Cycle News Staff | August 3, 2008
Josh Hansen ran away with the win in the Moto X Racing competition at the X Games 14 at the Home Depot Center. Hansen had little troubles en route, taking the victory after nailing the holeshot and running off with a wire-to-wire victory. “This win means everything to me. I need to get back on my feet and get my name back out there,” said Hansen. “A lot of people weren’t expecting this turnout, so it’s a positive thing. I worked hard and I’m glad to see it pay off.” Former Supercross Champion Jeremy McGrath finished second but had to work for it. He crashed earlier in his heat race and transferred to the main via a win in the LCQ. In the main event, McGrath put himself into second place right away and had to fight off a number of “Josh’s” – Josh Grant, Josh Hill and Josh Summey – in order to stay there. At first, Grant was turning up the heat on McGrath before he slid out on the dry and hard-packed track. Then Hill started to work on the former SX champ and was trying to make a pass over a rhythm jump section when he lost control of his bike and fell off, his now rider-less Yamaha launching over another jump, coming to rest across two lanes of the track. Hill was uninjured in the fall. He remounted and finished out the race. Finally, Summey gave McGrath something to think about until Grant came up and passed Summey towards the end. There was no time left for Grant to possibly advance any further. Hansen took the win some 11 seconds ahead of McGrath, followed by Grant, Summey, Josh Demuth, Justin Brayton, Nathan Ramsey, Troy Adams, Jason Lawrence and Hill. “Some of the fastest guys in the world were racing,” McGrath said from the podium. “I haven’t raced in a while, so I’m pretty surprised to be up here. The track was really slick and challenging to ride but I had fun. It’s all about having fun.” In the Supermoto competition, Jeff Ward collected his second X Games gold medal of his career after taking the win ahead of Robbie Horton, Brandon Currie and Steve Drew. Pre-race favorite Mark Burkhart had a miserable race. He washed out in the first turn and restarted in dead last, and then he again crashed hard while trying to come up through the field. He was credited with 11th place. In the inaugural Moto X Women’s Race, Sherri Cruse led off with the holeshot, jumping into the early lead. However, she soon swapped-out in the rhythm section, which allowed Tara Gieger and Jessica Patterson to get by her. The two WMA champs – Gieger and Patterson – battled until Patterson lost control over a jump. From there, Geiger cruised to a seemingly easy victory, adding a whip or two just for fun. Cruse ended up finishing second, while 17-year-old Tatum Sik took the bronze. In other competition, Kevin Johnson edged out Ronnie Renner to win the Speed and Style event. His MX skills were the deciding factor. Both Renner and Johnson chose not to do flip tricks around the course and instead opted to do more conservative and traditional grab-trick combinations. Johnson physically won the race by just a few seconds, Renners’ style scores were unable to overcome that gap. Third place went to Jeremy Stenberg, followed by Mike Mason and Edgar Torronteras. Crowd favorite Travis Pastrana was unable to advance to the semis after falling in a corner. Another favorite, Nate Adams, was unable to compete after suffering a hard fall in practice. In the Moto X Freestyle, Jeremy Lusk grabbed his second medal of the games after pulling off a trick (Hart Attack Indian Air Backflip) that he was unable to complete last year to get the gold this year. He beat Switzerland’s Mat Rebeaud, who was riding with an injured knee after colliding with “Twitch” Stenberg in the morning Speed and Style competition. He also fell during the Freestyle warm-ups, hitting his head. Speaking of Twitch, who was riding with a sore thumb, he stopped for an unknown reason while riding with 10 seconds left in his run and threw his bike (and helmet) to the ground in frustration.
