When skateboarders got airborne in the early eighties and evolved tricks with spins and grabs the combination of risk and aerial acrobatics infected other sports from motocross to surfing. Skiers, snowboarders, wakeboarders, parkour runners, trampolinists, if that’s a thing, all use words born in those early years of skating to describe their moves.

As an old skater I can nod wisely when I hear people talk about revert method airs or fakie ollies but I never thought I would I hear this terminology coming from the wheelchair bound. 

Aaron Fotheringham changed that when I saw him recently on the morning news putting his chair through the paces at a skatepark. He was pulling airs and doing hand plants in his wheelchair. This is extreme sport for those classically considered disabled.

Fotheringham was born with spina bifida, a birth defect in the spinal cord, that gave him only partial use of his legs when he was very young but had him completely confined to his chair by the age of eight. At around the same time while watching his older brother on his BMX bike he was encouraged to drop into a quarter pipe for the first time. He fell on that first attempt but didn’t quit there.

Known as Wheelz in the WCMX (wheelchair motocross) and extreme sports world Fotheringham has performed all over the world with Nitro Circus and has perfected backflips, double backflips and in 2011 a front flip in New Zealand. A year later he attempted and landed a 50 foot gap jump on a mega ramp in front of thousands of stunned Brazilian fans.

Visiting his web site to watch his videos I cringed through countless crashes where he lands on his neck, upside down and slams into transitions sending pieces of his chair and equipment flying through the air. During a training session with the Nitro Circus he goes down again and again on a massive hip ramp, even knocking out his front teeth (not for the first time) before being helicoptered off for medical care.  

In interviews Aaron talks more about his work with kids than his international success as an extreme athlete. He wants wheelchair bound children to see their chairs as toys with endless possibilities instead of a burden that will keep them back in life. He travels the country to WCMX events speaking and working as coach and mentor to the kids and their parents.

Over the years he has modified his chairs, making them lighter while improving wheels and suspension to absorb the impact and strain of grinding on hand rails and landing from some of the huge airs he pulls. He works with Box Chairs today to make custom chairs that he says are pretty much indestructable.

Watching his videos I was stunned by his audacity at taking on the mega ramps that the sick minds at Nitro Circus build but the boy skater in me was more taken in by watching him at the skate park. His flow from trick to trick over the undulating concrete course is smooth; front side grind to 180 air to hand plant, just like those early innovators from the eighties who I used to watch on VHS tapes and then bloody my knees trying to imitate.