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  • The 5 Finest Moments of X Games 15

    Monday, August 3, 2009 11:21am PDT (4 months ago)

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    Los Angeles, Calif. – The 15th annual X Games wrapped Sunday evening at the Home Depot Center. While it's taken a day to sift through all the highs and lows of the four-day long X festival complete with the standard bumps, bruises and wreckage, we did manage to find five rather inspiring stories from this year's competition that reveal much of where the X Games are today. So let's count 'em down...

    5.     She's Feelin’ It - When female motocross star Ashley Fiolek isn’t busy texting her friends (rumor has it the 18- year old is averaging a few hundred a day) she’s training hard in the sweltering deserts. In 2009 she’s been getting a feel for the tempo and hangtime of Super X, which features much larger jumps than standard motocross rasing. And "feel” is the key ingredient for Fiolek, who was born deaf. On Saturday, she ran a perfect race, sprinting past Jessica Patterson in the final lap before taking the win in the Women's Super X. “You can’t teach that stuff,” said a blown away Ricky Carmichael, who came dangerously close to saying she raced like a guy up in the commentator's booth.

    (Left) 18-year-old Ashley Fiolek, who has been completely deaf since birth, shows off her unique X-Games 15 hardware after her win in the Moto X Super X Women's Final. Photo: Chistian Pondella via Getty Images

    4. Old Guys Really Do Rule - While gray hairs are sprouting across all of these games, The Skate Vert competition is practically an ode to the sport’s roots. While most of skating’s new breed of stars (P-Rod, Eric Koston, Ryan Sheckler) forgo the vert ramp for highly technical (and more accessible) street style side of things, thesight of guys launching 8-feet above the deck still draws the crowd, keeping the old guys relevant. Case in point: Bucky Lasek, Andy MacDonald and Danny Mayer were three of the five Men's Skate Vert finalists, and each is 36 years old. Lasek ended up finishing 2nd to 29-year old Pierre Luc Gagnon (PLG) on a count back, but the old guys (legends) beat the pants off of rising star Alex Perelson, who’s 18 years their junior.

    (Right) 36-year-old skaters Andy MacDonald and Bucky Lasek are still forces to be reckoned with in the Skateboarding Men's Vert. Both earned medals again this year with Lasek (right) taking silver     and MacDonald the bronze. Photo: Elsa via Getty Images

    3. Alive and Kickin    g; Part I - One of the most horrific X Games wipeouts ever was Jake Brown’s 40-foot freefall into the floor of the mega ramp two years ago. (Quick, try touching your chin to your belly button—that’s how much his body folded upon landing.) Witnesses swore he was dead. Screaming moms covered their children's eyes as medics sprinted toward him. Incredibly, he got up and walked away, although his recovery was a long one. But apparently it’s complete (although you never can be too sure with Jake) because this year he came back to win the event that nearly
    killed him.

    (Left) Jake Brown will always be known as the guy who fell out of the sky onto the floor of the mega ramp in 2007. But his comeback from that near- death experience is complete now that he's won the Skateboard Big Air. Photo: Christina Pondella via Getty Images.

    2. No Pain No Gain is Insane - After years of notable progress in Moto X Best Trick, there was concern that the boys were being beaten down by the threshold guardians, and had reached a plateau. So Travis Pastrana fell on his sword for the sport—or at least on the marble-packed dirt, trying to land something new; a 360-degree flip rotation combo. His wipeout was one for the X Games archives, but amazingly, he walked away. Kyle Loza won sticking a trick he’s done several times before, much to the dismay of progressives who thought Blake Williams (Bilko) won for landing a variation of what Pastrana attempted. The judges made amends with Bilko in the Freestyle Moto X comp, where he won gold.

    (Right) FMX star Travis Pastrana has always claimed his biggest strengths are also his weaknesses. "I've got the willingness and stupidity to try anything. If I think it's even remotely possible I'll try it." And he did in the Moto X Best Trick, leading to one of the worst wipeouts of the week. Photo: Jeff Gross via Getty Images.

    1. Alive and Kicking; Part II - X Games athletes are a fickle bunch. Like other pro athletes, they roll with their entourages and typically stick to their respective disciplines. But Rally Car is one sport that seems to be drawing a lot of these guys to    gether. Apparently the allure of jumping what amounts to a super-powered Ford Fiesta over a 70-foot gap has proven too much for these guys to resist. In fact, BMX star Dave Mirra and FMX legend Travis Pastrana both have won gold medals in the newest X Games category. Now we can add former Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack to the mix. You remember him. He’s the guy who survived that horrific IRL crash in 2003 that morphed his car into a meteor shower. When video of the crash was put up on big screen at the Home Depot Center before the Rally Car Racing Super Special Final he earned some instant street (and dirt) cred with the X-Crowd. Brack and Pastrana put on a good show, too, with Brack hanging in the race even with a dangling rear bumper. Then Pastrana hit the wall, literally, which handed Brack, a 43-year-old X-Games rookie, his first Gold.

    (Left) That's Former Indy 500 winner Kenny Brack up top, flying over FMX star Travis Pastrana in the final of the Rally Car Racing Super Special final. That Brack was an X Games rookie didn't stop him from beating the former gold medal winner. Both Brack and Pastrana are crossover stars having serious fun launching their tiny cars into the air. We expect a bunch more of these converts in the future. Photo: Christian Pondella via Getty Images.
















































    Channels: Skate, Moto, BMX

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