GIOVE AND GONZO WIN IN X GAMES.Byline: Dan Lazar Special to the Daily News Forget the hair, forget the tattoos, forget the weird hair. Those are what make mountain-bike racer Missy Giove Missy Giove (Melissa) is a former professional downhill mountain biker, among the most successful in the world, male or female. Her nickname is The Missile. She is openly lesbian. famous. But it's her piranha that makes her unforgettable. It goes something like this . . . Giove, the top female mountain biker in the world, and the top finisher in the snow mountain-biking women's downhill finals Thursday at the ESPN ESPN Entertainment and Sports Programming Network Winter X Games X Games Sports medicine The official Olympics of 'extreme sports' sponsored by ESPN, held annually during the summer. See Extreme sports. , wears a piranha around her neck. No, it's not alive. But it used to be. Some time back, Giove went on a three-day ski trip Ski Trip is an episode from That 70s Show. Jackie invites the gang on a ski trip then un-invites Kelso after learning he made out with another girl behind the gym. Plot summary January 13, 1977 Thursday afternoon. , and of course, had to leave her pet piranha back in the apartment. ``So I fed him like six goldfish and figured he'd be fine,'' No such luck. When Giove returned home, she looked in the tank and found - nothing. Then she turned around. ``I look over and he's, like, stuck on my sweatshirt.'' Yes, Gonzo (that's the piranha's name) committed suicide by jumping into Giove's dirty laundry dirty laundry n. Informal Personal affairs that could cause embarrassment or distress if made public: Let's not air our dirty laundry in front of our guests. Also called dirty linen. . Giove was at a loss - ``It was sad. My fish died.'' - and just couldn't let go. Then she got an idea. Giove put Gonzo out on the window sill to dry. Homemade taxidermy taxidermy (tăk`sĭdûr'mē), process of skinning, preserving, and mounting vertebrate animals so that they still appear lifelike. . ``Then I just stuck a pencil through him and made him into a necklace,'' said Giove, who's eccentricities and top performances on the mountain bike have made her a crowd favorite in professional mountain biking mountain biking Sports medicine A sport in which participants use specialized bicycles to navigate rough, steep trails covered with unforgiving rocks Injury risk Concussions, fractures, death. See Extreme sport, Novelty seeking behavior. . Though his shellacked outer layer is beginning to peel - exposing the faintly visible preserved innards - Gonzo has been with Giove ever since, six years and counting. Extreme Culture: So, what about that stuff that has made Giove famous? Her head is shaved and bleached blonde - except for the top, which she died black and let grow out to below her shoulders. She's also got more tattoos than a biker bar, not to mention, as she says, a host of pierced ``miscellaneous'' body parts.All but a few of these pierced parts have appeared in a Reebok Ree´bok` n. 1. (Zool.) The peele. shoe commercial. Local boy: Todd Snider of Woodland Hills finished with a top time of 37 seconds, 55 hundredths, in the men's downhill snow mountain-biking preliminaries but faltered in the finals. He did not place. ``I tried to slow down for the dips and my front end slid out from under me,'' the 20-year-old said. Winter X Games SNOW SUMMIT, BIG BEAR LAKE The ESPN Winter X Games will be broadcast on ESPN today from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Admission to the games is free. Favorites for the snowboarding half-pipe preliminaries include Norwegian Terje Haakonsen for the men and Tina Basich for the women. Look for Missy Giove and Toby Henderson to put up a fight in the women's and men's snow mountain biking speed preliminaries. And Mike Dahlberg and Bird Lew should show well in the men's and women's ice climbing ice climbing Sports medicine An 'extreme sport' in which participants climb ice formations with pickaxes, often without ropes Injury risk Hypothermia, death. See Extreme sports, Novelty seeking behavior. difficulty final. The X Games will be broadcast on ESPN today from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. Admission to the games is free. CAPTION(S): Photo, Box Photo: Missy Giove wins the snow mountain-biking event at the X Games in Big Bear Lake. Myung J. Chun / Daily News Box: Winter X Games (See Text) |
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