Extreme Sports

Rodney Jones and the Mongoose Stunt Team are planning to visit Carroll Park's Skate Park tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow to teach extreme sports moves. The event -- which is free and open to the public -- comes in advance of the AST Dew Tour stop next week at the 1st Mariner Arena. The block party, which is sponsored by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks, will include youth and adult biking and skating contests, with prizes to be awarded to the winners.

The Olympics are expanding and have been for decades. Ancient Olympians would hardly recognize the international competition for what it once was. While the slate of events for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro is mostly set, the drawing board is full of possibilities for 2020. The host city hasn't yet been named for 2020 - it's between Istanbul, Tokyo and Madrid. Also yet to be determined is which sports, if any, will be added to the ever-growing list of events. Baseball certainly has a strong case to return.

The Dew Tour will not return to Baltimore this summer. The action sports tour, which features skateboarding, BMX and other extreme sports, started in Baltimore in 2007, returned in 2008 and was expected to make its third appearance at Camden Yards this year. Instead, the Dew Tour will begin its schedule in Chicago in late June and will make its Boston debut in late July. The chance to break into two larger markets with a new format showcasing individual sports was too great to pass up, said Chris Prybylo, the tour's vice president of events.

1. Dew Tour 2011 I will never be cool enough to be a skateboarder. Or a BMXer. Generally, extreme sports ... out. But that doesn't mean I can't watch pros such as Bucky Lasek, Shaun White and Ryan Nyquist do their action-sports thing for the tour's first stop in Ocean City Thursday-Sunday. Bonus: Kid Cudi plays a free show Saturday. Ocean City Pier, 4001 Coastal Highway. $24-$29 (includes festival village access). dewtouroc.com 2. 'Captain America: The First Avenger' A beyond-buff Chris Evans stars as dude-turned-superhero who loves him some red, white and blue shield and hates him some Nazis.

"I have nothing to prove to anyone," Jan Davis says of her favorite outdoor pastime. "I do it because I enjoy it."Lulled by the slow, warm voice -- she sounds like the grandmother she is -- you might imagine that the subject is orchid-growing or birding.Ms. Davis is, in fact, talking about making a 3,212-foot parachute drop from a cliff at Venezuela's Angel Falls, the world's highest cataract. This harrowing leap, which Ms. Davis says about 80 people have made, is a quintessential "extreme" sport as the word is defined by risk-addicted outdoor athletes.

DULLES, Va. -- It was a skateboarder's dream. Representatives of mall security were standing just feet away, staring at the performers, but weren't obliged to do a thing as the skaters rode around, flipping their boards with their feet, grinding on curbs and jumping over skateboards set up as mini-obstacles. The youths rode freely with smiles and without worry of official trouble, freedom granted them by the appearance of the Mobile Skatepark Series (MSS), which took over a small square of land for the weekend at the Dulles Town Center.

DULLES, Va. - The coveted 900. Before May, only one man, the legendary Tony Hawk, had pulled it off on a skateboard in competition. That changed on Mother's Day at the Latin X Games, when Sandro Dias finally landed the trick. After six months of repeatedly trying to put the 900 down, Dias, the top-ranked vert skateboarder in the world, completed the 2 1/2 revolutions. He did it in his native Brazil, in front of his mother, other family members, friends and some of his most dedicated fans.

CRESWELL, Ore. - Josh Ryker is hurtling toward Earth at a mile a minute - and he couldn't be happier. He wishes he could get down even faster. After this late-afternoon skydive - known as an accelerated free fall - he's going to jump in a car with friends and race to Mount Hood to bungee jump before 9 p.m., when he officially turns 18. Then his life-so-far goal of doing all "extreme sports" will be met. "I got addicted to the adrenaline rush," Ryker...

WOODWARD, Pa. -- It's move-in day at Woodward Camp, and the veteran boys in Cabin 18-B are observing time-honored camp traditions: swapping stories about how to dodge the cabin-inspecting "mini-moms," laughing about the French-speaking camper they taught to say "I am a sex machine" last year. The guys are also talking sports. But there's no mention of Kobe Bryant, the White Sox, or going out for the football team. This being Woodward Camp -- the world's biggest "extreme sports" camp -- they're talking nollies and grinds, about ways they've bent gravity on Woodward's 425 acres of dirt moguls, wooden ramps, and foam-rubber pits, about the joys of being outlaw athletes in training.

Good news for surfer dudes and dudettes: For the first time in a generation, Ocean City has decided to establish a section of beach that surfers can call their own. Located near the Ocean City Inlet, the block-long surfing spot will be theirs exclusively on weekdays but will revert to a swimmers' beach on the crowded weekends as part of a summer-long experiment. As the participants might say, it's a totally epic move by the big kahunas, man. In recent years, Ocean City has allowed surfing in the early mornings and during the evenings - when it doesn't interfere with other beachgoers - and on a rotating basis at selected beaches.

