ESPN Doesn’t Have Juice With Action Sports Athletes

If you know anything about ESPN, you probably know that it’s based in the relatively isolated hamlet of Bristol, CT.  For many sports buffs, this could be considered a utopia and, if your ESPN commercials are to be believed, you trip over athletes like Derek Jeter and LeBron James on a daily basis.

However, it looks like action sports athletes don’t have much interest in visiting the capital of sports.  In fact, when ESPN went calling to try and find skateboarders and BMX riders to help christen a new $500K skatepark opening in the town this weekend.

“We did make an effort to get some action sports athletes here, but were unable to do so,” said ESPN spokesman Rob Tobias.  “Their schedules are pretty tight.”

No doubt if the skatepark was being opened in a place that wasn’t hours from civilization, those tight schedules would open up (I suspect I have at least half-a-dozen pros in my cell phone who are doing nothing this weekend).

ESPN (home of something called the X Games) did try and make up for its inability to bring in anyone of note by donating some safety gear and skateboards that were used when Bristol hosted the X Trials (a prelim comp for the X Games)…  back in 2001.  I guess no X Games decks were left over from this year’s thousands that were given away and sold at the event…