Skill, luck saved falling skater

LOS ANGELES — As skateboarder Jake Brown recovered from the towering drop that knocked off his shoes and left him with a bruised lung and liver and a pair of broken bones, another Big Air skater shared his thoughts on the fine art of falling.

Brown had pulled off an improbable 720 over the mega ramp's 70-foot gap on Thursday night but plunged about 40 feet to the ramp's base during his second trick.

He was released from the hospital on Saturday after being treated for a broken wrist and a fractured vertebra, his manager said.

Bob Burnquist, who won gold in the event and has one of the behemoth Big Air ramps in his back yard, said Brown may not have been as out-of-control as he looked when he headed face-first toward the floor then flipped over as though he was lying down.

"It was a mix of skill, of knowing how to fall, of knowing just to relax instead of trying to stiffen up, and luck," Burnquist said. "He knows he shouldn't try to stand it up, because he's going to break himself, so what he did was the best he could've done and I probably would have done the same thing, just to try to lay down."

On the Big Air ramp, skaters take a technique from skydivers and attempt to go to their side and roll when they hit the ground.

"In parachuting you've got the P.L.F., the parachute landing fall," Burnquist said. "You kind of want to do that a little bit."

Skateboarders have long referred to falling after a broken-down trick as "bailing," suggesting an act of will rather than an accident.

Burnquist said that however lucky Brown was to have avoided paralysis or life-threatening injury, he might be second-guessing his technique.

"Now in retrospect, he's probably thinking he could have fallen even better," Burnquist said.