Issue link: https://bluemagazine.uberflip.com/i/25037
I acci ent ]��li · d pron This shoulder injury is the kind of thing that really bugs him, a nagging, recurring injury that Hoffman calls " chron ic." He tore the rotator cuff two or three times, then his shoul der started dislocating. The surgery stabilized the shoulder socket by tightening ligaments and reattaching a wad of loose cartilage. All of this begs the obvious question: Is it hard to get insurance in Hoffman's line of work? He laughs, "I got group insurance a long time ago. I think they look at Oklahoma as more of a territory than as indi viduals. So they must go, 'Wow, that's kind of risky territory.'" But the real risks Hoffman undertakes often go unno ticed. Most people don't pay attention to the technical details of tricks. They just want to see how high he goes and how hard he lands, like at the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. Though 85,000 people watched him perform at the closing ceremonies, few noticed the intricacies of a 900 or a No-Hands No-Feet 540- tricks he insists are taking the sport forward. So he just has to go bigger. In the debut segment of "Kids In The Way," he gets 3,200 feet of air off a cliff, flipping his bike and doing tricks over a pristine Norwegian fjord before parachuting to a beach. "You try to catch the wind and track away from the cliff face, " he says sagely, "it's all rocks and you don't really want to come down on that." As owner of Hoffman Bikes, head of pro Team Hoffman, and organizer of the BS Contest Series and the BS riding on ESPN2's X Games, Hoffman knows what the people want. That doesn't mean he has to like it. "People are kind of morbid. They like to see crash and burn. When you get the red necks who are there just to watch you fall, it gets kind of annoying." The word "daredev ii," however, does imply that every so often the devil wins. "I'm just accident prone. I'd probably get hurt at any thing I did, you know? But it's not the most dangerous sport. Of course, it just depends on what level you play it."