Elissa Steamer - NY times

[sk8norcal]

saw on skatedaily....

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/02/sp...in&oref=slogin
(check the video segment)

LOS ANGELES — Elissa Steamer did not intend to be a trailblazer, and it is not a role she is completely comfortable with yet. But when she began skateboarding 23 years ago, she had few women to skate with.
Skip to next paragraph
Enlarge This Image
Tony Donaldson/Icon Sports Media

Elissa Steamer has won the women’s street final in four of the five years the event has been held at the X Games.

So she skated with the boys around Fort Myers, Fla., where she grew up. In striving to keep up with them, she became the most accomplished professional women’s street skater.

“I’m not the first girl to skateboard,” Steamer said before she won a gold medal in the skateboard street women’s final at the X Games on Friday. “There were women who came before me. I guess they did not eat, sleep and breathe skateboarding like I did.”

With women’s skateboarding in its fifth year at the X Games, Steamer is no longer alone. And at 33 she remains at the top of her sport. Her victory Friday gave her a gold medal in the women’s street final in four of the five years the event has been held at the X Games. Last year she won silver.

“When I first saw skate videos, there was only one girl in them,” said Amy Caron, who took bronze. “To be on the podium with her and competing on her level is awesome.”

Steamer was exhausted after rolling through the street course that was set up on a parking deck across from Staples Center. She stuck a kickflip over a gap, and scored an 87.83 to beat 20-year-old Marisa Del Santo, the gold medalist in 2007.

“Everybody is so good now,” Steamer said. “You have to go all out.”

She appeared more relieved than happy after the competition, when she sat down and lighted a cigarette. “It’s not really that fun,” she said. “I felt like I was going to puke the whole time.”

Asked what the problem was, she said, “I think it was my old age.”

Steamer has competed long enough that she used to participate in the men’s class because there were virtually no other professional women at events during the late 1990s.

more......