In that heady and burlesome time knowed to some as the 2000s, a quest for immortality consumed the skateboarding class. With mall shops and mail order ware-housers moving mass quantities of boards and shoes, it was a good time to be a pro; video game and beverage manufacturers slathered sponsorship funding across contests and podium-climbers, expanding the auto fleets and real estate holdings of the chosen ones. The world at their fingertips, a few skaters made it their business to ensure that their names would never be forgotten to history’s foggy fogs, seeking position in that ‘forever-tome’ of human achievement, the Guinness Book of World Records.
No less than Andy Macdonald set it off in the fourth quarter of 1999, collaborating with ‘Swatch Watches’ to achieve a 52-foot backside grab and a 41-foot 360, using ramps purpose-built for the feat in a ‘secret location in East Lansing, Mich.’ Danny Way would respond with his own world record grab, a 23-foot-six-inch highest air on a skateboard, a benchmark he would go on to top multiple times. Bob Burnquist would go on to construct the world’s largest skateboard ramp — reportedly defined as an agricultural structure to evade local zoning masters — while Rob Dyrdek dedicated a segment of his ‘Phantasy Phactory’ cable TV programme to obliterating more than 20 skateboarding world records. This effort included the much-contested record for world’s largest skateboard, a title originally held by Tod Swank and the Foundation team in the late 1990s before its brief capture by certain Michigan community college students in 2007.
Chris Athans, GX/Deep Fried technician of the more feared grades, has in mid-2023 secured his place in ‘the game.’ His impossibles reliably wrap and he may be the best backside wallrider working today, demonstrating on video capabilities that include nosemanualing out, or manualing into a backside wallride backside 180, or presumably any other varietal that crosses his mind. With Fred Gall shorn, speculation abounds that Chris Athans could possess the most-recognizable man bun on the modern scene.
Yet, much like the fabled ‘supermassive’ black hole, the allure and gravitational girth of the world record can be hard to resist. Chris Athans this week hit again via ‘Back to My World,’ another reliably-soundtracked Deep Fried entry, bringing to bear his flick and poise in the steeps — and midway through the first section, a submission toward an as-yet untapped Guinness World Record. After frontside tailsliding a block-topping brick, he takes a few Sean Young pushes and speeds through the flat and then up the opposite hill, before carving around to wallride a slatted fence and whip out of a 360 flip on the way back down. Guinness Book officials presumably still are stretching their measuring tapes and studying GPS coordinates, but it is difficult to conceive of this clip representing anything other than the largest bank ever skated.
Could the fusion of Yay Area hill-bomb courage and lust for World Record-setting bring motocross-bike assists down hills, enabling bigger conquests and higher opposite-face carves that could tingle the attentions of the Guinness powerbrokers? Might a future GX1000 rain clip 360 flip augur for the GWR of ‘wettest tre,’ or only serve to confuse? Were you personally aware that the world record for consecutive varials done on a halfpipe record stands at a measly nine, seemingly ripe for the toppling?
Tags: Alec Guinness, Andy MacDonald, backside wallrides, Chris Athans, Danny Way, Deep Fried, Duty Now For The Future, Foundation Super Co, high and far jumps, hills and walls, Oh My Guinness, Phantasy Star, Rob Dyrdek, The Game by Richie Rich, world record embankments
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