X-Games So Far…
So, the X-Games are this weekend. I’ve watched most of them so far.
Lacking any stomach churning crashes from the Mega Ramp this year they just kept replaying Jake Brown and Danny Way’s mishaps from previous years. So, it’s good to know that ESPN is still happy to feed the bottom, even if there’s no actual food.
This year’s X-Games medals are little sculptures of hands throwing up the “LA” hand sign. Because nothing says street more than a bunch of middle class kids competing in niche athletics.
Speaking of which, Travis Pastrana showed up to try to rock a 360 flip. No one could seem to grasp the concept of a 360 flip so it was called a “Rodeo Flip” a “corked out 720″ and “The Toilet Paper Roll.” The last one is what Pastrana actually called it, which is dumb. It’s a trick that already has a name, doing it on a motorcycle doesn’t make it a different trick. Steve Caballero, a fakie to 360 is a Full Cab, I don’t care that you “can’t ollie a bicycle”. I think Cary Hart is the only one that gets it, he’s always held that the Hart Attack should just be called a Superman Seatgrab.
Anyway ESPN hyped the living hell out of Pastrana’s return, at Mirra’s urging, to FMX best trick. Boy, they must have felt like douchenuggets when he crashed his first try and decided to pack it in.
He did better than Willie Watts. Watts is from Broken Arrow, OK, which is the hometown of one of my best friends. I only say this because I know that they don’t put fail into the water in BA, but, Watts hyped up a crazy backflip body varial and then…two dead sailors. So awesome.
In a break from typical X-Games over hyping/under delivering/manufactured drama, the Adaptive Motocross race was actually a very cool thing.
Over in BMX Big Air Kevin Robinson regained his title in a last minute rally against Chad Kagy and Dave Mirra. Mirra tried to do a no-handed 3 across the 70 footer and, instead, gave a master class on how to eject from a trick gone wrong. Anthony Napolitan pulled the first double front flip in competition, much of the crowd thought he should have won. He shouldn’t have won. The competition is “Big Air” not “big trick to not even big air if it was on a regular vert ramp.” Not taking anything away from the double front, that was awesome, but what Anthony did was the equivalent of Jay Miron devoting his entire last X-Games park appearance to landing a 360 double whip across a box.
I missed the Big Air Rail Jam, which honestly seems like a contest created so Danny Way could win a gold medal. Danny way got a gold medal.
Apparently BMX Park is this afternoon. W00t. And by “W00t” I mean, “Daniel Dhers is going to do 70 consecutive 720s and a handfull of flairs to win, because park – theoretically the most diverse of all BMX disciplines – has been reduced to a box jump competition.”
Oh, by the way, they threw BMX “street” on during “X-Center” the hour before the X-Games was listed to start. Really? Why the hell wouldn’t you just start the X-Games an hour earlier? What since did that make? None, just like the street contest, which had a format that I found hard to understand (8 tries at each obstical) and which just seemed to kill momentum.
