I’m really crappy at sports and my lack of athleticism won’t allow me to get picked in the neighborhood pickup games.  That’s how sad my life could be sometimes.  That’s until I discovered the internet earlier this year where I can partake in all sorts of pseudo athletic activities.  I’m in a fantasy basketball league, a fantasy mixed martial arts league, and even a fantasy Lord Of the Rings league.  I play Frodo. 

The fantasy realm is crossing over into the action sports world.  MotoXDream.com gives supercross fans to live the life of their favorite motocross athletes.  Whether you’re a rookie or a seasoned vet, playing MotoXDream Fantasy Supercross is super easy. All you have to do is choose 4 riders from each class every week. Then you just sit back and enjoy the race, because MotoXDream will keep track of your points and position throughout the series.

Headlining and offering up the grand prize, MotoSport.com, has provided Tommy Hahn’s 2008 MotoSport Xtreme Kawasaki KX450F team bike. This scooter isn’t a replica, it’s the real deal. This race bike will be given to the overall winner of the series. On top of that, the weekly swag prizes for the top finishers of each race will be getting quality goodies from this years sponsors like Von Zipper, FMF Casual, No Fear MX, Cycra Racing, Fox, Shift Racing, Sixsixone, EVS Protection, Spy Optics, Rider Down Foundation, MotoSpace.com, and MotoSport.com.

The cost to play will be $25. Before you wonder why you should pay, besides the opportunity to win a fabulous Race Bike and weekly swag, MotoSport will donate $5 of the sign up fee to the Rider Down Foundation. And you’ll receive a $20 gift certificate to MotoSport.com. Basically, it’s only going to cost you a donation of $5 to a great organization helping our fallen riders.

You’ve been through that predicament.  You’re watching a sick ROLLERBLADING video with all your closest homies at your mom’s house munching on some Rice Crispy treats and Bobby all of a sudden screams in his girliest voice, “Damn dawg!  Did you see that spot ARLO EISENBERG was totally shredding?  We gots ta hit dat spot up dawgs!  Who’s wit me!??” 

Unfortunately for you, Arlo, and your dawgs, you had no clue where that spot was.  Why?  One reason is because Rollerbladers probably get beaten up at that spot by wandering jocks in lowered S-10 pickups or simply because you and your friends just don’t know.  All of us have experienced this hype from watching skateboard, snowboard, surf, and HEELY vids, just to later be let down due to little or no info on these certain spots. 

Well we now live in 2008, close to 2009 and long are the days when we don’t know squat.  We can literally pull the encyclopedia out of our ass pockets and look up anything in the entire universe, 24/7.  Well ad NEW BREEDERS to your favorites list  (next to HOTORNOT.COM) because now, you can look up any spot in the entire world, any time.  Ever wonder where and how you can get to that spot Arlo was tearing things up?  Look it up on New Breeders.  Ever been on a road trip and you find some obscure city and wondered where to go?  New Breeders will lead you there. 

Check it! 

The first knockout of a vehicle-sponsored tour is now official. When Jeep pulled out of paying for the winter version of 48 Straight, it was the end of the line. A simple message on the event web site says it all: “With news that Jeep has decided to no longer continue its sponsorship of Jeep 48Straight, the company has announced that the 2008-2009 winter event series has been canceled.”

Three stops had been scheduled; Telluride, Co. Dec. 12-14, Squaw Valley Jan.30-Feb. 1, and Sun Valley, Id. March 27-29. All three events featured pipe and cross comps for both skiers and snowboarders, and each stop was to be broadcast twice by CBS.

Some 60 pro snowboarders and skiers are now left out in the cold after planning their winter to allow for the competitions. The pipe and cross courses were considered among the best of any winter contests.

But the organization was plagued by bad luck that started when it was still called Jeep King of the Mountain. Top rider Tara Llanes crashed in the 2007 finals and was paralyzed from the waist down. Summer stops in 2008 were rained out, and the promised 48 straight hours of music were intermittent and soggy. Still, the series was looked on as a rising star in the world of action sports. Yet an economy that has car makers going to congress with hat in hand for a bailout doesn’t bode well for any of the many events sponsored by the auto industry—including freestyle skiing World Cups and the snowboard Grand Prix series.

48 Straight started out as the Honda Ski Tour. In 2007, Jeep replaced Honda, and the well-established Jeep King of the Mountain series became 48 Straight, offering exciting summer mountain bike cross-like competition and winter events. The summer bikecross stops offered one of the richest prize purses in mountain biking. Many saw the quickly growing summer series as a Dew Tour wannabe, with bands and a village, but with a major focus on helping the global environment.

Organizer Kipp Nelson worked frantically to come to some financial arrangement with Chrysler, the parent company of Jeep, but while the economic slide may allow automakers to fly to Washington on private jets to beg for taxpayer money, it evidently doesn’t allow the continuing sponsorship of an action sports tour.

Fans and athletes alike are disappointed. No word yet on whether the summer bike races part of 48 Straight will survive. But Nelson has said that when the economy recovers, it will be easy to get another sponsor and bring the tour back.

- Wina Sturgeon, Adventure Sports Weekly

Totino’s Pizza Rolls has a contest where you can enter a video on YouTube showing how you “bring the energy of the X Games to your favorite activity” and be entered to win the prize.  So that means it’s not limited to just what you see at the Summer and Winter X Game (Skating, BMX, snowboarding, etc.).   Pretty much everything you can do with a board (wake, skim, kite, etc.) and beyond is fair game and just show in the video how much style and flair you have — like you were doing it in your very own X Games competition.

