Steve Emig: The White Bear: Ride Like a Girl? Damn... Wish I Could These Days

A big nothing, no footed can-cans, a huge backflip gone wrong, big airs, big carves, and more toboggans than a big snowy hill in Ohio in January. This clip popped up on my YouTube yesterday, and I checked it out, partly to see just how good today's women BMXers were, and partly because I'm drawing a picture of Krys Dauchy (aka China Krys Darrington today), the first factory sponsored female BMX freestyler back in the 1980's.

Krys popped on the scene with her crazy contortionist stomach stand, which drove us boys crazy (OK, crazier). We could have chalked that up to gymnastic female flexibility. But Krys could RIDE, she was pulling backwards grip rides at a time R.L. Osborn and Joe Gruttola were doing that. The only other woman riding well then was Alma Jo Barrera in Texas, pulling many of the popular tricks of the day. BMX freestyle was, and still largely is, a Boy's Club.

Now we're 33 years from when Krys Dauchy popped onto the scene, and these women just plain fuckin' rip in a skatepark. Growing up as a Generation X kid, it was always an insult to say, "You throw like a girl," or "You ride like a girl," as we grew up. The story is that Girl Skateboards got its name, making fun of this old saying. Spoofing it. There weren't a lot of women in sports, outside the Olympics then. But in the weird world of action sports, there were a handful of female pioneers, and I met several of them in my own journey. I saw Cara Beth Burnside skate Pipeline skatepark in about 1988, and there were only a couple guys there that night out skating her. One of them was Micke Alba, the other 50 skaters couldn't hang with her. She was that good of a skater back then, and went on to blow minds in women's snowboarding. I knew Miki Keller at Vision in the 80's, when she worked as the Sims Snowboards team manager. She went on to build women's motocross into a serious sport. I saw Lori Rigsby skate at Houston Skatepark in 1990, another female pioneer. Years later, I even gave street skating legend Elissa Steamer a ride in my taxi one night. She said I was, "The first grownup" who recognized who she was. I became good friends with hardcore rock climber, and American Gladiator, Salina Bartunek, while working on that show. I started bouldering myself, inspired by her enthusiasm for climbing.

These women all took a lot of crap, and became good at weird action sports, in a guy's world, at a time when their families and friends gave them crap for riding or boarding, and us guys in these sports, often gave them crap as well. But they persevered, and inspired more and more girls and young women in the many years since, and now there are women ripping in pretty much every sport, Oh, AND the final Jedi knight in the final of the nine originally planned Star Wars movies, Rey, is a woman as well. So as the testosterone pumps thick today, leading up to the Anaheim Supercross event in Anaheim, here in SoCal tonight, I figured I'd give some props to the women, still pioneering and breaking new ground, in the action sports, and mainstream sports, worlds. Keep rippin' women!

Here's Krys Dauchy, women's BMX freestyle pioneer, busting out a flatland routine in 1987. My Krys Dauchy Sharpie scribble style drawing will be available in a few days. #sharpiescribblestyle

And here's a photo I shot of new school female ripper, who's competing in the park contest in the clip up top, S&M Bikes rider Jessie Gregory (@lilbmxwolf), busting I one footed Hannah at Sheep Hills. This was at the Boozer Memorial Jam, a couple months ago.