Even though i have never made it to an X-games i now feel like i have after this weekend! The Action Sports Tour (AST) Dew Tour is basically a way for X-games athletes to show their skills all over the country and make some cashola leading up to the big show.
ASCI and Wisp Resort teamed together to send a few representatives to the tour as a minor sponsor (minor=$30,000). My work-mate, Brittney Paugh, and myself hopped into the Jeep with loads of promotional materials and a big smile and headed to
Arriving at the Dew Tour is like pulling into an extreme sports circus. Marketing dollars for big companies are hard at work trying to out do their closest competitor. It seems that the most obnoxious exhibitor is the one with all the people around (people=kids).
Sony has a full trailer with lounges and flatscreens with people playing all the late and great Playstation 3 games....i am uninterested, there is natural talent to be seen. Panasonic has the worlds largest flat screen TV in their booth.....i had to check it out.....seems like a bit overkill. Vans shoes has their typical mid 30 year old-recovering/active alcoholic-trying to look like an athlete-too cool for school promotional guy asking trivia questions for swag. I answer one and get some swag...such a sucker lol.
Perhaps the greatest impression (other than Mountain Dew of course) was SlimJim. It always interests me how the marketing teams at these compaines like a beef jerky company come up with the plan to create an extreme sports image in an attempt to regenerate their customer base of young kids. Its a good strategy but maybe they should make a product that has a health benefit not just an association benefit....longshot.
After visiting this obnoxious vendor villiage it was time to get out there and start promoting ASCI. It was too easy. Because we had VIP passes we could basically go anywhere and not stand in lines. However, there were 4 lines stretching at least a football field to get in. We took all of our promotional material and event flyers and just "Walked the proverbial Line". Passing out all of our stuff before we knew it, we were now ready to watch the real athletes do their job. Like I said...captive audience.
The first stop and eventually most impressive was the
Imagine beign 25 feet in the air committed to a double back flip with a 720 tail whip. Hard to imagine, even harder to believe when its right in front of your eyes. I have respect.
Next stop was skateboard vert. Now this definently takes skill because heck, skateboarding itself is no challenge to downplay. It seemed to me though that this is the most relaxed of the events but has a flow to it similar to a verse of poetry. The guys are completely seamless with the large standing verticle walls of the half-pipe and conduct their routine something similar to that of a dancer.
Shaun White is competing...WHAT! I thought he was a snowboarder. Well he is both, and damn good at both. Actually he is beyond good, he won the whole event up against the arsenal of people in Tony Hawk's Pro Skater (Burnquist, Lasek etc.) He does things no one else can do apparently because he brings some tricks over from snowboarding. I have respect again.
Next event, BMX Dirt Finals. WOW. Not quite as impressive as
Final event of the weekend was Freestyle Motocross finals. Now anyone who has seen this already knows it takes a loose screw to get into this sport. The jumps are enormous (100ft+). Now a 100ft jump is enough to make most people cringe, but its the fact that they decided to do 360 back flips on a 220lb motorcycle off these jumps. But wait thats not all, during the backflip they come off the bike and do a superman or click their heels together. Its madness and the margin for error is small. We saw this first hand as one of the competitors over rotated a back flip coming down from about 50ft up on is rear end. He broke is ankle. He is out of the dew tour.
So what did I come away with from this experience...........well, i think I will one day write a book about how these athletes are mid 40's and cant walk. But man they had a lot of fans.
