Mike Sciacca
The city of Los Angeles is the official host for the ESPN X Games IX,
but Sunday's downhill BMX competition portion of the 10-day extreme
sports festival had a definite Huntington Beach flavor to it.
Six Surf City riders displayed their talents at Woodward West Camp
in Stallion Springs, Calif., east of Bakersfield, the site of the
game's third downhill BMX competition.
The ninth annual ESPN X Games is showcasing more than 300 of the
world's best action sports athletes competing in several sports
categories for medals and prize money.
The competition continues today through Sunday at several venues
in the Los Angeles area, although the Staples Center is the games'
primary venue.
Aggressive in-line skate, bike stunt, dirt, park, moto X and
skateboard events will take place over the next four days.
The surf competition, which was included in the X Games for the
first time, was held Saturday at the south side of the Huntington
Beach Pier.
Todd Lyons led the Huntington contingent in Sunday's downhill BMX
final with a fourth-place finish.
"I was pretty stoked," said Lyons, primarily a dirt jumper who was
making his sixth X Games appearance. "I was one of the last guys to
get invited to this event."
Lyons was followed by Neal Wood in ninth-place, Robbie Miranda in
11th-place, Brian Foster in 12th-place and Foster's brother, Alan, in
13th-place.
The quarter-mile course featured 20 sets of jumps, with a 45-foot
distance between jumps.
"We had never done that before so at the beginning of the
competition, we all were over-jumping," said Alan Foster, who, at 33,
was the senior competitor among the Surf City group.
"I really didn't care where I finished this weekend," he said.
"Obviously, I wanted to do well but my main goal was to do well and
just make it downhill."
In the downhill BMX qualifying event, which set up Sunday's final
field of competitors, Wood finished fifth, Miranda was sixth, Brian
Foster placed ninth, Lyons was 22nd, Alan Foster was 30th and
Huntington Beach's Christophe Leveque was 31st.
Thirty-three riders qualified for Sunday's final but Leveque
pulled himself from the competition.
Lyons, making his ninth X Games appearance, made it to the elite
eight round and finished in fourth-place in the championship final.
In the consolation final, Wood finished first, Miranda and Brian
Foster were second and third, respectively, and Alan Foster was
fifth.
"That's a pretty big thing for Huntington Beach to have so many
