“I don’t actually know anyone who travels more than me.”
It could be viewed as bold statement – at least until Corbin Harris, former pro athlete turned global talent exec and man of various other pursuits, unfurls the itineraries that have strung together his last few months. “If you go back to January and being home in Australia, then I’ve be on the road across Aspen and Switzerland, from there I went on a snowboard trip, I entered my first skate comp in ten years and then was in Milan, back to the US, back to Paris and then Marseille, oh and Puglia, and then back to New York for The Knicks (NBA) parade and back to LA and now I’m here.” “Here” is Sacramento, California, where he’s hosting X Games commentary (see: man of various pursuits). It’s all part of life for the former pro skater and partner in The Familie – a talent agency working with sportspeople such as this year’s US Open golf open winner, Wyndham Clark, through to musician Machine Gun Kelly. Not bad for a kid who grew up skating Sydney’s southern bowls and dredged pools in the 90s.
Read the latest edition of ROAM here. “Life’s busy, but it’s been like this since I was 13 — chasing dreams and doing contests all over the world. I’m also someone who enjoys travel, I always have. I’m Australian – oh, I’m definitely Australian — but I’m also a bit of an international person too …” ROAM recently sat down with Harris to unlock a memorable time that cuts through his many and varied journeys.
Here, he recounts a roadtrip with Tony Hawk and the world’s craziest charity car event, Gumball 3000 — a real-life Smokey And The Bandit (kids, look it up) run across Europe with a ragtag bunch of pro athletes, global musicians, DJs and David Hasselhoff.
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“I’m someone who gets excited to be on the road, but Gumball was mental. I did it with Tony (Hawk) who’s a good mate and with some other skaters like Aaron “Jaws” Homoki. You had (musician) Eve, Deadmau5 the DJ and Felix Baumgartner — that guy who parachuted from out of space with Red Bull. Xzibit was there — you know, the rapper.
It was crazy. The drive started in Copenhagen, then Stockholm and though St Petersburg and down though Poland and into Monaco for the F1 race.
We were in this Land Rover Defender — this souped-up thing by a company called Twisted Auto.
We’d all pull out and hit the road and along the way we’d stop and skate some parks and get some footage but then we’d also get to the day’s stop where we’d do a big (skate) demo in font of thousands of people.
We had Tony’s ramp flown in (from the US) and set up in the main square in the middle of Warsaw and we had like 20,000 screaming fans watching.
Corbin Harris recently travelled across Europe with a ragtag bunch of pro athletes and global musicians, including David Hasselhoff. Credit: Supplied
And then we park up and do some photos and talk to all these fans. You go grab a quick shower at the hotel and then it’s onto a club, where these musos are performing or (Grammy winning French DJ) David Guetta’s playing and it’s mental. And you’re doing this every day for like 10 days straight. I was f…ed by the end of it. The cars are crazy. Xzibit was in this Maybach with a private driver — he’s sat in the back watching TV and relaxing.
And the Hoff was in an (Audi) R8 supercar. He was a cool guy; kind of like you’d expect him to be, I mean I didn’t get too deep with the guy but we had drinks at night and hung out.
Rapper Xzibit performing on stage. Credit: Supplied
In terms of pushing the limits on the road, yeah you do push it a bit and we were always playing catch up to the group as we’d always stop and skate. We got pulled over by the cops a couple of times in Poland, put it that way.
I also remember we went through this tunnel that was like 40km long and which we entered in sunshine and we’ve got Prodigy belting out and we’d had a few drinks — not Tony, who was driving — and I vividly remember we came out of the tunnel and it was snowing. Like, what the f…?
Six hours after that we pulled into Monaco at night. We had a police escort as we had to drive some of the (F1) track to get to the hotel. I was aligned with Red Bull and always had this interest in F1 and then we were suddenly there, on the Monaco track — the craziest and most famous F1 circuit.
Crowds in Krakow, Poland. Credit: Oskar Bakke/Oskar Bakke
The next morning, we woke up and had Dom Perignon for breakfast — hey, we were in Monaco. And then we went and watched the race from the top of our hotel and these incredible vantage points and then that was it. We were out the next day.
It was mental. And it’s a trip I’ll ever forget.
