“We saw a real desire among the athletes to get back to the core of what these sports are all about,” said Gavin Harvey, President of OLN. “This is going to be authentic, old-school competition among the legends of these sports and their challengers. It’s not going to be canned. It’s going to be real. It’s going to be great television. And it's what makes the Gravity Games uniquely positioned as action sports events proliferate.”
From June 25-29, OLN will bring the top contenders in action sports to Camp Woodward. The Camp is the hotbed for tomorrow’s action sports elite and a spot where many of today’s top stars got their start – including 2004 Gravity Games Bike Vert gold, silver and bronze medalists, Jamie Bestwick, Chad Kagy and Kevin Robinson. The placid training grounds are going to explode with the onslaught of high-flying athletes performing gravity-defying tricks of Freestyle Motocross. Bike and Skate Vert competitions will also take place at Woodward.
The event then moves to FDR Skatepark in South Philadelphia from July 11-13. Located beneath Interstate 95, FDR has a reputation as one of the toughest skate parks in the country. Built by skaters, for skaters back in 1994, the park’s permanent bowls, hips, ramps and attitude provide an ideal fit and backdrop for the Skate and Bike competitions. The event crew will repair and build additional features for the competition.
Continuing with its signature coverage first introduced at the Winter Gravity Games, OLN will again produce an “actionmentary” to document the event. The stylized, documentary format will feature OLN cameras shooting from non-traditional camera angles in an aspect ratio that will give the coverage much more of a film feel than conventional sporting events. OLN will be shooting in high definition with Panasonic VariCams throughout the event.
“The non-linear, documentary-style of the actionmentary resonated with the viewers and the athletes competing in the Gravity Games at Copper Mountain,” said John Carter, Vice President of Events and Production. “It is different than coverage offered by any other network and by staging this event in the streets and parks where it all began, we have a richer story to tell.”
In 2004, OLN added two additional events to the Gravity Games brand to include OLN’s Winter Gravity Games, which took place at Copper Mountain in Colorado in March, and Gravity Games H2O, which took place off Australia’s western coast city of Perth in October. Log on to OLNTV.com for more information.
OLN® is the leader in outdoor adventure and action sports television. Now in more than 63 million homes, OLN is the home of best-in-class events like The Tour de France, The Gravity Games, Professional Bull Riders (PBR), USSA Skiing and the Boston Marathon. The Network offers exclusive programming in four primary areas: Outdoor Adventure, Action Sports, Field Sports and Bulls & Rodeo. OLN is distributed via cable systems and satellite operators throughout the continental United States and Hawaii.
