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| photo: Atlantic Wire |
It was a textbook example of ‘risk creep’ – the slow
ratcheting up of risk until there is a realization that things have gone too
far. With their announcement this week to pull the ultra-high profile X Games
Best Trick in both moto X and snowmobile freestyle, ESPN found themselves
having crossed over an invisible line (story here).
The news release from ESPN states the event cancellations are not in response
to the spectacular crash and subsequent death of X Games snomo rock star Caleb
Moore (story here).
This seems pretty hollow to any observer.
Best Trick was one of the big ticket events, and the size of the jump has grown steadily with the hype. Travis Pastrana, an 11-time X Games gold medalist Moto X Best Trick was quoted in the ESPN news release as saying "[Best Trick] was a staple of progression in FMX but also the most risky part of it... Usually these athletes were capable of landing their trick in a foam pit or on special set up but under pressure, they rarely did which added to the dangerousness of it”.
Winter X Games
started in 1996 based around snowboarding, but included skiing and such quaint
events as snow mountain biking and shovel racing (which is exactly what it
sounds like). Snowmobile snocross came on in 1998, and ever since the X Games
have migrated towards more spectacle than athleticism. This most recent news
signals a corporate wake up to how risk has creeped beyond what is acceptable –
there was certainly clear and instant backlash from the mainstream press that
Moore’s death was a signal things had gone too far. There may be other ‘institutional’
pressures at play, with X Games land use permit supposedly under scrutiny
(story here).
After Moore’s death, the press (and X Games) made it clear
this was the first death that happened at the games. While strictly true, there
is a string of broken bodies, career ending head injuries, live-on-tv
convulsions, and of course Sarah Burke’s tragic death from a crash in training for
the event (in freestyle ski superpipe). I’m not so callous to believe such
things are good for ratings, but ESPN’s parent company, Disney, the king of
family entertainment, may have had a say in the decision.