What Really Happened: X Games 17

Sometimes, the difference between a competition and a race can be massive. Look at X Games 17 for example.

This may not come as news to some of the more dedicated fans of two-wheel sport, but what really happened at X Games 17 is that we learned the difference between a competition and a popularity contest.

Jeremy "Twitch" Stenberg won Best Whip, and it's not like his whips were bad, but they didn't match up to a couple that he beat. (Photo: CoxMX.com)

Back in my early days as a motojournalist, I used to sit around and pontificate about how judged competitions weren’t like races because in racing there’s a clear winner or loser. The guy who wins is nearly always the guy who gets to the checkered flag first. It’s cut-and-dry. There have been instances in the past of penalties and people getting points docked and things like that after the fact, but those are typically all explicitly stated in the rules and there tends not to be much hullaballoo about these sorts of rulings.

So, as a bit of a competition purist, I actually took exception to the idea of judged competitions because, as I estimated way back when anyway, the judges could – emphasize the word could – pick whoever they want to win if it serves their purpose.

Now, this didn’t start to become reality until guys like Travis Pastrana became almost bigger than the event itself. But once that happened, all of a sudden there was a lot of talk about how Pastrana, or Brian Deegan, or whoever else, didn’t “really” beat whoever it was that they beat according to the judges.

Thomas Pages was fifth in Best Whip, but as you can see, his whips were consistently gnarlier than Stenberg's. (Photo: CoxMX.com)

There was a lot of talk about it last year after the Freestyle Moto X competition inside the LA Coliseum. Pastrana won, but some people thought Levi Sherwood should’ve won because his tricks were bigger or whatever. The truth is, though, that I defended Pastrana’s medal because, just with the shear pace with which he attacked the course, he got more jumps in, and his lines were more creative, so while Sherwood may have had a couple bigger tricks, overall I thought Pastrana winning the event was pretty easy to justify.

However, at this year’s X Games, I think a couple of guys – actually, three guys – were flat-out robbed.

First, two guys were robbed in Thursday night’s Best Whip competition. Now, this is sort of expected at this event because it’s judged by the fans, and the fans I guess aren’t the best judges, but anyone who saw Jarryd McNeil’s whips – for the second year in a row – and didn’t think he was flat-out the gnarliest guy out there by far is completely out of their heads. He somehow got third place behind some pretty standard whips thrown by the very popular Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg and last year’s gold-medal winner Todd Potter.

Jarryd McNeil finished third but threw whips like this or better throughout the entire competition. (Photo: CoxMX.com)

But perhaps even a bigger travesty from Best Whip is that Frenchman Thomas Pages didn’t even medal. The dude was the only guy even close to McNeil as far as his whips were concerned, and he finished fifth with only nine percent of the vote! That is absolutely ridiculous, and you can see why in the pictures in this very article.

And the final guy who got robbed, as far as I’m concerned, is Mike Mason. It’s apparent that Mason wasn’t exactly considered a “star” by X Games standards because he initially wasn’t even invited to X Games at all.

However, with pressure from fans and friends alike, he was invited to take part in Speed & Style on Saturday night. And he won.

Except, he didn’t.

The only time all night that the guy who won on the track didn’t win once their “tricks” were averaged into the score was when Mason beat Nate Adams – the new Freestyle Moto X gold-medal winner – in the Speed & Style final, but the gold was given to Adams instead by virtue of his stronger trick scores.

Mike Mason had tricks like this off-axis backflip and more but somehow lost Speed & Style because his tricks weren't good enough. (Photo: CoxMX.com)

Now, I could see this being true if, for example, Carey Hart was the one who won the final, because he – kind of ironically – didn’t even flip over the finish-line jump, but Mason had solid flips and his tricks were not pedestrian by any means.

However, it seems the X Games wanted to make sure that the more popular name, Nate Adams, would get the gold, because that’s a better story for them to show a guy winning double gold seven years after he won gold in Freestyle Moto X the first time.

It’s a shame, too, because in situations like this, it’s not just the competitors who lose, the fans lose, too, because McNeil, Pages and Mason are all guys with unique stories and unique backgrounds, any one of which could make for great star material as we roll into X Games 18 next summer.

Nate Adams (left) even conceded after he realized they gave him the gold that Mike Mason (right) was the rightful winner. (Photo: CoxMX.com)

Related Posts:

• 

  Aug 03 2011

  Interview: Mike Mason

• 

  Jul 31 2011

  Day 3, X Games 17

• 

  Aug 05 2011

  Editorial: X Games Needs Athletes

• 

  Jul 30 2011

  X Games 17; Day 2

• 

  Jul 29 2011

  X Games 17 – DAY 1

• 

  Jul 28 2011

  X Games 17, The Not So Calm Before the Storm