PHILADELPHIA * Pierre-Luc Gagnon * was about 40 feet from the ground when he caught an edge with his skateboard. His exhilarating ride had ended badly. He didn't much like the ramp installed for the X Games competition this weekend.

"It's the same ramp they used in Dallas * and Atlanta *," said Gagnon. "Why don't they just bring in a new one?"

Gagnon was feeling like underappreciated talent. He believed that ESPN *, the U.S. sports channel, was making money on the athletes and skimping on the equipment. But that kind of frustration is not unusual these days for a skateboarding crowd discovering that legal concerns and money squabbles come hand in hand with success and popularity.

Three decades after a few latchkey kids in California * sneaked into a neighbor's drained swimming pool and spawned a culture, skateboarders are still totally awesome, creative and usually defying gravity and convention. But the counterculture skate bums of the past are also litigious businessmen today, who want a bigger piece of the X Games pie from its creator and main profiteer, ESPN.

Skateboarders are now dealing with issues like protecting the use of their likeness for profit, or getting a cut of the merchandising income.

Last fall, the United Professional Skaters Association met with Gene Upshaw, the executive director of the National Football League Players Association. In their attempt to unionize, the skaters nearly hired a football union lawyer.

"We just wanted to be compensated fairly," said Andy Macdonald *, a skaters association board member competing with Gagnon earlier this month at the X Games.

Logos from sneakers and sodas festooned the black and orange bunting hanging from the stands of the First Union Center, where X Games VIII was pulsating from last Thursday to Monday. Free radicals convened for what amounts to the annual Olympics of action sports - junior Evel Knievels, skateboarders, BMX riders and Tony Hawk *, the grandest action-sports star of all.

There was also a new subset, a number of disgruntled skaters who want representation. They nearly boycotted last year's event in Philadelphia when ESPN presented them with a contract signing away their right to be photographed for an X Games IMAX movie.

"Hard to believe this was the same sport where the kids used to hope not to get caught in somebody's backyard," said Don Bostick, the president of the sport's World Cup. "But times change, especially when the extreme becomes mainstream."

The rise in action sports over the past decade has thrust pursuits such as snowboarding and skateboarding into the mainstream. Nowhere was the change more evident than at the Salt Lake in February when a cadre of young snowboarders rocked at the Winter Olympics.

As networks and advertisers clamor for younger audiences, X Games stars are almost as coveted for their endorsement potential as Tiger Woods.

Hawk, the 32-year-old skateboarder who rarely competes and who makes much of his income from two Sony * PlayStation * games and sponsorships, has been besieged by children and teenagers in Philadelphia, to the point where security has had to escort him through the crowds. He, too, wonders when his peers will be as well rewarded as he is.

"The prize money for the events hardly reflects the amount of money generated by the industry right now," said Hawk. "It's not just ESPN. All over, the sponsorship dollars are not distributed the way they should be."

Last Thursday, the First Union Center was awash to rock and alternative bands pumping through the arena's sound system. Prepubescent kids seeking autographs from skate gods contorted their torsos over metal barriers.

The X Games hopefuls were banned from skating in Philadelphia's Love Park *, a cult favorite among skateboarders. Instead, in a posh, air-conditioned downtown hotel where many of the athletes were staying, BMX bicycles were allowed in the lobby, for at least one week. In the bar, sponsors and their new action-sport investments mingled over pints of dark beer.

"Everyone used to look at these kids as public nuisances," said Bostick. "Now they're stars."

And the stars want star treatment.

Ron Semiao sat in a club-level suite at the First Union Center, admiring the madness below him. This is his baby. He came up with the idea while thumbing through action-sports magazines in 1993 *. In 1995 *, ESPN held the first Extreme Games in Rhode Island *.

"There was a lifestyle and culture attached to these guys that no one had tapped into," he said. "I thought, 'Let's create the Olympics of these sports.'"

More than $1 million in prize money will be given out this year, up from about $300,000 eight years ago. But for the skateboarders, it's not enough.

"We're getting ripped off by ESPN," Gagnon said. "They're using us to make money for them. At first, I could understand. No one knew who we were. But now we're big enough to get paid a decent amount. All these other sports, they negotiate deals where the talent splits what the network is making, 50 or 60 percent. In skateboarding, we get 1 or 2 percent of that figure."

Max Dufour *, also a competitor on the circuit, cites figures claiming that ESPN sold out its sponsorships for last year's X Games for a total of $30 million.

The network will not detail its take from advertising or its production costs, said Josh Krulewitz, an X Games spokesman.

The dispute came to a head last year over the filming of the IMAX movie. Macdonald and others led a group of skateboarders who refused to sign the waiver that would allow ESPN to use their images exclusively for the movie.

Jack Wienert, the executive director of the X Games, told the skaters that if they did not sign the waiver, they could not compete in the contest. The skaters countered that they would leak their boycott to reporters in 45 minutes if a deal was not struck. "He tried to call our bluff," Macdonald said. "Fifteen minutes, we get a call back saying everything's fine; we don't have to sign the waiver the way it's written."

The athletes swap stories of X Games T-shirts being sold at 7-Eleven with their image on them. The skater Jake Brown has lamented that a picture of him taken at last year's X Games was sold to Motorola without his consent and with no money going to him.

This article was originally entitled "Skateboarders say X Games take them for a ride", and was found at http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi? template=articleprint.tmplh&ArticleId=68318 Skateboarders say X Games take them for a ride

Search this site for more about Pros Cons X-Games *