Extreme Wheeling

When Aaron “Wheelz” Fotheringham was a little boy, he used to blast up and down the hall using his crutches, pretending that he was a superhero. He’d don a Superman cape and jump off of the top bunk in his bedroom, pretending he could fly.  (Don’t try this at home!) These days, as a pioneer in the sport of wheelchair motocross (WCMX), Fotheringham flies for real.

The 19-year-old made it into the 2010 Guinness Book of World Records as the first person to do a single backflip in a wheelchair. In August 2010, he mastered the double backflip. Many days, you can find him speeding down giant ramps and twisting in the air before landing solidly on two wheels as part of the daredevil performance group Nitro Circus. “I’ve timed it, and I’m only in the air for two and a half seconds,” Fotheringham says during a phone interview from his home in Las Vegas. “But when I’m doing the jump, it feels like a minute. It’s scary—but it’s a good scary. It’s that adrenaline rush we all want.”

And his WCMX skills have given him more than a rush, they’ve taken him around the world. He’s travelled to Australia, Korea, the Czech Republic and all over the U.S. for exhibitions. This year, he’ll be heading to New Zealand and Europe with his group.

He’s come a long way. The WCMXer, who was born with spina bifida, is the third of six children adopted by Steve and Kaylene Fotheringham. When he was eight years old, he visited a local skate park with his older brother, Brian, who suggested that he try to ride some of the ramps in his wheelchair. Fotheringham recalls that he hesitated for a moment, and then Brian helped him to the top of a shallow ramp. The eight-year-old sped down it...and wiped out, landing hands first. But in his typical fashion, he tried again—and again—and again.

The brave streak started early, as did Fotheringham’s characteristic unfailing ambition, says mom Kaylene. “He’s indomitable. Nothing stops him. I was always amazed that he didn’t care that he couldn’t walk. I thought there’d come a time when he would feel sorry for himself, and he just never did.”

When her boy was 15 months old, she says, there was a five-inch step in their sunken living room. Fotheringham saw the other kids climbing it, but it was too high for him to crawl over. He tried every day, crawling to the step with quiet, dogged determination. Kaylene has a photo of him napping with his head on the step— he’d tried so hard that he’d fallen asleep there. Then one day it happened; he learned to get up that step. “He conquered it,” she says.

At age seven, while attending his brother’s baseball games, he worked at falling and getting up by himself using his crutches. He knew that there might come a time when he could fall and no one would be there to help him up. While everyone else watched the game, Fotheringham practised. “After working at it for two or three games, he got it,” says a proud Kaylene.

So, it wasn’t all that much of a shock that he didn’t give up on WCMX after that first time at the skate park. In fact, he went on to compete in BMX freestyle competitions. His wins include the 2005 Vegas Am Jam BMX finals. Fotheringham constantly tried progressively harder tricks, including carving, grinding, power-sliding, hand-plants and a mid-air 180 before mastering the single backflip in 2006.

After someone posted a video of him doing the flip on YouTube, news of his achievement quickly spread. A TV station in Las Vegas aired the footage. Fotheringham was happy enough with the local acknowledgement. “I was pretty stoked to be on the news here in Vegas,” he recalls. But other media outlets caught on and appearances followed on CNN, ESPN, MSNBC and ABC. Soon, wheelchairathletics became his full-time job.

Footage on his website (http://www.aaronfotheringham.com/) inspired the producers of Glee (then a fairly unknown TV show) to call Fotheringham about stunt work. They wanted him to be the wheelchair stunt double for Kevin McHale, who plays Artie Abrams. Fotheringham was flown to Hollywood, where he was treated like part of the cast. He appears in the episode titled “Wheels.” “You can’t really tell it’s me,” he says of his brush with Hollywood stardom. “It was interesting because I had to do [the stunt] in the actor’s wheelchair, not in my sports chair. It was also cool to meet all those Glee people before anyone really knew who they were.” More stunt work followed with his next job, for the German movie Vorstadtkrokodile, which was more Fotheringham’s speed. “I did a chase scene where I swerved through people, cut through traffic and crashed into a café,” he says.

Although he prepares for this kind of work with his physically punishing training regime, he still gets hurt. Cuts, bruises, scrapes and sprains come with the territory. His worst injury was a broken plate in his elbow. “The rest have just been concussions, sprained shoulders, dislocated shoulders,” he explains. “I’ve been pretty lucky...And all those concussions and all that pain finally paid off.”

 He remembers exactly when and where he first landed his milestone flips. The single backflip? That was July 13, 2006, at 8:59 p.m. at a skate camp in Tehachapi, California. The double backflip took nearly a year to perfect. He landed that on August 26, 2010, at 8:29 p.m. at Camp Woodward skate park in Pennsylvania.

When he’s not doing WCMX, Fotheringham is crowd-surfing at punk shows, taking in favourite bands like Battle Born and NOFX. He also spreads his inspiration around, giving motivational speeches and answering emails that he receives from around the world. One day, he hopes to have his own wheelchair fabricating company. His goal is to design “the most wicked chair in the world.”

Having seen the WCMX star at work, kids now post videos of themselves doing wheelchair tricks. Kaylene envisions a day when WCMX is a widespread sport and the younger athletes whom her son has inspired rise through the ranks to compete against him. “I hope it becomes a sport, and an opportunity for paraplegics to say, ‘Yes, I can,’” she says.

Not all younger wheelchair athletes may be as thrill-seeking as Fotheringham, but, at a minimum, he wants to inspire kids to get active. To him, the wheelchair is not a hindrance to his dream of flying through the air. “I like to say that I’m not in a wheelchair. That makes it sound like it owns you,” he explains. “I like to say that I’m on a wheelchair, like being on a skateboard. It’s something you ride.”