Extreme sport: Lucrative thrills

By CATHRIN SCHAER

Most of his relatives think he's a bum. "They ask me when I'm going to get a real job," says Dave Bodnar, the prize-winning skateboarder from Australia who's been in New Zealand competing at the Vodafone X-Air national extreme games and who makes a living throwing himself off ramps on a piece of wood with four wheels.

But judging by Bodnar's latest results - first in the amateur championships in California, second at the Australian X-Games and first in the Asian X-Games - the 24-year-old Sydneysider probably has more earning potential than most of his more sensibly employed cousins.

Meanwhile Rhys Dulieu, New Zealand's only professional freestyle motocross rider, has had a hard day at the office.

"I got into it because I wasn't very good at standard motocross. I kept coming last," Dulieu explains, laughing.

But he had a talent for getting big air and doing tricks. Then, during a working holiday in Australia, the 25-year-old Wellingtonian met another rider who convinced him to enter an extreme sports event in Melbourne. "I made it right through to the main event."

And he's been carrying a motorbike helmet to work instead of a hammer since. (He was a builder.)

Dulieu has been perfecting a new trick. Called the Matrix, it involves standing on the handlebars, barely touching the motorbike. It also involves jumping up to 20m in the air and covering up to 33m as you go. Hardly surprising then that he has a bit of a recurring injury.

After more than his fair share of broken bones, the 25 year-old Wellingtonian has been recovering from a groin strain which meant a spell from his bike of two weeks. But the realities of this kind of career mean that he's competing today and had to keep practising despite the injury.

"The old body gets a bit of a beating," he groans.

If he can perfect a trick of his own invention, perform it in front of an audience and the right photographers, Dulieu too could soon be earning more than Bodnar's sensibly employed cousins.

How things have changed in the world of alternative or "extreme" sports.

Once "real" athletes run, swam or played rugby.

They didn't travel the world leaping off man-made structures, spinning mid-air circles on a BMX bike or skateboard. But, these days, practitioners of alternative or extreme sports can earn a very nice living indeed - especially if they're based in America.

Just as there are international circuits travelled by professional golfers, surfers and racing-car drivers, over five or six years a circuit has developed for extreme athletes.

It started with the X-Games in the United States. This is a set of competitions held in winter and summer to accommodate disciplines such as snowboarding and wakeboarding. It was started by the ESPN television network.

The first Extreme Games were in June 1995, and included nine categories of what television executives termed action sport. This included windsurfing, bungy jumping and mountain biking (all have since been replaced by other sports).

Almost 200,000 spectators attended and even more watched it on TV. The event was so successful that the sports network continued putting it on every year, relocating, renaming the event X-Games, adding a winter version and attracting more crowds (almost 300,000 at last year's event).

There are now also several competing events, such as Fox Network's Gravity Games, as well as international versions of the X-Games in places such as Asia and Australia.

In New Zealand there's the Vodafone X-Air which started last weekend and finishes this weekend in Hamilton.

Another comparable affair would be the Rip Curl Heli-Challenge, an annual extreme snow sports event in Wanaka.

Perhaps, because of the way it began, as a television show, the extreme sports circuit isn't like the Olympics, in that it's not always necessarily about competing. It's half-sport, half-entertainment.

There will often be suitably alternative bands or DJs accompanying the sports. Additionally an all-important part of the extreme circuit is the demonstration - this is where riders of all kinds are paid to show off their mad skills to an audience.

As the popularity of these extreme events grows, so does the prize money.

Where once first place in a contest meant a couple of hundred dollars, if you were lucky, now a gold medallist in vert skateboarding or BMX events at the X-Games can win anything between $NZ26,000 and $38,000. The pool of prize money at the X-Games sits at around $US1 million.

But for some athletes, who can earn more than $NZ240,000 a year, this is only the icing on the extreme-sports cookie.

Their regular monthly income comes mostly from sponsorships and endorsements with the best athletes being sponsored by several of the companies who make the clothing they wear and the equipment they use.

Most have several major sponsors for sunglasses, shoes, clothing, equipment and their mobile phone, perhaps, and several of those sponsors will be handing over cold, hard cash in the form of a monthly retainer as well as the free goodies.

Sponsors also pay for their athletes to travel and to enter competitions so that the fans can see the free goodies in action.

In return, the athletes attempt to receive plenty of media coverage while wearing the sponsor's T-shirt or riding the sponsor's bike. If they score a part in a video or feature in a popular sporting magazine, they may receive a bonus from the sponsor.

