Name: The Snowboarding Accident That Never Aired | David Letterman
Uploaded: 2025-12-10T16:33:52.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Snowboarding Accident That Never Aired | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-10. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Snowboarding Accident That Never Aired | David Letterman' from Letterman on Comedy Buff. Published 2025-12-10. Transcript available.

what a show we have for you tara dakitas is joining us ladies gentlemen it's
going to be
good to see her again yeah this uh what a what a lovely young woman the nice
thing about this show
you occasionally you get to meet great people from all walks of life and that
certainly is true with
this girl uh she was five-time x games a snowboarding a gold medal winner and
we had her
out here uh for the show on i guess it was thursday and we had a we had a ramp
built out
there as like 40 feet high and then we we covered it with snow and slush and
crap like that and then
she was going to slide down and do some of her snowboarding tricks and and the
second time down
uh because the snow was melting and not behaving like snow uh things went haywire
and she goes
sailing off the deal and lands right on the on the pavement now there are two
great points of
embarrassment here for myself and also for my friend paul tara dakitas was fine
she did what
she needed to do she just hit the pavement and had the good sense to stay there
so now when she's down
i'm looking around and and and you know really quick thinking on my feet i say
what do we do now
that that was my contribution to the emergency paul has another perspective on
what happened tell
them what you did i am just so used to accompanying uh performers right and
acts you know and people that
need uh punctuation in the back that when she hit the pavement yeah i gave her
a big pow like that old
joke i cut her cut her all the way down i'm so embarrassed about it well i'm
embarrassed just a
couple of idiots anyway the the good news is uh she's fine paul and i will
never live it down but
uh she's fine and she'll be here and we'll talk a little bit about it we're
going to show the footage
and she'll tell us what happened and she's a lovely woman and i'm i can't tell
you how happy i am that
she's okay welcome back i made it yes you did first of all uh i've sort of been
trying to explain to
people what i thought had happened to you regarding the injuries tell folks
what the injuries were and
how you're doing and what the outlook is pretty good i hope right i'm here no
the injuries
thank you um you know i still haven't seen the clip so i don't know what it
looks like
but all i remember is the concrete and then getting rushed off and and i'm good
i'm great i had a
really nice weekend and i got i got some bruises and you know i got some
stitches like five stitches
yeah now before uh you attempted the jump we were talking and i said how many
uh bones have you broken
in your body and you said well how much time do you have but you you have had a
lot of other injuries in
your career haven't you i guess it's just part of the sport it's definitely
part of the sport just like
any sport i mean there's a lot of injuries that come with it what other kind of
stuff has gone wrong for
you oh man am i the only guest on tonight um well i'm just coming off two years
of acl uh
replacement and repair ligament in the knee ligament in the knee i i also broke
a bone and did some nerve
damage when i tore the acl um and i also had stitches in my head yeah so i do
wear a helmet from
time to time but it's just all these weird fluke things that happens when you
get injured now snowboarding
is not that old a sport is it really compared to like olympic sports compared
to regular skiing it's
only been around how long um it's been around about 25 30 years well longer
than i thought actually yeah
definitely i mean the the first is when you know they had a rope on the the
nose of it and it was
basically a surfboard going down the snow well now that sounds cool you had a
rope you could hang on
to uh-huh now did that work how was that i wasn't part of it then thank
goodness how did i wouldn't
want to go on one of those down that that thing that was just i don't know what
was the problem was the
ice wasn't the snow wasn't snow it was ice right yeah like you said i i watched
the the other show and
it was like a combination of ice chunks and stuff yeah just stuff out of the
street
so how did you begin this as a sport for you were you obviously a kid when you
took to it i was um i
actually i my parents were really active so i grew up skiing and um i was on
the mountain one day and on
my skis and i had a bad fall and i cut my head again i'm starting to okay
anyways um so i i i got angry
imagine that i think you saw me now you were you were angry when you hit your
head the other night
last week yeah you're just angry what that you you made a mistake or you had a
problem i mean you didn't
really make a mistake did you um i don't really know what happened it was so
quick yeah um i just get
angry i get angry when i get hurt so pain makes me angry and that's kind of a
breakthrough
and um and too many people's hands on me doing stuff now see i like that
yeah
uh so so now uh what is your next uh competition what do you where do you go
once you're ready to
compete again um i'm gonna go home and uh take a little time off and then uh uh
there's a vans
triple crown that i'm gonna do but there's also a queen of the mountain which
is a contest that
benefits um the boarding for breast cancer which is the bbc and it's something
i've been doing for
years so i always participate in that and it's a great event yeah that sounds
great i'm actually
taking the um the uh the young girl that lost her arm to a shark the little surfer
girl um i'm taking
her snowboarding wow yeah my god and she went out surfing again didn't she yeah
she's been she's been
i think she started competing again and she's been doing really well that's
just amazing yeah it's
inspirational let's uh let's uh talk about what happened on our show first of
all i'm going to show
folks the uh the scaffolding that we had set up and you tell people what we're
looking at and is this
something you do all the time on this scaffolding here have you been on these
before i have been
on them before they used to run the summer x game so i have been on them before
and this is uh 40 feet
high and they they spray it with artificial snow and this platform here to the
left that's where you
came flying off i guess is that pretty much what happened you don't remember
anything about this
nervous to watch well would you rather not watch it we can yeah i'll watch it
you want to see the
beatles absolutely could i and then they can watch this that's right later we'll
play that uh but
earlier in the day you actually made a couple of runs and did just fine show
the one run or the
whatever run we got there and i think this was uh just a little creepy yeah
this was the first one
now that looks scary right there but you're fine everything's fine there yeah
wow so what did you
what did you think after that one um after that one well you know we were
having a little problem
getting enough speed yeah so i wasn't clearing it before so that one i was like
all right i made it to
the landing i can do some tricks so you so you thought things might be okay but
still in all you
were a little concerned yeah yeah you know i was i was i was reading in this
magazine you were talking
about your your anatomy and there's a certain part of your anatomy that people
are fond of
and you were saying that it's good to have that as a snowboarder because you
you've got to keep
bouncing back up it's a good thing for the yeah the bouncing booty yeah there
you go now this is the uh
you now this i believe is the one where you had the problem are you ready for
this
you've seen nothing of this then right no just some still photographs yeah okay
i think i kind of
hit the cameraman yeah well you were not aware of the fact that when i saw
something going wrong i ran
out there and tried to catch you oh that was me what happened where were you uh
i don't want to talk about it
okay so here we go now this is your second attempt and the tricky we're doing
is a what
a backside 360. all right here we go let's watch this
who is that guy see he threw me off
oh my god you see that looks very very bad
very bad do you use any of that come back yeah i remember that yeah
well we this is for you we couldn't be happier that you're well thank you thank
you very much
you're a great champion thank you and a wonderful woman
and we'll be watching you and then pulling for you in all your upcoming
competitions thank you
thank you very much tara diketis ladies and gentlemen we'll be right back here
with dr phil