It was 1975 and skateboarding was hugely popular when Jim O'Mahoney, head of the U.S. Skateboard Assn., got a call from the producer of ABC's television show, "The Guinness Book of World Records."
The producer wanted to shoot a skateboarding event for the show.
As a child, growing up in Long Beach, O'Mahoney begged his parents to drive fast over the steepest section of Hill Street, an almost 30-degree incline in Signal Hill that mimicked the feeling of a roller coaster.
O'Mahoney told the TV producer he could create a downhill skateboarding race on the steep Signal Hill incline, bordered by oil fields. "It was also the location of the annual Model T Hill Climb, where they raced their souped-up Fords from the bottom to the top. It was the natural place to do it," he explained.
So for the next four years Signal Hill was the site of some of skateboarding's hairiest races and most vicious wipeouts. The Signal Hill Speed Run, the world's first downhill skateboard race, also prompted several developments in the sport, including street luge racing, fully enclosed skate-cars and the introduction of women to the sport of downhill.
Downhill skateboarding and street luge racing are popular again, with the North American Downhill Championships taking place this weekend at the Frank G. Bonelli Regional County Park in San Dimas. Marcus Rietema, the event's organizer, said, "Everything we do today relates back to Signal Hill."
The contestants in Signal Hill's downhill races remember them as wild, death-defying parties on wheels.
Before the first race in 1975, O'Mahoney got insurance, had police block off the streets and got a permit from a confused Signal Hill Chamber of Commerce that didn't quite understand the event's danger.
Surfer Guy Grundy remembers getting a call asking if he wanted to enter the first event. He quickly got to work practicing and finding a helmet and leathers for safety.
The day of the event, it was clear that not everyone had prepared like Grundy. "One guy in shorts and a T-shirt looked down the hill and said there is no way I'm going down that. 'You are absolutely nuts,' " Grundy recalls. "About six of us turned up to compete, but only two even tried" to race.
The other competitor, Garrison Hitchcock, fell and dislocated his shoulder. Grundy made it down without incident and his top speed of 50.25 mph earned him a trophy and entry into the Guinness Book of World Records.
