Ken Block legacy of rally driving, action sports, DC, more

There’s a famous image of rally driver Ken Block that is breathtaking for both its beauty and its sense of danger.

The image is ultra-wide, 2-by-6 feet when printed, the result of 25 photos stitched together to form one frame. In it, Block’s helmet is barely visible behind the wheel of a 1,400-horsepower, methanol-fueled 1965 Ford Mustang as he navigates one of the most treacherous corners of Colorado’s famed Pikes Peak hill climb. Block has taken the corner so fast and so wide that his front tires are smoking, while his back tires are kissing the mountain’s edge and tossing a plume of orange dirt and rocks. The potential for disaster is palpable.

Larry Chen, who photographed Block and his family for more than a decade, was perched at the next turn and took the shot in 2016. For years, he says, people have asked him to share the best photo he has ever taken. “My easy answer is always, ‘I haven’t shot it yet,'” Chen says.

But since 2016, he has known that wasn’t true. He knew he took his best photo that day in Colorado. “But I always assumed Ken would top what he’d done before,” Chen says. “He always did.”

That’s because Block was everything the photograph embodies: A calculated risk-taker, a marketing genius and a man who always had something better coming just around the next corner.

“And now he’ll never be able to top it,” Chen says. “I’ve been thinking a lot about that.”

So too have many in Block’s orbit. In the two days since the DC Shoes and Hoonigan co-founder was killed in an accident while snowmobiling near his home in Utah at age 55, those who knew him best are remembering him as much for the impact he had on them individually as for the way he transformed their industries.

And they want to talk about Ken Block the man.

Not the loud, exuberant exhibitionist in the viral videos who became one of the most famous drivers in motorsports, but the person he was when the cameras turned off and the crowds went home.

“I went through my career believing that to be committed to being great in motorsports, you had to give up personal relationships and put aside having a family,” says rally driver and TV host Tanner Foust, Block’s friend, X Games teammate and longtime competitor. “Then I met Ken when he started rally racing. The more family…