This weekend at U.S. Bank Stadium you could stand in the valley of the shadow of death, right down there where visiting football teams drink Gatorade.
Elliot Sloan was standing in this valley Saturday afternoon at the X Games. He had just skateboarded from a 75-foot-high platform, launched himself off a ramp, pulled off a 720-degree rotation, gathered speed in the valley, launched himself high as the suite level, rotated 900 degrees and stuck the landing.
"Man, I've never done that before,'' he said. "I don't know if anyone has done that before.''
The "Indy 900,'' during which he reached under his skateboard before landing like a duck on lake, won him gold in the Big Air final. In 2015, he tried a "900,'' fell on his head, compressed two discs in his neck and suffered shooting pains.
Did he have to conquer fear to try the move again?
Sloan nodded and said, "Uh, yeah."
He pulled his shirt up to wipe his face, revealing the skateboarding version of a flak jacket. "This thing has saved me so many times,'' he said. "So much can go wrong so fast. When you watch it back, you say, 'Oh, it doesn't look that fast.' But when you land it there's a split second where you go, 'Oh, man, what am I doing?' "
It's a fair question. These are the Elbow Pad Olympics, which test fearlessness as much as skill.