Ear to the ground:

“Maybe they’re from Dove Creek.”
– Comment made after hearing two tourists remark that Durango was too “big city” for them.

Total slacker

Durango native Mickey Wilson can now officially be called King of the Slackers. Wilson balanced his way to a first-place finish June 13 at San Francisco’s Red Bull Baylines slacklining competition, dubbed “the world’s most innovative slacklining competition.”

In case you haven’t heard, slacklining has moved from the back yard to the big time, becoming a genuine, competitive sport where athletes perform a variety of height-defying tricks on a 5-centimeter wide climber’s tape (think seat belt.) The Baylines course consisted of five slacklines set 30 feet in the air, a setup that employed both slackline disciplines of highlining and tricklining. Each of the 12 participants was given just three minutes to wow the judges and thousands of spectators.

And when all the bouncing, wobbling, oohing and aahing was done,  Wilson was crowned champion, scoring 25 out of 30 possible points. His coup de grace: a triple butt-flip-to-back-flip-to-chest.

“Mickey was an incredibly clean and consistent competitor, his stand-out trick was his triple butt-flip-to-back-flip-to-chest where he pulled three seated front flips, went straight into a back flip and landed on his chest. In my opinion, this was the best trick, landed in the cleanest way, in the whole competition,” said Andy Lewis, a fellow competitor (who, incidentally, also appeared in Madonna’s 2013 Super Bowl halftime show.)

Wilson, who grew up in Durango and now lives in Denver, attended the School of Mines, where he first tried the sport and founded a slackline club. He has competed internationally, walking lines as high as 400 feet.

“I’m obviously extremely happy with the win, and very content that all my hard work and training has paid off,” said Wilson. “This was a very interesting course … in that the lines mostly all ran parallel to one another instead of criss-crossing. They were also longer and tighter… and that made it more of a trickline-specific course, which is always fun.”

Footage of the competition is available at www.redbull.com.