The Park Final went down today at the Dew Tour in Chicago, and it was a doozy. Despite taking it on a gnarly crash earlier in the day, Dave Mirra rallied to turn in an awesome first run that no one else could touch. He dropped his signature no-handed 360 flip and a clean 720 over the box, as well as a giant 540 and a flair whip over the kicker on the 10-foot quarter. Garrett Reynolds kept the heat on Dave with a totally different style, throwing a barspin-to-barspin 360 drop from the top of the course, a no-handed to late barspin 360, and a barspin to manual to no-hander. Marcus Tooker took third with a 360 whip to barspin, a 720 over the box backwards, and a perfect bikeflip.

Results
1. Dave Mirra
2. Garrett Reynolds
3. Marcus Tooker
4. Steve McCann
5. Brandon Dosch
6. Mark Webb
7. Craig Mast
8. Ryan Nyquist
9. Daniel Dhers
10. Dennis Enarson
11. Morgan Wade
12. Mike Spinner

The Vert Prelims happened just after Park, with the Final scheduled for later tonight. Pre-qualified riders Jamie Bestwick, Chad Kagy, and Simon Tabron will be joining the following seven riders to close out the Chicago stop of the Dew Tour.

Vert Prelim Results
1. Jimmy Walker
2. Dennis McCoy
3. Francisco Zurita
4. Kevin Robinson
5. Jay Eggleston
6. Koji Kraft
7. Steve McCann

Dave Mirra caused a mild ruckus when he revealed recently that he's gone brakeless. DC just loaded up a new edit featuring Dave riding his warehouse, and as always, it's a doozy, big and smooth. Check it out right here, and look for Dave to be tearing it up on his bike and in his Subaru rally car this summer.

As reported on www.forbes.com by Kurt Badenhausen

Snowboarder Shaun White was down to his last chance after falling during his first two runs of the men's half-pipe competition at last month's Winter X Games. It was the culminating event in the four day contest that drew 68,000 fans to Aspen, Colo. Once again, White delivered. He ripped off a stellar final run that included back-to-back 1080s (three complete rotations in the air) to win the gold.

White's payday for winning one of his sport's biggest competitions: a paltry $30,000. By comparison, Geoff Ogilvy earned $1.1 million for winning golf's 2009 opening event, the Mercedes-Benz Championship.
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But the snowboarding and skateboarding phenom crowned the Flying Tomato will get his money. We estimate that White earned $9 million in 2008 thanks to lucrative endorsement deals with Burton, Hewlett-Packard, Oakley, Red Bull and Target. His earnings are almost entirely from sponsors, as yearly prize money for skateboarders and snowboarders rarely tops $100,000. White's endorsement take is greater than any baseball or football player outside of quarterback Peyton Manning.

CLICK HERE FOR A SLIDESHOW OF THE HIGHEST-PAID ACTION SPORTS STARS IN PICTURES

White is the Tiger Woods of today's action sports stars. He wins more than anybody else, and his fame far eclipses that of his competition. Other action sports stars are starting to get noticed by a broader audience, and that has meant bigger paychecks, thanks to rich sponsorship deals.

With this in mind, we decided to take a look at who makes what in action sports. Through interviews with industry experts we estimated 2008 earnings for the top stars in the more traditional sports like snowboarding, skateboarding, surfing and BMX. We excluded Motocross racing, which straddles the line between action sports and motor sports and top riders like Chad Reed and James Stewart can make as much as $5 million racing around a dirt track.

The top 10 earners in 2008 were all male. Top female snowboarders like Torah Bright, Gretchen Bleiler and Hannah Teter make as much as $750,000 annually, but that fell short of our $1 million cut off.
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Shaun White is the top earner among the current crop of action sports stars, but the highest-paid guy in the game is still Tony Hawk, the godfather of action sports. Hawk retired from competitive skating in 1999 at the age of 31, but he has built a thriving business that earned him $12 million last year. Hawk dominated skateboard competitions through the 1980s and '90s, winning 71% of the events that he entered during his 17-year career. Despite his success, Hawk found that he could not support his family financially by just competing, so he launched his own skateboard company, Birdhouse Projects, in 1992.

Hawk parlayed his skating success into a business empire that includes his own Boom Boom Huckjam action sports tour, a clothing line available at Kohl's and Tony Hawk's Big Spin roller coasters at Six Flags. He also created a videogame with Activision, "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater," that launched in 1999. It is one of the best-selling videogame franchises of all time with $1.2 billion in sales since its launch. The latest version hits stores in October. Today, Tony Hawk Inc. employs 30 people at offices outside of San Diego. Last year, Tony Hawk branded product sales were $200 million.

Hawk is still a big name with teens, despite being retired for 10 years. TRU, a market research firm focused on the under-30 set, does an annual study on awareness and likability of celebrities. The top athlete in its 2008 report amongst teens was Hawk, ahead of the likes of LeBron James and Derek Jeter. That is why companies like Activision, Quiksilver, Sirius and T-Mobile are still quick to partner with him.

Corporate money has been pouring into action sports in recent years as the popularity of these sports has taken off with consumers. Participation in skateboarding increased 74% between 1998 and 2007 to 10.1 million participants, the fastest growth of any sport in the U.S. Snowboarding registered the third fastest growth over the same 10-year period, up 42% to 5.1 million participants according to the National Sporting Goods Association.

"These sports are so much fun for participants and accessibility is much better than 20 years ago," says Bob Klein, an action sports pioneer who built the first snowboard half pipe and later became an agent for boarders including Shaun Palmer and Danny Kass.

Walt Disney's ESPN has been hugely influential in expanding the reach of these sports through the X-Games. ESPN launched the first summer competition in 1995 that was billed as the Extreme Games, featuring sports like bungee jumping, eco-challenge, sky surfing and street luge, all events that no longer exist. The Winter X-Games joined the party in 1997.

NBC launched its own action sports competition in 2005, the Dew Tour. The tour features five-stops over four months with prize money totaling $2.5 million, the biggest purse in action sports. Big sponsors on last year's Dew Tour included Sony, Toyota and Wendy's International.

The latest big brand to enter the fray is Gatorade. The sports drink leader announced plans for its first big push into action sports earlier this year. The PepsiCo subsidiary signed three up-and-coming action sports athletes to endorsement deals including 14-year skateboarding phenom Chaz Ortiz.

Peter Carlisle, who heads the Olympics and Action Sports division of sports agency Octagon, says, "Action sports provide a unique platform to reach the masses and the younger demo that is particularly hard to reach through mass marketing."

Good news for today's action sports stars.