PERMALINK: Pogo resurges as action sport
Monday, August 23, 2010
The pogo stick as we know it bounced into existence around 1918, and it's been thrilling kind of entertaining kids ever since. But in the past 10 years or so, the pogo stick has experienced an unexpected renaissance, and a new use has sent its popularity -- at least among a certain set -- increasing by leaps and bounds.
Formerly wimpy toy, meet today's teenager. Raised on extreme sports such as skateboarding, BMX and FMX, a small but growing subset of teenagers -- we'll call them Generation X Gamers -- are literally taking pogoing to new heights.
Extreme pogo.
Confused? Don't be. It's exactly what it sounds like. The 34 competitors in this past weekend's Pogopalooza 7, the seventh-annual edition of the self-proclaimed "World Championship of Extreme Pogo," took part in four different disciplines: big air, high jump, tech and best trick. They did flips, spins and grinds. They soared as high as nine-and-a-half feet into the air.
They'll post their best tricks -- and, of course, their best spills -- on YouTube, and share them on extreme pogo websites .
And yes, some of them took pretty nasty spills on the concrete in Salt Lake City, where this year's competition was held. Such as Dalton Smith, at 13 the youngest competitor in Pogopalooza history, who underrotated while attempting a double backflip dismount and ended up with two smashed-up kneecaps, a broken nose and a one-night stay in the hospital.
Broken bones and other injuries are common in extreme pogoing because, well, what goes up must come down.
"You fall from eight feet up in the air, onto cement, every single day," said Dan Mahoney, who broke the world record in the high jump for the third consecutive year by clearing the bar at 9 feet, 6 inches. "It's pretty hard on your joints."
But Mahoney, a 17-year-old high school student from Nova Scotia, Canada, said the chance of bodily injury is no surprise to competitors.
"It's an extreme sport, so obviously there's some risk involved," Mahoney said.
And these obviously aren't your playground-variety pogo sticks . These are serious sticks meant for those who would use them to land serious tricks.
Gone are the only slightly springy steel springs in the traditional model, replaced by a variety of airtime-producing apparatuses: compressed air cartridges; rubber bands that act like bungee cords; sticks that act like a bow shooting an arrow, compressing and snapping back out.
"It's sort of a blank canvas for science as far as what you can put between the handlebars and the foot pegs," said Nick Ryan, one of the organizers of Pogopalooza.
At 21, Ryan already has stopped competing in extreme pogo. He says you need a fearless mindset to last in this sport, and he no longer has it. These days he focuses on organizing the event and getting the word out about extreme pogo.
"What's interesting is that seven or eight years ago people would just laugh in my face because it's ridiculous if you have no context," Ryan said. "They're thinking of the sticks you get at Toys R Us that can only get six or seven inches off the ground. But as soon as they see [extreme pogo], and get an updated picture of what we're talking about, they don't laugh."
Jack McCluskey is an editor for ESPN.com
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