Aaron Fotheringham

Aaron Fotheringham is an extreme wheelchair athlete who performs tricks adapted from skateboarding and BMX. Born with spina bifida, he invented his own new form of wheelchair motocross (WCMX) and started breaking records on the quarterpipe.

Fotheringham both developed and championed the sport of WCMX or wheelchair motocross – an adaptation of skateboarding and BMX stunt-riding for wheelchairs. As his experience in the chair has evolved, so too has the complexity of his tricks, from carving and grinding to hand-planting and power-sliding. There’s nothing the fearless Wheelz won’t try – an attitude that has propelled him to an international career as an extreme-sports stunt rider.

Fotheringham earned his first Guinness World Records certificate in 2008 for landing the first wheelchair backflip, which he did at Doc Romeo skatepark in his home city of Las Vegas. His next record challenge took him to Rome in Italy on 24 Mar 2010, where he pulled off the highest ramp jump by wheelchair. His biggest day of record-breaking, though, would come on 20 Jul 2018. At the Woodward West summer camp in Tehachapi, California, under a baking-hot sun, Wheelz set three hair-raising world records at the skatepark: the longest wheelchair ramp jump, the tallest quarter-pipe drop-in on a wheelchair, and the highest wheelchair hand plant.

Fotheringham continues to wow audiences with his incredible skills in his chair, now travelling the world with fellow extreme sports stars in Nitro Circus. To date, he’s still the only WCMXer to tackle Nitro Circus’s epic Giganta Ramp. He also engages with his audiences and speaks regularly as a champion of disability sports.