What Pros Use

Christian Maurer is the X-alps paragliding champ — in ordinary-joe-speak it translates to: birdman. For many of us, flying means confining ourselves in an alloy fuselage 5 miles up with air hostesses asking whether we’d like chicken or beef with our MRE’s meals. These birdmen must brave the elements while suspended thousands of feet above ground hunting thermals.

Paragliding is similar to parachuting; the major differences are the control and ability to traverse distance by riding natural lifts called thermals.

That's a mannequin in the window right?

The X-Alps is a 2 week adventure race where top pilots navigate the European alps. Whoever arrives first wins. Easy-peasy-lemon-squeezy right? Well not really, our participants are expected to camp in harsh conditions, hike up mountains to launch points, fly through high elevation passes, and NOT DIE. They can only fly and hike their way to the finish line 800km away.

Christian has arrived first in the X-alps twice and holds the Swiss and World cup titles. This winged man is probably more comfortable in the air than on land.

This is a bit off beat for @WhatProsUse[1]. Today we’ll be examining Ari Marcopoulos, a man who helped define a generation of extreme sports through photography.

Extreme sports is a term cultivated in the 90′s by marketing henchmen because they didn’t know what to call emerging activities like skateboarding, snowboarding, waterboarding (too soon?). They could have just defined them under sport but that’s not edgy enough. So over a decade later we have extreme in all of it’s variations[2] attached to rather pedestrian words like:

• Extreme Pizza – welcome to the house of rad, eat your fill
• Extreme Networks – as if computing couldn’t get more extreme [3]
• Extreme Music – really just loud noises
• Extreme Games - chess boxing should be included

Ari Marcopoulos’ camera trigger finger rivals that of a professional eSportsman. He gave the rest of us neophytes a glimpse at Californian subcultures responsible for changing what young kids in everywhere thought was extreme/awesome/rad/gnarly. Here is Ari Marcopoulos’ camera gear.

1. Frequent topics include: sports [↩]
2. Extreme, xtreme, x-treme, extra-cream [↩]
3.  Source [↩]

My lofty aspirations as a child amounted to getting paid to play video games. I didn’t want to be a policeman or firefighter, 12-year-old me wanted to be: Jung Jong Hyun. This ungodly being has returned to us from the future to foreshadow what is to become of sporting. Jung dominates one of the only sports where you make up your own nickname: Starcraft II. Jung will henceforth be referred to as his handle MVP.

"This is my index finger"

Let me tell you a bit about Starcraft. It is the most popular competitive videogame on Earth. At the center of this popularity is the nation of South Korea, where matches are broadcast on live TV, streamed over the internet, casted by nerds professionals and viewed through the spectacles of millions. The life of a young Korean prospect is lived entirely in training. Promising young gamers under the age of twenty (reaction times deteriorate as you age) are sequestered in a team house where they spend over twelve hours a day bathed in the cold glow of their computer screens.

Do not let your luddite bias skew the fact that these advanced beings are the real deal. Starcraft pro-gaming in South Korea[1] is backed by mega-corporations like Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Blizzard, Intel, and any other technology company you can think of. At the top of the heap is MVP, whose tournament earnings alone net upwards of $250k, not to mention sponsorships. This puts him a few bags of money above most UFC fighters, and he doesn’t have to get punched in the face for a living. His only worries are aging and carpal tunnel syndrome.

MVP is a fitting name for the winningest eSportsmen of 2011. Short of mass human extinction, this is the future of sporting.

1. the US and Europe aren’t far behind [↩]

Although fancy sports like competition yachting, golf, and tennis are bastions for latte sipping 1%ers, it does not lessen the worth of their champions. We’ll be focussing on tennis today. There are very few things required for tennis greatness, among them are superhuman endurance, cat-like flexibility and flawless technique. At the upper echelon, tennis is as much a battle for court position as a contest of baseline-forearms[1].

Every few years a new king is inaugurated to reign over us plebes. My introduction to tennis was watching  Federer mercilessly crush competition, I then spectated as Nadal wrestled the crown from Roger’s iron eastern grip, and most recently: the Djokovic coup.

Year-over-year the top dogg’s seem more dominant than their predecessors. So with 2012 likely being the year of Djokovic, it’s safe to assume that he’s the best tennis player on earth, and perhaps ever? This is Djokovic’s tennis gear; and yes, it’s all gluten free.

1. oh how exciting… [↩]

The Ironman is the unholy spawn of endurance racing, cross training and suffering on earth. This three-headed chimera of a sport breaks down into three sections:

• Swimming 2.4 miles
• Running a marathon ~26miles
• Bicycling a +century (over 100 miles)

In 2011, there were 1773 finishers. The worlds population is 6.8 billion. That means only 2.59191314 × 10^-7 % of humans had the fortitude to even complete the task. They say people have a hard time processing extremely large numbers, which is probably why the 99% of us still don’t understand the causes of the Global Financial Crisis 2008[1]. To give you an idea of the awe inspiring magnitude of just how infinitesimal the probability really is: you have a better chance of winning the lottery.

The challenge is insurmountable for mere mortals like us. Those that have made it are miracles of nature, even when they have to crawl to the finish line after soiling themselves. 2011 was the year of three time winner of the Ironman: Craig Alexander. This is Craig Alexanders bike & triathlon gear.

1. see what I did there; fix your pitiful lack of knowledge with This American Life [↩]