Skating it
to the Extreme
PHOTOS COURTESY OF RED BULL CRASHED ICE
San Diego man goes all out with sports and faith by LORI ARNOLD
120,000 fans, braving snow and frigid temperatures, lined the 430-meter Crashed Ice course in St. Paul, Minn., on Feb. 20 to 22 to witness the second leg of the four-city 2014 Ice Cross Downhill World Championship. The track included a 40-meter drop right out of the starting gate.
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REFRESHED | March 2014
J
osh Gabardi digs life on the edge and has a few notched bones—broken wrist, repeated breaks to his collarbone and shoulder blades, separations to both shoulders and a to-the-bone gash of his leg—as his testimony. In late February he took his passion for extreme sports to a new extreme with an insane new sport called ice cross downhill. Think of it as a widened Olympicstyle luge track with a stunning downward slope. Add a few jumps, steps and mind-bending hairpin turns. Oh, and instead of using the protective cover of a bobsled or the stability of skis for the gravity-defying stunt, athletes simply put on ice skates and race, four at time, to the bottom with speeds exceeding 40 mph. “I’ve always been crazy,” said Gabardi, a 24-year-old El Cajon resident. “It’s always been in my heart and that’s a part of God, too, you know, because God puts it in your heart. I’ve just have always had it in my heart to do something in my life with extreme sports.” After qualifying, Gabardi joined 99