After you upload your video, judges from Totino’s will pick the top three by Dec. 26 (you have until Dec. 10 to enter).  After that, YouTube users will get to pick the winner, who will be announced by ESPN on Jan. 25 during the ’09 Winter X Games.

The grand prize winner gets a fully-paid trip to Aspen with three friends in 2010 (plus $4K in spending cash).  The first finalist gets $5k in cash, and the 2nd finalist gets a year’s supply of Totino’s Pizza Rolls (52 boxes, to be exact).

Full disclosure — Totino’s advertises on Lat34, but we’d like this contest regardless.

To enter and for more information, check out the YouTube contest page at http://www.youtube.com/RollIntoTheXGames.

But it was the men’s race that was the stunner, just as it’s been during previous stops in New Jersey and Utah. Eric Carter got the season title, the cash and the car based on his overall results, though Brian Lopes won the day. The men’s races have been amazing all season. Leads by less than a wheel length. Finishes so close that judges had to scan and rescan photos of the runs.

Carter and Lopes, who 48Straight officials call “two of the most acclaimed racers in the history of the sport,” duked it out to the end. But Carter, who says he has tried for the title for six years, finally got the success he’s been dreaming of. “It’s funny because I didn’t feel so good on the course, and never really felt I had my rhythm, but I guess I was riding a lot faster than I thought because I had some good runs and knocked off some great competitors,” he said after his victory.

Those competitors would include Cody Warren and Greg Minnaar of South Africa, who won the stop in Utah by inches.

The total in prizes for each event and the overall titles comes to $100,000, the biggest purse in the sport. 48Straight has also been trying to grow its concept into something like the Dew Tour, but greener and with more music. Every event features sponsor booths like Paul Mitchell giving away product samples, and environmental booths giving away information. The series show shown phenomenal growth since changing to Jeep from the Honda Ski tour and adding summer events.

But now, trouble is looming ahead. Jeep has informed Troy Ballard, the Idaho-based owner of 48Straight, that the auto brand intends to renegotiate the terms of its sponsorship. Read “cut back.” No new deal has been announced, but since the first winter event is less than six weeks away, the new agreement has had little time to be finalized. At the moment, all of the scheduled events are still on.

The San Luis Obispo race will be shown on CBS sports on November 1, check your local listings for the time.  For more about the series, check out the official site.

San Luis Obispo Final Results

Men
1. Brian Lopes – Laguna Beach, Calif.
2. Eric Carter – Temecula, Calif.
3. Greg Minnaar – South Africa

Women
1. Fionn Griffiths – Great Britain
2.Melissa Buhl, Chandler, Ariz.
3. Kathy Pruitt – Santa Cruz, Calif.

by Wina Sturgeon
AdventureSportsWeekly.com

If you think mountain biking or BMX is dangerous because of the possibility of crashing, then you might not want to check out Muni.  UPDs (or unplanned dismounts to you and me) are a fact of life and there’s no such thing as coasting, given the mechanics of the unicycle.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t do just about everything you can do on a downhill mountain bike with a unicycle — in fact, you can probably do more.  Or at least different things.  And if you check out the video below of Kris Holm, an acknowledged legend in the sport, you will see a few things you might not ever see done on a regular bike (haven’t seen many bikes on the railings of bridges, myself).

Holm also promotes the sport with his Evolution of Balance Award, an annual grant that promotes “non-competitive mountain unicycling adventures in remote places around the world.”  Most recently, the grant was awarded to a group of riders who proposed a route across the isthmus of Panama.  They plan to follow through with the adventure next January.

Though the sport is growing, there are only an estimated 1,000 Muni riders in the United States, so mountain bikers don’t have to worry about sharing their trails too much any time soon.

For more about Kris Holm, check out KrisHolm.com.

Despite the best efforts of Mother Nature, the most intense contest in mountain biking was able to come to a close Monday with teenager Brandon Semenuk taking the win.

The 17-year-old, who qualified second for the finals, edged Kurt Sorge and Thomas Vanderham for the win.

Gee Atherton, who finished second in the 2004 Rampage contest and who qualified third for the finals, crashed before getting able to compete and was knocked out.  His brother, Dan Atherton, skipped the finals as a result giving Mike Kinrade, the first qualifier to miss the cut, a shot.  Kinrade made the most of it, finishing fourth.

The goal of Rampage is simple — to get from top to bottom, with style, amplitude, difficulty of line and fluidity all being considered in the final score.

This was the fifth edition of Rampage, with the first four taking place from 2001-2004.

For more about the contest, check out the official site RedBullRampage.com.

James Doerfling cr. Christian Pondella
Here are the full results.

1. Brandon Semenuk – $10,000
2. Kurt Sorge – $3,500
3. Thomas Vanderham – $2,000
4. Mike Kinrade – $1,300
5. Cameron Zink – $700
6. Mike Hopkins – $500
7. Cedric Gracia – $400
8. Graham Agassiz – $400
9. Kyle Strait – $300
10. Darren Berrecloth – $300
11. Robbie Bourdon – $300
12. Paul Basagoitia – $300
13. Cam McCaul
14. Michal Marosi
15. Gee Atherton DNS (did not start)

Best Trick ($5,000, presented by the Utah Sports Commission): Thomas Vanderham, no-hander over the 59-foot canyon gap.

Check out this story on Adventure Sports Weekly about the event.  South Africa’s Greg Minnaar and Arizona’s Melissa Buhl took the top spots in the contest.

Tara Llanes interviews rider Fionn Griffiths. cr. Wina Sturgeon