The point is that when the legions of fans see their hero using Brand X, they too will want to use that brand.

For the sponsor, it's all about reflected glory, or looking cool by association.

These kinds of deals can become even more lucrative when an athlete has a signature model of shoe, skateboard, bike or electronic game.

The gear bears their name and they may even have helped to design it. There are rumours of million-dollar deals being done overseas with regard to these kinds of endorsements.

However there are obviously different levels of income. Some skateboarders will arrive on the council bus, others will turn up in a late-model Mercedes.

While American action-men such as skateboarder Tony Hawk and BMX rider Dave Mirra are certainly millionaires, local boys Bodnar and Dulieu are hovering around the middle to lower end of the earning spectrum.

Bodnar is sponsored by SMP clothing, Genetic shoes and Electric Visual; Dulieu by Etnies shoes, Split Clothing and Maidstone Yamaha, among others.

They both receive regular cheques from their sponsors as well as keeping whatever they win at competitions and being paid by organisers for their parts in various demonstrations.

And judging by current form, they both look destined for bigger and better. That's if injury doesn't bring about early retirement at the ripe old age of 26.

Of course, there's still some controversy around today's earning potential for extreme athletes.

While sponsorships are seen as an acceptable fact of life, even desirable to most riders, some of the extreme events are more questionable.

Some competitors see it as "selling out" while others are more amenable, considering it a way to make a living doing something they love.

For instance, at the X-Games in the United States last year, verbal blows were traded on the skateboard ramp. One outspoken skateboarder, Matt Dove, won the prize for best vert trick and $NZ26,000 with it. But he did so wearing a T-shirt on which he had written "Extreme $ Profits Network" in reference to the ESPN network making money out of exploiting skateboarding.

Mark Reiter, one American professional skateboarder's agent, says: "It's high time that these athletes were rewarded for the fact that they go out and risk life and limb every day. For the most part, they do it for the fun of it. But if somebody's going to skate a 15-foot ramp in front of a TV camera, they should be paid on the scale that other professional athletes are being paid.

"The Gravity Games was on a major television network in the middle of the afternoon. What were they competing against? Golf, football, and NASCAR. The skateboarders weren't getting paid 1 per cent of what those guys were getting. To me, that's full-on exploitation."

At present sport-specific and youth-oriented companies do most of the sponsoring but as more mainstream corporations figure out that this is one of the best ways to target the youth and/or hip market, there are bound to be more opportunities.

So how does all this work here in New Zealand?

In a time when the popularity of traditional sports appears to be waning, should local boys and girls forget the rugby league and netball and take up skateboarding?

Probably not - unless they plan on moving to America. Or perhaps Australia, where both Bodnar and Dulieu are based. Neither could do what they love for a living in New Zealand.

Even in Australia Dulieu reckons there are only about 10 full-time FMX riders in Australia, with another 10 riding part-time. To make his money he rides in demonstrations most weekends around Australia and New Zealand.

While he's loving it, Bodnar isn't exactly a multi-millionaire yet.

"I wouldn't even call it a job," he says. "But to be able to do what I want, to travel around the world and earn enough money to scrape by and have a good time, well, that has to be the best."

The constraints of a smaller market and the fact that most big equipment manufacturers are located overseas means that, although recently youth-oriented mobile phone companies such as Boost have been getting in on the act, sponsorship deals here are not particularly lucrative.

The X-Air event, which started this weekend in Hamilton, has cash prize money but at $40,000 in total it's not really enough for anyone to live on.

That's despite the fact that, if it airs on all the international television channels it's supposed to, it's going to be the biggest televised event coming out of this country after the America's Cup.

It's also, event director Mark Wright, says "a boutique event". Wright, who started X-Air four years ago to provide a forum for his own favourite sport, wake boarding, had been approached about making the event a qualifier for the American X-Games.

But he decided against it. "Some overseas events are so much manufactured as media products that they lose all their essential goodness, which is a whole bunch of people having fun with their mates. While there are still some negative perceptions about these kinds of sports, I think, in general, the public's opinions have changed.

"With the music and the action I think we create something that someone from a traditional sporting background would enjoy as much as any 12-year-old kid in baggy pants."

* The final water-sports-specific part of the X-Air is on today at Hora Hora Domain, Lake Karapiro, from 11 am to 5 pm.