe too slippery for skaters, skateboarders and BMX bikers to gain traction and the aerial stunts of the Moto X bikers hazardous in the extreme. After allowing the vert ramp to dry, AIL skating brothers Eito and Takeshi Yasutoko from Japan dazzled the crowd with double flat spins, 360 degree turns, 180 degree twists. They took to skating soon after they could walk; their parents were both skaters and the early training showed.
When the BMXers took to the ramp, Mat Hoffman and Simon Tabron amazed the crowd with a tandem, no-handed 540 degree spin — that is one and a half turns in the air achieved after muscular acceleration up the vertical wall of the half-pipe. Skateboarders Anthony Furlong, Jake Brown, Jean Postec, Rune Glifberg and Sandro Dias stole the show with a rousing finale.
For many, it was the diminutive da Silva they wanted to see. She confided that what attracted her to skating as a sport in the first place was simply the challenge. “I played a lot of ‘girl’ sports,” she said, “But the ones the guys were doing were a lot more challenging.” She feels that the division between men and women in sport is largely artificial. “Many of the things men can do women are perfectly capable of as well,” she said. She pushed herself and tried to set new limits every day — “It’s scary, but it’s just something that is inside me,” she said, “If I see a guy trying to create a trick that I think is do-able, then why not me?”
The push to excel does have its downfalls; literally. In the 2005 games in Dubai, da Silva — in skater parlance — slammed badly from four meters in the air and injured her knee. Has it stopped her drive to push the envelope? “Nope.” No further comment necessary!
“I am 27 now,” she said in response to an enquiry about how much longer she could take the physical strain and stress on her body, “But I feel like I am 17! Sure it hurts sometimes — but some of my heroes, Matt Hoffman and Tony Hawkes have pushed their careers at least another ten years. Who knows?” The secret to success in any pursuit she thinks is to enjoy it. “If you enjoy it or have fun doing it, it’s not a job.” If someone pays her for having fun, she thinks, then so much the better.
Skating since she was 14 and professional two years later, da Silva felt that her sport had opened up her life and brought opportunities that, as an average girl from Brazil, she simply would not otherwise have had. Foreign travel, exposure to different cultures and public acclaim for her skill made her more responsible and encouraged her to learn foreign languages and therefore something about other cultures and the wider world.
She said that when her professional skating career is over, she would still be involved in sport in some way. As a qualified sports masseuse and, as a professional athlete, she has first hand experience of the vicissitudes of participation in sport; this enables her to empathize with her future patients.
Over in Dubai for another year, the X Games has taken root. The record crowds were enthusiastic and were treated to a display that set a challenge to the visitors. Extreme sports started — and is still very evident in the US and Europe — on the streets. These athletes have redefined the word ‘extreme’ in their various disciplines, have taken the hits and hurts and carried on with a determination that breeds a very special kind of character. Not a single one was anything but modest about their achievements.
What, I asked da Silva, would you say to a woman in perhaps Saudi Arabia taking up one of the extreme sport disciplines?
She grinned mischievously: “You tell those Saudi ladies they can do anything they want. Just go for it!”
Message delivered.
