The X Games

A daily look at X Games 13 from Staples Center and the Home Depot Center by Los Angeles Times staff reporters. Included in this year’s coverage are several latimes.com exclusives, including a frequently updated blog, a user-generated photo gallery and a continually evolving notebook that includes event updates. All at latimes.com/sports/extreme.

Will the big air events ever get too dangerous?

Two days after Jake Brown survived a harrowing 45-foot fall to the bottom of the mega-ramp inside Staples Center, some extreme-sports athletes were questioning the worthiness of the big air events.

The apparatus features a choice of two roll-in ramps, one measuring 60 feet and the other 80 feet, then a pair of ramps that lead over gaps of 50 feet and 70 feet. But the portion of the ramp that caused nearly all of the accidents during the skateboard and BMX big air competitions, including Brown’s crash, is the 27-foot-tall quarterpipe that follows the jump.

“It’s kind of fun to do the ramp, but I’m not too psyched on the quarterpipe,” said BMX rider Gary Young, who opted to skip big air and compete in the freestyle event. “A foot off one way or the other can be real bad.”

In the BMX big air competition Friday night, world record-holder Mat Hoffman went out of control above the quarterpipe, but managed to land on the padding on the top deck. Still, he dropped about 18 feet and was walking with the help of a cane Saturday.

“The quarterpipe plays a huge issue,” said Kevin Robinson, who won his second consecutive gold medal in BMX big air Friday night. “If you mess up, you don’t come down from it safe that many times. It’s not something you can just get on and keep crashing.”

The skateboarders who compete in big air have the advantage of practicing on the ramp over a longer period of time. Danny Way, a three-time gold medalist in the event, first constructed a mega-ramp in 2002. Since then, others have gone up, including one in the backyard of Bob Burnquist, who won the skateboard big air event Thursday night.

But Way, who once used a mega-ramp to clear the Great Wall of China, says his big air invention is just the start.

“On this, you feel as though you have no cage and no limit,” Way said in the past. “You can go as big and as far and as crazy as you want.”

Added BMX gold-medalist Robinson, “I still think there is a long way to go. I think we’re going to come back next year and show you more and people are going to be blown away.”

Even so, Brown’s fall was a reminder to veteran skateboarders that a serious injury is just a wobble away.

“You tend to take it for granted because we’re so smooth and fluid most of the time,” said Bucky Lasek, who finished fifth in skateboard big air. “In reality, it’s a big risk. We do this because of the adrenaline.”

-- Dan Arritt, Ken Fowler and Peter Yoon

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Shaun White, home alone

Shaun White is the world’s most recognizable action-sports athlete. He’s a perpetual Winter X Games star and an Olympic gold medalist who, most recently, starred in an American Express commercial. He has millions of dollars to match his million freckles, and a spacious new home in upscale Rancho Santa Fe, east of Solana Beach in San Diego County.

But White is still a month shy of his 21st birthday. He’s close to family and used to coming home to his parents, brother and sister.

“It’s weird,” says the red-headed White, also an accomplished skateboarder who today will compete in the vert final. “It’s one of those things where I did the Olympics. I came home and went, ‘Man, I’m 19 and can move out.’ I’m like, ‘Sweet! Let’s go shopping. How rad is this?’ ”

He found his dream house, 25 minutes from his parents’ home in Carlsbad, with 6,000 square feet and a spacious swimming pool.

But that’s a lot of house for someone so young and still single. “It’s weird,” he says again, “because I got in there and I’m sitting there and I’m like, ‘What do I do now?’

“It’s really fun when your friends are over, but you go home and there’s no one. It’s like when you’re young and you’ve got to do your homework, but you’re out playing and in the back of your mind you’ve got to do something.

“That’s what it feels like. I can’t really relax, but I’m trying to get used to it.”

-- Pete Thomas

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Too close to the action

An ESPN cameraman was taken away on a stretcher for “precautionary reasons” after his camera lens was hit with the back tire of a motorcycle during the Moto X freestyle elimination at the Home Depot Center.

Ronnie Faisst was coming down from a jump early in his second run when his back tire clipped the cameraman’s lens, knocking him down the side of the jump. As medical personnel rushed to the cameraman’s aide, Faisst crashed on the same jump his next time through the course. He laid on the surface for a few minutes before walking away.

Faisst was given another chance at a second run because of interference with the cameraman. The remaining cameramen were removed from the top of the jumps. Faisst, though, suffered the same result, crashing on the same jump, in his do-over run.

Chris Stiepock, general manager for the X Games, said he did not believe the cameraman’s injuries were serious.

--Dan Arritt

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A winning debut

Ricky Carmichael has won about everything there is to win in the sport of supercross, but still, he had an image problem.

