That Dude Is Gonna Die. Cool

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Even those not as famous as Hawk inspire intense reactions. On Friday, the first day of competition, a young woman in a tight tank top that reads I DIG YOUR BOYFRIEND stands with several hundred fans cheering on a 13-year-old female Japanese in-line skater flying off a giant wooden ramp. "Go bigger!" she keeps yelling. "Go bigger!" Translation: the objective of the competitions isn't to be the most graceful or the most strategic, but to be the one doing the most foolhardy thing possible. "The Olympics are kind of old," says spectator Leo Szumel, 19, from Santa Cruz, Calif. "These are more dangerous, more exciting to watch."

It is not always easy to appreciate the excitement. There are no team sports and few ways of objectively measuring results. And while these are amazing athletes, that doesn't necessarily mean the same thing as it does in other athletic endeavors. Sure, they're the best sky surfers on the planet, but how many people want to be sky surfers?

In the final analysis, that's not what these events are about. Sure, sometimes there are moments of true, gravity-defying beauty, but more often it's the rush of watching Evel Knievel, the chance that someone will blow it completely. Wide World of Sports, which learned the value of a good spill from the classic ski-jumping crash it used in its opening credits, has been highlighting the great spills. Sweet.

--Reported by Jeff Galbraith/San Diego