Crews get course ready for BMX feats

Crews have been working all week to prepare venues for the Action Sports Tour Dew Tour.

This includes hauling in roughly 600 loads of dirt and unpacking 1.4 million pounds of equipment.

Park athletes from skateboard and BMX will compete on separate sites, but each will see the addition of concrete elements.

It takes up to 20 veteran park course builders five days to construct the park course. The course is made with steel decking, scaffolding and skatelite — a professional riding surface made from a wood-based material. Holding the entire course together are 32,000 screws.

In the vert competition, each rider will be challenged with different features and side transitions. Riders will be judged on flow, height and difficulty of tricks.

Scoring is based on the judges' overall impression of the run, including, but not limited to, the following criteria: content (the number, difficulty, originality, and variety of tricks executed successfully), aggressive execution, style, and use of the vert ramp.

In the finals there will be 10 skaters, and each will make three 45-second runs.

The 2007 Dew Tour will introduce new cutting-edge vert designs, highlighted by a different vert design at every stop of this year's tour. Each vert ramp will have varying widths, heights and other elements such as 22-foot roll-ins, skate bowls and transitions. In addition to a ramp that will allow skateboard vert riders to drop in from a height of two stories, these features will progress the sport, giving riders more creativity, variety and altitude on the ramp.

The ramp is constructed by 25 people over the course of three days, using nothing but forklifts and manpower. The vert ramp is custom-built with steel decking, scaffolding and skatelite, using 9,600 screws to hold the ramp together.

Each BMX dirt course is unique and different from the next at all five stops. Each design uses 1,000 yards of dirt to create the course.

Each dirt jump is approximately 12 feet high and is 20 to 30 feet apart from the next jump. The entire course measures 300 feet by 50 feet.

BMX dirt legend and Utah native Fuzzy Hall designs and creates the dirt courses with input of other Dew Tour BMX dirt athletes.

The BMX dirt athletes begin their runs by dropping in from a 24-foot tower to take on three back-to-back dirt jumps while performing tricks in midair.

Using industrial dump trucks, it takes approximately 600 trips to bring in between 4,000 and 5,000 yards of dirt to create each of the FMX courses — equivalent to 40 to 50 football fields.

During the athletes' 90-second runs, they must use the entire course, utilizing all the jumps while executing a different trick for each jump. The distance from one dirt jump to the next varies between 75 and 105 feet. In addition to dirt jumps, kicker ramps are also used on the FMX course.

Usually 9 to 10 feet in height, kicker ramps are made of iron and are used to give the riders a steeper vertical takeoff than a dirt jump can provide, giving the riders greater height to execute their tricks.