Big prize money makes all the hard work worth it for world’s top skateboarders

Big money makes hard work worth it for top skaters

COSTA MESA, Calif. — Oh, what they won’t do for a piece of the biggest payday in skateboarding.

Many of the world’s top skateboarders convened at the Orange County Fairgrounds on Friday night for the preliminaries of the Maloof Money Cup, the $450,000 extravaganza that’s backed by Joe and Gavin Maloof, who own the Sacramento Kings.

While more than 30 street skaters threw their bodies around a course that resembles a city plaza, defending vert champion Pierre-Luc Gagnon practiced in the half pipe well past sunset.

Gagnon is pre-qualified all the way through to Sunday’s finals and didn’t have to skate in Friday’s qualifier. Still, he was working to master the mini mega ramp, which is making its debut at the second edition of the Maloof Money Cup.

Rather than just skating in a half pipe, the skaters will drop down a 30-foot ramp and sail onto a handrail, grind across it and drop into the half pipe, where they’ll continue to do tricks and flips.

“It’s definitely not easy to get everything down in such a short amount of time,” said Gagnon, who won $75,000 and an SUV last year by beating Olympic snowboard gold medalist and X Games star Shaun White. “We’ve only been skating this for like three days now.”

First place is once again worth $75,000 in vert and $100,000 in the street competition.

“It definitely makes you try really hard. It’s no joke,” said Gagnon, a native of Montreal who now lives in Carlsbad, just north of San Diego. “It’s amazing that skateboarding got up to this point, that now we’re finally being rewarded for all the years of work. People are taking us seriously and taking skateboarding seriously, that we’re not just like a bunch of bums that don’t really have talent.

“Like, we’ve been doing this for years and years and people don’t seem to realize that it’s really, really hard what we do and it takes years of practice,” he said. “It’s not just something you wake up one day and pick up. It’s just like any other sport. It takes practice and skills.”

That’s why Gagnon was putting in another long day.

“I’ve seen a lot of guys skate just as hard as me,” said Gagnon, who swept the vert titles last year at the Maloof Money Cup, X Games and Dew Tour. “Usually we don’t practice that much before contests because it’s just a plain ramp, but here it’s like, ‘Whoa, I’ve got to adapt to all these new sections.’ “

Defending street champion Paul Rodriguez didn’t have to go through the qualifying but still spent time on the course, ending up on the concrete a few times when he failed to land tricks. The obstacles include ledges, stairs, handrails and even a green picnic table.

Here, the skaters aren’t in danger of being chased off by police or security guards as they often are out on the real streets.

“It’s a challenging course, but good,” said Rodriguez, who stars in Rob Dyrdek’s skateboarding movie, “Street Dreams.”

“Certain obstacles are kind of hard to be really consistent on because they’re more like street obstacles that you may spend more time trying to film a trick, maybe take a couple hours, may take a couple times coming back,” Rodriguez said. “So they’re kind of hard obstacles to be able to in seven minutes bang out tricks over and over.”

The street course will have to be torn out, but organizers will try to recycle various components and place them in skate parks around the country.