Jamie Bestwick and Scotty Cranmer Back on Top

Some familiar names are back in the X Games gold medal slot for park and vert. Scotty Cranmer and Jamie Bestwick, respectively. Cranmer won gold in park back in ’06, then sat out most of last year with a foot injury, but when Scotty is on, he’s on. As for Bestwick, he went down extremely hard on a tailwhip 540 and didn’t know where he was when he woke up, but he already had nailed two runs that kept him in the top spot, despite sitting out the last few minutes of competition.

You want highlights? Here goes. First up, we’ll start with park.

What a mess. A good mess, but messy nonetheless. Here’s why: there are two heats in the beginning. Five riders in each heat, 10 riders in total. The two heats run, and the top five scores from both of those heats go on to the final finals. I know it’s confusing, but it works pretty well. Unfortunately, before we got to the final finals, the announcer called the results as the final results, awarding Diogo Canina first place. Diogo was surrounded by his friends, doused with water and put up on someone’s shoulders to celebrate.

And then we got word to him that he actually had to ride again. A run In the end, Diogo finished in second, but he seemed visibly bummed. I would be too. Here’s some highlights from the top three though.

Gold, Scotty Cranmer: Insane gaps into and out of the concrete. Double whip backflips, frontflips and a huge flair over the capsule channel. Scotty also knows the format, so while everyone was getting psyched for Diogo, he was getting ready to ride the final finals.

Silver, Diogo Canina: Insane flair transfers, 360 flips out of the concrete, tailwhip flips over the hump in the concrete. Won X Games for about five minutes before everything got straightened out.

Bronze, Gary Young: Gary won qualifying, and perhaps because of the “First in Qualifying Curse,” fell back to third. He eyed up some of the most creative lines in the park course, fired them out, then went back and fired them out faster and with turndowns in them.

In all, it was a great comp that unfortunately got overshadowed by some organizational confusion. But hopefully Diogo Canina is happy with his silver medal. It’s good to see Scotty Cranmer back on top. He’s been missed in the park comps. Congrats guys.

And now onto vert. Jamie Bestwick nailed two stellar runs before going down hard on his head and shoulder after hanging up a tailwhip 540. Those scores were high enough to propel Jamie into the first place spot, where he remained for the second half of the final jam session. Jamie’s tricks included alley-oop downside whips, a perfectly nailed nosedive tailwhip 5 earlier in the session, opposite and regular flairs and consistent flow and style. Chalk up a three-peat for X Games gold in vert for Jamie Bestwick. Feel better dude.

In second was fellow U.K. vert competitor Simon Tabron, who has now added one-hand one-foot 900s to his vert repertoire. Simon has the 9 on lock, but he mixes that up with a wild batch of variations, including barspin to tuck no-hander and smooth carving flairs.

Third place went to Chad Kagy, who went down several times on double flair attempts. While still on the bike, Chad nailed flair whips, opposite flair whips and barspins to tailwhips, but a few slide outs and time constraints kept Chad from getting his dream run in.

I’ve also gotta mention the number of 900s throughout the entire vert comp. Tabron, DMC and Tim Wood all pulled consistent 900s throughout the day. And that is no joke. As for new tricks, well I gotta give it up for Kagy’s opposite flair whip and Tabron’s one-hand one-foot 900. As is the case with vert, even though Jamie and Dennis went down hard, I gotta end this by saying that I’m glad that everyone walked away from the vert comp.

And that’s going to do it for X Games 15. Be back in the office by Tuesday, so look for regular updates to commence.

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