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Skateboarding grows up and so do its riders

Sunday, August 05, 2007

CARSON, Calif. (AP) -- Skateboarding is all grown up.

Long synonymous with youth, many of the sport's top practitioners and biggest stars are now husbands and fathers. Long associated with delinquency, skateboarding is now downright respectable.

One-time teen sensation Tony Hawk is now over 40, retired from competition and acting the elder statesman as he does commentary for ESPN's X Games coverage.

The sport has even been around long enough to now have its own version of an old timers' game -- an exhibition called Legends of Vert, featuring 1980s skate idols like Hawk, Christian Hosoi and Mike McGill, will be held on Sunday morning.

Compared to the newer and more youth-oriented variations of sports the X Games churns out every year, Sunday's signature event Skateboard Vert is almost like baseball, storied and classic.

All of the returning medalists in the event are at least 30: defending champ Sandro Dias is 32, silver medalist Bob Burnquist is 30 and bronze winner Bucky Lasek is 34.

Lasek, who won gold in Vert in 2003 and 2004 and won Best Trick last year, has been married for 10 years. He has kids 9 and 7 and a third on the way.

He says it's a suburban dad's life at his Baltimore home when he's off the ramp.

"If I'm not traveling I'm taking them to school, most of the time not picking them up because I'm skating, and then I come home and make dinner and be daddy."

He said the kids only dabble in skateboarding. The sport seems stodgy when dad does it, and they've gone in a different direction.

"They're into horseback riding," he said. "They ride English-style."

While the years haven't hurt Lasek's game, they've hurt his body.

"Over time, you definitely start feeling it more, the little ones start to add up," Lasek said as he sat with both knees iced. "I just had surgery on my left knee, I had it fixed but I was favoring my right knee because of the injured left knee and now my right knee is swelled."

Lasek faced criticism for what some observers called a conservative style that left him with just a bronze last year.

He was quick to dismiss the thought that he needed to take a more aggressive approach.

"My whole ride is aggressive, my whole line is aggressive," he said. "If I make my line I have no doubt. I have a good feeling."

Burnquist, coming off a Thursday night win in Big Air, hasn't won Vert gold since 2001, when he was 24. He said age can be an advantage.

"Over time, you know what works, you know what doesn't, you set up your lines right, you're a little bit more collected, you're not super-nervous, you don't have much to prove.

"I'm actually in better shape now than when I was 20."

The three thirtysomethings will still get a serious challenge from youth, though.

Twenty-year-old Shaun White has hoarded gold medals in the Winter X Games and Winter Olympics but has never won a gold in skateboarding.

A toddler next to the practice ramp drew big laughs Saturday when he pointed up and said "mama, it's Snow White."

But unlike last year, when the Olympics and the fanfare that followed took up most of White's time, the red-haired action sports celebrity spent the spring and early summer practicing on mentor Hawk's ramp, and won the first two Dew Tour events of the season.

He's set on winning Vert, his only event at these X Games.

"I just want to focus on getting the Vert done," he said.

During last year's Best Trick competition, White had 18 near misses as he tried to pull skateboarding's next big thing, the 1080, three full mid-air turns, doubling the traditional "McTwist," a trick named for McGill around the time White was born.

Speculation is rampant that White will mix it into his regular Vert routine (there's no Best Trick this year), but he isn't saying whether he'll try it in competition.

"I figured I'd probably end up trying it afterward," he said.

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