through the air, easy-peasying the landing, and refusing to let something as minor as being strapped to a metal chair bring him down. Meanwhile, people like me whine about and struggle to get up to jog a mere mile once a week. No wonder Nitro Circus Live hired him. Fotheringham has already done overseas tours with the notorious crew of adrenalineseekers (which includes motorsports
And when he leaves the park? He takes the stairs.
After he won a major contest, Fotheringham became obsessed with a new goal: pulling off a backflip.
fellow skaters and riders kept suggesting a crazier idea: Do a backflip with the chair. “I started hearing it so much and thinking about it so often that I had it all worked out in my mind, what it would look like, how I could technically accomplish it,” he says. “I mean, it’s as simple as pulling on the frame, sure. But I had to practice it.” During a week-long extreme sports camp in the summer of 2006, he had just one goal in mind: to execute the perfect wheelchair backflip. It took him two sweaty, head-and face-landing days to pull off his first flip in the gymnastic foam pits. “I’m claustrophobic, so when I get stuck on my head in the foam, my chair on top of me, I’m not comfortable at all.” Although he videotaped his backflips that summer, posting successful landings (and plenty of missed landings) on YouTube, it wasn’t until fall of 2008 that Guinness World
Records observed his feat in front of an audience of 400 at Doc Romeo Park. By that time, his arsenal of tricks had exploded: soaring hand-plants, insane wheelers, rollouts galore. Sponsors called, both wheelchair and athletic companies. His life exploded too — in a good way — and with scheduling help from his mom, he began to travel the U.S. and the world, attending camps for disabled kids, working as a coach and mentor, and being featured in every media, from short documentaries to Nike commercials to an appearance on reality TV show “Secret Millionaire.” (He’s not the millionaire in question — yet.) Emails flood his inbox, thanking him for the example he sets, for the inspiration he gives to the disabled and abled alike. Watching him execute his signature backflip at Doc Romeo Park, I’m simultaneously awestruck and embarrassed. Here’s a guy catapulting
sensation Travis Pasaran, among others), most recently in February with a two-week stint in New Zealand. (Dropping down the 50-foot “Giganta-Ramp” is just another day at work for Fotheringham.) Occasionally he lands wrong and gets a concussion, despite his helmet. (He’s only broken his arm once.) Most of the time? He nails it. Last year, he mastered the double backflip. That’s probably because he spends at least 40 hours a week at Doc Romeo, practicing technique, honing tricks on what’s become his training ground. “I’d never leave Vegas because we have a buttload of awesome parks,” he says. “They were so important to me growing up. Less than three miles from my house, in every direction, I can find a killer skate park. Where else can you get that?” When he’s not touring, teaching workshops or instructing at a camp, Fotheringham stays busy editing videos of his tricks and toiling in his new metal fabrication studio. He’s working on getting certified as a welder so he can start creating his own line of extreme wheelchairs. So far he has fashioned a bed cage and bumper for his truck. “I love video editing and photography and welding, but I like to keep moving, too,” he admits. “I get bored staying still for too long.” Which is why you’re as likely to spot Fotheringham in a mosh pit as you are at Doc Romeo Park, where people gather to watch the superstar in action. After a sweaty wheelcore session, he’s ready to go home to work in his metal shop. On the way back to his truck, he takes the stairs — rolling, tumbling and rocking right over them. For more info about Aaron Fotheringhman, visit www.aaronfotheringham.com.
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