Josh Stafford, a 15-year old Point Loma resident, took third place in the skateboarding vert event at X Games 12 in Los Angeles this month.
Stafford began his journey to the X-Games six years ago.
“My good friends’ dad helped build the old Mission Valley Skate Park, which was later moved to Clairemont. After that I fell in love with skateboarding and have been doing it ever since,” Stafford said.
The vert event is a basically a vertical ramp shaped like a U that allows the skater to fly into the air and land back onto the ramp but while in the air the skater can perform tricks like a flip or spin that they ordinarily cannot do on a flat surface.
“The scoring is based on a combination of flipping the board, getting high enough on the ramp and good style,” he noted.
Stafford said he hopes to build on his third-place finish this year to qualify for the 2007 games.
“Usually the people that did well the previous year have a good chance at making it back the following year,” Stafford said. “There are other factors to qualifying like contest standings throughout the year and how much coverage you can get in video and magazines.”
The X Games’ alternative edge has kept the event hovering under the mainstream radar, which has fueled its popularity for more than a decade. The first games were held in the New England area in 1995 and 1996 before moving out west to San Diego at Mariners’ Point by Belmont Park for two years. The event then traveled up the coast to the bay area from 1999 to 2000, across the country to Philadelphia until 2002, eventually returning to the west coast in 2003, where it has remained ever since.
The summer X-Games are composed of five sports: skateboarding, freestyle BMX, moto BMX, surfing and rallying.
Due to the popular demand, a winter edition was added in 1997 to incorporate the colder side of extreme sports, including snowboarding.