The Dying Game

Man this article truly hit home with me. Give it a read.....what do you think.

http://adventuresportsjournal.com/the-dying-game/


Why it hit home to me is because one of our crew lost his son this past summer in a cliff diving accident at the age of 20. His buds gave him the nickname Rockmon because he was so fuckin tough, I know where he got that from. Anyway, I remember Eric being a snot nosed kid ripping up Greek Peak, amazing to watch really. Many feel he had a pro skiing career ahead of him, some even think he would've been there if it wasn't for a couple of bad injuries that delayed him. Last year NewSchoolers did a video edit on Rockmon..... http://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/777991/Eric-Richardson-Season-14-15-SIP-?c=latest


I realize it's a tough decision but when does it all become too dangerous. At my age it's easy because I don't want to get hurt anymore. If my skis or the tires of my bike leave the snow/ground it's on accident. But for these young bucks it seems that going bigger and bigger is their way of life......

My favorite line from that article ..... "A true hero is the person with gray hair and sore muscles who on his 75th birthday is hiking to see that amazing sunrise over Lake Tahoe from the top of Rubicon Peak."

Oh man, sorry to hear about your friends son, his family, and their loss. I can't imagine that. Dying at 20 isn't right imo but this skiing stuff is a lot more dangerous than a lot of people often recognize. While watching Eric's edit it was obvious that he was an extremely gifted/talented young man.

It's a little scary what these sports have become. I'm feeling very fortunate to have made it to the point where the days of trying to be a bad ass or skiing tough guy are well behind me. I'm no longer bold and I'm stoked on getting old!

Wow, talk about a first world problem. I'm white, live in the mountains, and don't have to worry about a whole lot except screwing up my hucks.

I blame Red Bull. Skiing is one thing, but, man, have you seen that stuff they promote in film on MTBs? Holy crap. And yet, there will always be some kid with a lot of free time and low IQ and minimal fear factor wanting to be sponsored. Take that money away, and a lot of the problem is solved.

I guess one advantage of coming to the game so late is that I never developed the skills to take those kind of risks. I definitely ski too fast at times especially considering my bindings don't release.  Still I'd take slow 3D turns over ripping groomers any day.  I definitely feel in the most danger skiing groomers.

Interesting perspective from RA too.

Pendulums swing.  Maybe living to 75 will become the new cool.

First of Camp , sad to learn of this young man ,such a heartache for his friends and family . AT 73 next month i feel blessed to have made it this far with a very high quality of life and participation , yeah the open heart surgery  thing and now the hip replacement were / are speed bumps but many of my contemporaries are on the WRONG side of the grass.

So yeah i agree with the notion of a life well lived being celebrated in the 7th and 8 th decades of life . I have told many of you guys my close skiing partners are now in their 80's and still at it having beat cancer , heart , knee and hip replacement and other pretty serious stuff requiring surgery . But to a man they have attitude , desire ,a zest for living and stay in the best shape possible .

Me whatever  this thing called life throws my way i try VERY hard to simply focus on WHAT I CAN DO and my greatest joy is watching my adult sons and their sons rocking the mountain and when we are all together ,WELL that is SPECIAL . The eldest grandboy will be 5th yr of Rx school and the next one  will be a freshmen in PT in the fall ..so these are MAH BOYZ !!

Interesting topic Camp.  There's a similar phenomena in my other sporting passion of running.  Track and cross country running has morphed into pain competitions of ultra marathoning and triathaloning.  Running an impressive, competitive 5k time is no longer considered an impressive fete.  The new generation runner is more concerned with how far or how extreme as opposed to how fast.  At the current day running "water cooler" they would consider completing a 50 mile event more impressive than say fine tuning your training to run a sub 15 minute 5k.  Hucking a 30 foot cliff, and struggling to run 50 miles are both sporting examples of "who can hold their hand over the candle flame the longest."  They don't take much skill, they just test masocism thresshold.

That being said, man that kid could ski.  He was smooooooooth. Such a shame.

Our sports today has transitioned from the beautiful to the grotesque. The industry of Enterainment has taken it over, bigger jumps, bigger falls are all what sells and what sells is all that matters. I loved the movie "Chariots of fire" or the books "Unbroken" and "Boys in the Boat", these were stories about true athletes and at a time when it was pure. Last night the wife brought home the movie Concussion which highlighted just how sick we have become as a society about athletics. We need to get back to the purity and beauty of it and get the money and enterainment out.
 

Thanks for the kind words regarding Eric. Like any tragedy you eventually try and find the good, this one was certainly hard but at the end of the day it has brought our core group of friends closer. His dad is one of my good friends. He struggles everyday but he'll be fine.

To be honest both his dad and I cliff jumped at the same area when we were kids. BUT we weren't doing flips. We wouldn't even think of it. I applaud these guys in this article for attempting to bring awareness back into sports. Guys like RA and our buddy #14 got paid to push the limits and survived, granted with a wrap sheet of injuries but still survived. #14 has more hardware in his body than our local Lowes store

Harv, you brought up ability. I'm not so sure if it's ability or opportunity. What I mean is when I was a kid growing up skiing jumps were taboo. We'd build them and ski patrol would take them down - fuckers. But nowadays bigger badder jumps are being built for these kids to go into. Parks, pipes, gaps, rails, boxes, ramps, whatever are all getting bigger and bigger. And yea, people like GoPro, Red Bull, X-Games are all promoting that. How many flips are these guys doing now on 800lb sleds?!?! Seriously! Young men and woman are dying during these events and our society seems to accept that. IMO it's time to dial it back. Like others have said bring finesse back into our sport and take away some of the bad-ass mentality. Make it more for the love of the game.

I shared Erics story on here for 2 reasons. His ability was amazing and should be shared. He was born into it. He was on skis at 18mo's old.  His Grandfather was in the ski industry for a million years, and both his dad and uncle were on the US Ski Team. Second reason is for these young bucks. Live to ski tomorrow, being the badass on the hill is temporary.

Sorry to hear about your friend.

This came across my Facebook feed this morning: http://www.powder.com/stories/opinion/in-memory-of-matt-heffernan/#CRw1Bj8zZrWdiiXH.97

(not sure why because it happened last year?)

A similar cliff diving accident where flipping lead to drowning.

"Going big" has to stop somewhere. The pressure by friends or sponsors or whatever is leading to bigger jumps, bigger halfpipe walls, hucking bigger cliffs, etc. I don't think the fact that everyone has a camera most of the time helps.

PeeTex wrote

Our sports today has transitioned from the beautiful to the grotesque. The industry of Enterainment has taken it over, bigger jumps, bigger falls are all what sells and what sells is all that matters. I loved the movie "Chariots of fire" or the books "Unbroken" and "Boys in the Boat", these were stories about true athletes and at a time when it was pure. Last night the wife brought home the movie Concussion which highlighted just how sick we have become as a society about athletics. We need to get back to the purity and beauty of it and get the money and enterainment out.

 
I had a buddy tell me one night while we were perched up on top of bar stool mountain that blood sports are a sign that a civilization is in decline. I don't know how true that statement is but I thought it was really interesting and worth further thought, then I got really drunk.