“If you walk up to someone that doesn’t know anything about our sport, they say ‘Oh, don’t you do X Games stuff?’ ” he said. “I always felt like an outsider.”

Not anymore. Carmichael made his X Games debut Saturday in Moto X racing, a supercross-style event that he helped create. And not only that, but he won, going wire to wire in the final to defeat silver medalist Grant Langston and bronze medalist Kevin Windham.

“To win the inaugural one means a lot,” he said. “The first one is always the sweetest one, no doubt. Any race that I’ve ever won, the first time I did it was the best.”

About the only bummer of the race was that James “Bubba” Stewart, the rising supercross star, was a late scratch at the X Games because of injury, depriving fans of a showdown between the two supercross superstars.

“I always miss a great competitor,” Carmichael said. “It’s a shame he had some bumps and bruises. I was looking forward to doing battle with him.”

Carmichael said he figured this would be a one-time appearance at the X Games, but said he enjoyed himself so much this week that he’d like to come back next year and perhaps compete in other events such as Moto X step up and Supermoto.

For now, he hopes only to win one of the few contests he has yet to win.

“Now that I have a gold medal at X Games, I better win an ESPY,” he said. “I’ve been beat out four times and I don’t know what else I can do. If I don’t do it this time, I give up. I’m really hoping I can get one of those bad boys.”

--Peter Yoon

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Jones is a step ahead

Adam Jones brought his own bag of tricks to the Moto X freestyle competition at the Home Depot Center, then walked away with the biggest treat of his career, his first X Games gold medal.

Jones, a 23-year-old from Minden, Nev., earned a score of 94.40 in the championship round against Nate Adams of Glendale, Ariz. Jones tried an array of backflips during his 90-second run, including two he only invented last week.

“That really helped me this week, just having two tricks that nobody else was doing,” said Jones, who finished second to Travis Pastrana in this event last year.

“I knew this year was probably the only year I’d have an advantage like I had, so I had to stick my run, and I did.”

Pastrana opted to skip the event this week because he hasn’t been practicing, and Adams, the 2004 champion in this event, was competing with a broken left index finger. Adams broke the finger July 27 during an event in Spain and had a metal plate inserted Tuesday.

“I don’t know what the story would have been if Nate would have not been hurt,” Jones said. “Without a broken finger, I’m sure he could have done more.”

Adams, 23, still managed to reach the final after out-pointing Jeremy Stenberg of San Diego, 93.20-92.00, in a semifinal.

DAN ARRITT

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Tabron goes back to back

Simon Tabron became the first BMX rider to land back-to-back 900s, but he couldn’t overcome Jamie Bestwick, who won the vert gold medal thanks to a nearly flawless first run.

Tabron’s second effort included the history-making combination and a slew of tail whips, but earned him a score of 92.66 points. That was a full point behind Bestwick’s score from the first run, in which he landed an opposite double tail whip and a turndown flair, among an array of other technically difficult tricks.

Tabron, who went eighth in the field of 10 riders, pulled off an alley-oop 900 in his first run and jumped out to the lead at 91.00 points despite falling on a hand plant. It was in his second run that he gave Bestwick, the final rider on the lineup, a run for his money.

“I actually turned to my friend Jimmy [Walker] and I was like, ‘I’ve got to pull out some stuff now,’ ” Bestwick said. “And then when I looked back at that first run, the one thing that set me and Simon apart was that I had some relentless combinations. And I probably went a good three or four feet higher than the other guys on the ramp today.”

Bestwick secured the victory when Kevin Robinson, who was the penultimate rider, crash-landed while attempting a double back flip. Robinson finished third.

--Ken Fowler

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Dhers rises to the top

Four years ago, Venezuelan-born Daniel Dhers was encouraged by a friend to go to Brazil and attend the Latin X Games. It was not uncommon for officials to add competitors on the spot. They were right to do so, as he competed and finished in seventh.

He has gotten better, much better, since then.

Dhers, 22, took home this year’s gold medal in the BMX freestyle final at the Home Depot Center. Dhers, with a score of 91.66 points, beat New Jersey-native Scotty Cranmer’s 90.33 and BMX-legend Dave Mirra’s 88.00.

This was Dhers’ second time competing in the X Games. Last year’s Dew Tour champion finished third in freestyle finals last year at X Games.

“I won the overall, won the LG, and someone came up to me and said, ‘You know, you won a lot this year, but you didn’t win X Games.’ He was right,” said Dhers, who speaks three languages and is learning sign language, in Spanish. “So I put it on my agenda as a maximum priority.”

--Jaime Cardenas