The Dew Tour will not return to Baltimore this summer. The action sports tour, which features skateboarding, BMX and other extreme sports, started in Baltimore in 2007, returned in 2008 and was expected to make its third appearance at Camden Yards this year. Instead, the Dew Tour will begin its schedule in Chicago in late June and will make its Boston debut in late July. The chance to break into two larger markets with a new format showcasing individual sports was too great to pass up, said Chris Prybylo, the tour's vice president of events.

Good news for surfer dudes and dudettes: For the first time in a generation, Ocean City has decided to establish a section of beach that surfers can call their own. Located near the Ocean City Inlet, the block-long surfing spot will be theirs exclusively on weekdays but will revert to a swimmers' beach on the crowded weekends as part of a summer-long experiment. As the participants might say, it's a totally epic move by the big kahunas, man. In recent years, Ocean City has allowed surfing in the early mornings and during the evenings - when it doesn't interfere with other beachgoers - and on a rotating basis at selected beaches.

Rodney Jones and the Mongoose Stunt Team are planning to visit Carroll Park's Skate Park tomorrow from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. tomorrow to teach extreme sports moves. The event -- which is free and open to the public -- comes in advance of the AST Dew Tour stop next week at the 1st Mariner Arena. The block party, which is sponsored by the Baltimore City Department of Recreation and Parks, will include youth and adult biking and skating contests, with prizes to be awarded to the winners.

In cross country circles, it's known as "The Dip" -- a painfully steep ravine in the middle of Hereford High School's cross country course, the home of the state championship meet. Through the years, the course has swallowed the dreams of many runners. To some, the mere thought of it is enough to do the trick. "I was not mentally ready," recalled Dulaney senior Vince Walsh of his initial meeting with "The Dip." "I'd heard so much about it and I was extremely scared, and I ran a terrible race."

We're a week into the Winter Olympics and I'm starting to think that maybe the sports world has passed me by. Did somebody say halfpipe is now an Olympic event? I had a stoner friend back in college who told me it would come to this, but I didn't believe him. I also had a friend who dressed like Johnny Weir and was equally unashamed to be a little "princessy," but there was a thing back then called etiquette that prevented us - and, I presume, the media - from asking probing questions about his most personal preferences.

TURIN, Italy-- I have a hard time picturing Jesse Owens spinning around a few feet before the finish line and moonwalking the last few steps. And I just can't envision the 1980 U.S. hockey team lining up on the blue line as the final seconds tick away and kicking their legs into the air like the Rockettes. And can you possibly see Michael Phelps finishing up the breaststroke and leaping out of the water like a dolphin? No, someone was angling for a new endorsement deal. Quick, get Oscar Mayer on the line, stat!

TURIN, Italy-- I have a hard time picturing Jesse Owens spinning around a few feet before the finish line and moonwalking the last few steps. And I just can't envision the 1980 U.S. hockey team lining up on the blue line as the final seconds tick away and kicking their legs into the air like the Rockettes. And can you possibly see Michael Phelps finishing up the breaststroke and leaping out of the water like a dolphin? No, someone was angling for a new endorsement deal. Quick, get Oscar Mayer on the line, stat!

Today and tomorrow over at Adventure World in Largo, you'll have a chance to see -- and do, if you dare -- the "extreme" sports: professional skateboarders careening down pavement at 60 mph with no brakes, bikers soaring 18 feet above ground, jumpers plummeting from a 200-foot tower attached to a bungee cord.ESPN has thrown up a small city of ramps and jumps for the third annual X Games Experience, a traveling exhibit spinning off the annual X Games competitions. The cable network is inviting "everyday athletes" to show off their talents.

A tall, fit-looking guy in a black helmet and matching elbow and kneepads whipped back and forth across the Sawmill Creek Skateboard Park in Glen Burnie on Sunday, whamming up and down a quarter-pipe, the steel pyramid, and grinding along a rail. He lost his balance only a couple times in about 20 minutes - nothing serious. He stopped every now and then for a slurp of sports beverage, perspiration noticeable. Ah, kids, an unknowing passer-by on Dorsey Road or baseball and softball players nearby in the Anne Arundel County park might sniff.

Some of the world's best skateboarders are coming to downtown Baltimore this weekend for a two-day extreme skateboarding and BMX biking jam session mingled with performances by regional and national rock bands. "It's a chance to see world-renowned athletes skate a big ramp," said Buster Halterman, a California-based professional skateboarder who will be showing off aerial maneuvers and board flips along with Tony Hawk and Baltimore native Bucky Lasek at the Scion Thrash & Jam on Saturday and Sunday.