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The X Games have always been about innovation, about firsts. X Games IX, held over 10 days last August in six different venues in and around Los Angeles, was no exception. Tony Hawk turned his patented 900, the first time he's done it within regulation time (and the last-he announced afterward that he was retiring from competition). Brian Deegan landed a never-before-seen 360 backflip, which he dubbed the "Mulisha Twist," in Moto-X. And Ryan Sheckler rolled over the Skateboard Park competition, becoming the youngest-ever gold medalist in X Games history-this genuine Sk8r Boy is only 13 years old.

Uh, wait. Sorry, bro'-wrong magazine. Yes, innovation was key, but I'm talking about the technology that went into putting this extreme sports extravaganza on the airwaves of ESPN, ESPN2, and, for another first, live on ABC in primetime.

I'm talking about a Steadicam-on-a-wire that flies through the air at 70 miles an hour. I'm talking about a cameraman on rollerblades chasing world-class athletes around a skatepark course all day long, getting fantastic shots. I'm talking about miniature cameras mounted to the helmets of BMX riders racing down a mountain course. And much, much more. Read on, dude.

The X Games are a marvel of modern media synergy. They're a marketing machine, and the brand, more than anything else, is the X Games itself. ESPN owns the Games outright. ESPN didn't invent the sports, but it made a lot of them, bringing them to a wider audience and turning their best athletes into celebrities. Some of the sports involved have official, sanctioning bodies, but it's pretty clear that ESPN is calling the shots. The Association of Surfing Professionals, for example, nearly didn't sanction The Game(tm)-the X Games' made-for-TV (and trademarked, apparently) competition format-and threatened to disqualify nine of its members from the elite World Championship Tour if they participated in it, according to a story in the L.A. Times. In the end, of course, ESPN won out and Surfing made a splashing debut at the X Games IX.

And because ESPN is so firmly in control of the X Games, they have free rein to try out new techniques and technologies. In a sense, the X Games serves as ESPN's greenhouse for new technology. They even invented their own microphone, called the "X-ducer," a tiny square of Lexan plastic designed to pick up sound from the surface to which it's attached-say, a skateboard ramp. The PZM-style mics have since been adopted for other sports such as basketball, where they're often affixed to the backboards. More than a hundred X-ducers were deployed at X Games IX.

"It's a showcase," says Paul DiPietro, Technical Operations Manager of the X Games. DiPietro was kind enough to chat with me in his expansive corner office in the Staples Center. Well, it was a corner, at least, curtained-off from a locker room appropriated for the event.

DiPietro is based out of ESPN headquarters in Bristol, Connecticut-or simply, "Bristol," as they call it-where he's worked "since Day One," DiPietro says with a wry smile and index finger pointed toward the fluorescent lights overhead. His first X Games were number three-I mean, "III"-in San Diego in 1997, where he was a Venue Operations Producer, eight of which now report to him. In fact, 450 of ESPN's 600 people at X Games IX report to DiPietro. For him, the X Games are a full-time job. As soon as these Games wrap, he'll begin working on the Winter X Games, and then the Global X Games, and so on.

Asked what about these X Games he's most proud of, DiPietro answers, "Size and ease." To explain what he means by the latter, he makes a sweeping gesture to indicate all the people milling about beyond the curtain, noting how calm it is. "It's a good team," he says, and he is particularly complimentary of his vendors, who integrate seamlessly with his own staff. "They're self-sufficient," he continues, and "they have to be for this whole thing to work." Many of them have been working on the X Games for years, some since the beginning, and those whom I talked to reinforced the team aspect of the Games. The showcase part of it certainly helps, too-vendors get great exposure from the X Games (see "X Cams IX" on page 30).

To the extent that size matters, he's not sure if this is the biggest X Games ever, but it's certainly as big as anything they've ever done. In fact, he tells me, the management of the Staples Center informed him X Games IX was the biggest event they'd ever hosted, including the Lakers' NBA Championship games and the 2000 Democratic National Convention.

It's easy to believe, as DiPietro shows me through their complex under the arena. We start at the nearby tape room, which houses rows of bakers' racks filled with tapes. They brought their entire summer X Games tape library with them from Bristol, shrink-wrapping the racks and loading them on palettes into a truck.

The main corridor is dotted with portable air conditioners, from which air hoses lead behind heavy black curtains into rooms that literally didn't used to exist-ESPN built their own walls to carve out video and audio edit suites, which are jam-packed with people and gear (see "Linking It Up" on the facing page). DiPietro proudly points out the difference between "our walls" (drywall) and "theirs" (cinderblock).

Continuing on to the loading dock, we find the mobile trucks, which house control rooms, live audio mixers, more edit suites, and so on and so forth. The whole conglomeration is a veritable Bristol West down here, and I start to wonder what's left back at the ranch.

Back in his office, DiPietro talks about the process that goes into designing an event for the X Games. While acknowledging ESPN's ultimate authority in producing the X Games, he describes the design process as "symbiotic." The course design is laid out by the event and sport organizers, he says, and "they're basically done when we get it." Then, together with his Venue Operations Producer, any relevant vendors, and Rich Feinberg, the Senior Coordinating Producer, DiPietro will visit the site and lay the broadcast plan on top.

Although "every effort is made to maintain the integrity of the sport," says DiPietro, changes can be made to the course if necessary, as it's in everyone's best interest to put on a good show. DiPietro describes this as a "common goal" among ESPN and the sport organizers, and it extends to producing a good live event for the spectators, too. "If there isn't a happy crowd, it makes for a lousy TV show."

Looking forward, DiPietro is already pondering ways to improve his product. "It changes every year," he says. "Different sports, different venues-it's always changing." This year it was Surfing, and DiPietro admitted that he allocated more resources for it than for some of the other events. "You want to put your best foot forward."

Next year, he'd like to figure out a way to get a live feed off the in-water FrogCams for Surfing and Wakeboard. Leaning back in his chair, he recalls going crabbing in his youth, laying out traps tethered to floating markers. He figures he might be able to adapt this concept to float a transmitter on a small buoy, tethered to the cameraman. "Give him, say, 20 feet to work with." The only problem is how to avoid catching a surfer on the line. But in the Wakeboard event, the competitors keep to a fixed course, and the transmitter could be mounted right on the trick-the float off of which the wakeboarders launch their aerial stunts-alleviating the need for a separate buoy that could get into trouble.

You read it here first. Watch for it next year at X Games X.

Ken Gordon is a freelance writer, designer, consultant, and jack-of-all-new-media-trades. He lives in New York City, and is a contributing editor to Xtreme Video Magazine, Digital Video in the Classroom, and writes for DV.