That's Entertainment cont'd.

You Are Here:

Home >> That's Entertainment cont'd.

Today's Question
How do you make primitive snowshoes? answer

What should you do if you get lost driving in a snow storm? answer

Today's Question
What is the greenest ski and snowboard on the market? answer

Can I really damage a coral reef with sunscreen while snorkeling? answer

What kind of dog will make me look manlier? answer
Is there a sport that safely combines my twin passions for guns and kayaks? answer
How come most of the world's cultures enjoy eating goat, but Americans don't? answer

Online Favorites

Special Issues

Photo Galleries

Outside Magazine October 2001

Page:

That's Entertainment cont'd.

By Mark Jenkins

"I'VE ALWAYS loved the water and I've always loved heights and I've always loved danger and speed," says Tao Berman, 22, stocky, crew-cut, alert, holder of three world records for extreme kayaking.

"I started kayaking when I was 14. By high school I was essentially kayaking full-time, doing first descents in the Cascades. I set my first world record right after high school, an 83-foot waterfall in Mexico.

"I hold the world record, a 98.4-foot waterfall. I've been on Dateline, Fox, Guinness Prime Time, Ripley's Believe It or Not; the list goes on and on. For the last seven years people have been saying I'm going to die. I'll let my track record speak for itself."

Berman—a Heretic morphing into a Professional—places fifth in the Gorge Games extreme whitewater kayaking competition.

DOWN AT THE Hood River marina, now showing on the Gorge Games' Jumbotron, kayakers are cartwheeling in boiling river waves that could drown a salmon. You catch only the flash of a helmet or hull before the minuscule boater is consumed by a collapsing wall of whitewater...only to miraculously pop out of the liquid avalanche seconds later, alive, upright, in control, even getting off a grin for the camera. The sound track is a roaring, in-your-face screecher titled "Kill the Jocks," from a band named Ethel My Love.

The crowd sitting on the grass watching the screen is composed of tan, fit people. Dads in Oakleys with microbrews in hand listen while their 15-year-old daughters describe the tricks the kayakers are performing. Moms with the dead-giveaway midquadriceps bike-racer's tan line bounce their sleeping toddlers in bright-colored joggers. Shirtless adolescent boys with impressively ugly tattoos and ripped torsos project cool for girls wearing halter tops and belly-button rings. And of course, assorted writers, photographers, and other freelance outdoor devotees swarm.

It's a miniature Left Coast Olympic village, the Gorge Games being the closest thing we have to an Olympics of the outdoor world. There are nine disciplines (so far): adventure racing, sport climbing, whitewater kayaking, kiteboarding, windsurfing, outrigger canoeing, 24-hour mountain biking, 49er sailing, and trail running. These competitions have their roots in adventure, but they are no longer adventures. (Just like, say, fencing or archery or judo or Greco-Roman wrestling, which were all life-and-death disciplines for several thousand years before they became Olympic events.) Adventures take too long and can have unpredictable results, and they are hard to turn into TV.

Along the perimeter of the arena are the tents of the Gorge Game sponsors, including Irish Spring, Paul Mitchell, Nautica, Yahoo! Sports Outdoors, Leave No Trace, and SoBe. In the center of the circus is a four-sided, steeply overhung sport-climbing cube and, beside it, the premier sponsorship location, festooned with banners and impressive signage, reserved for the title sponsor of the 2001 Gorge Games: Subaru.

"We're here because all of our consumers do these sports," says Isabella Patty, 29, promotions and sponsorship specialist for Subaru of America. "It's our way of supporting them, supporting the athletes, giving back and saying thank you. Subaru owners are so loyal. I can't tell you how many of these kayakers and windsurfers are in ten-year-old Subarus."

"You've got to have a big title sponsor to pull off an event like this," states Peggy Lalor, 43, former competitive windsurfer and founder of the Gorge Games. "It takes a lot of money to run the event, and it takes dough to have significant prize money to draw the top pro athletes so that you've got a story worth telling on national TV. If you don't have the pros, you don't have TV. If you don't have TV, you don't have exposure. If you don't have exposure, you can't get a big sponsor. You've got to have all the pieces to make it work."

THAT NIGHT PEGGY takes me to Jack's, a locally celebrated bad-decor bar, where we drink "scorpions"—fruit bowls of alcohol. Everybody's out on the town again. Athletes, sponsors, groupies. It's one big party.

I strike up a conversation with a guy named Will. He has a bachelor's degree in environmental studies and a law degree, but he tends bar in Hood River—the classic lifestyler. "I would flip burgers to live in this town. I would! Bartending's actually perfect. Short hours, good money. A three-sport day is always the goal. Mountain bike in the morning, windsurf in the afternoon, the bars at night. Five years ago there were ten guys for every girl. Now, I gotta tell you, it's good, it's real good."

"I LEARNED HOW to climb at a mall in Indianapolis," says Tori Allen, 13, professional climber and winner of the Gorge Games women's bouldering competition. Tori is four-foot-eight, weighs 78 pounds, can do 42 pull-ups, and started climbing only two and a half years ago.

Page: