FISE – The International Festival of Extreme Sports (1 of 2)

So ok, we’re not so keen on extreme sports (skateboarding, bicycle moto-cross, wakeboarding…), don’t know much about it and only encounter it in hyper-kinetic video ads and the like. We were never expecting to run into anything like that on this trip. Ah, but you never know…

Photo curtesy of Google Street View

The other day, less than a week after we arrived in town (and that town would be Montpellier, just to be clear) we were exploring, venturing outside the old, and most interesting, part of the city into the new part. Through the largest indoor mall in the Roussillon area (lots of store-front shops selling all manner of, you know, stuff), back out into some neo-classical architecture. A huge building with large, curving wings enclosing a few hectares of grass, with people eating lunch. In front of us a large, 20-story building with international flags on the roof, stiff in the wind. Then down some steps and… oops, what’s this!

In-Line skaters getting ready for the Big Drop

A river. People. And on our side of the river, a huge skateboard course. We get ourselves settled in the shade and slowly begin to realize, by talking to people and reading signs, that this is a Big Deal. This weekend the largest extreme sports festival in Europe will be held here, on our doorstep. Today, Thursday, is just a warm-up, with a few amateurs practicing on the course, and everything being readied for the really professional events on Saturday and Sunday.

Getting some air on the skate course

The skaters were clearly amateurs, but there were some good moves. It wasn’t terribly crowded, only a few hundred people milling about. An older woman sitting next to us explained that tomorrow things would be really, really packed. In other words, while this may not have been the best the sport had to offer, it was easily accessible. We watched a bit longer, then turned our attention to the river, where an overhead trolley system towed wakeboarders.

Wakeboarder jump  (note tow line in his left hand)

Again, we saw nothing extraordinary, but got a sense of what it was all about. After about an hour we slowly made our way back home, promising ourselves we’d come back the next day when things looked to be much hotter.




Well, these stills are ok, but the action is much too dynamic. Let's try some movies...

That whine noise is the tow mechanism

Up next: We come back the next day