Skateboarding Through India


Extreme sports videos don’t get enough credit as artistic travelogues. For all the flinch-inducing, jaw-dropping athletic skill on display, the real star of extreme sports videos is often not the stunt-happy main character – it’s the backdrop. Take for instance Danny Macaskill’s rampart-flipping, phone booth-hopping mountain bike riding on the Isle of Skye. The video’s fine-grained camera work and textured shots show off his native northern Scotland in a way that virtually eclipses the bicycle trickery going on in the foreground. Another great example is Ryan Doyle’s parkour video in Dubai. His rolls and gainers through souks and off bagdirs are OK and everything, sure, but it’s the backdrop that shines through.

So it is as well with skateboarder Killian Martin’s new video above. As the freestyler spins and caspers his way through India, the director, Brett Novak, manages to sell the subcontinental playground better than most Indian tourism campaigns I’ve seen. The takeaway is clear: if you work for a tourism board, hire a wingsuit diver, an artistic extreme sports director and an indie band, and watch the tourists stream in.

Trials rider Danny MacAskill carves up Edinburgh

The video below, via Outside Magazine’s excellent blog, shows an amazing Scottish biketrials rider named Danny MacAskill absolutely running rampant all over Scotland’s capital.

If you’ve never heard of trials riding before, the sport (at it’s best) can feature a rider jumping fences, hopping up on roofs, doing flips off trees, and all sorts of other mind-boggling stunts– all without a foot touching the ground. Trials riding, incidentally, may also be the world’s most painful sport to learn.

Over 2.4 million people have already watched the video below, which really gets good at the 1:02 mark.