“Pedro Barros, 15, takes gold in Skateboard Park at X Games - USA Today” plus 1 more |
| Pedro Barros, 15, takes gold in Skateboard Park at X Games - USA Today Posted: 01 Aug 2010 09:20 PM PDT LOS ANGELES (AP) — An X Games dominated by age and experience finally got a dose of youth on closing day. Fifteen-year-old rookie Pedro Barros beat 37-year-old veteran Andy MacDonald to win Skateboard Park on Sunday at a games previously dominated by repeat winners and older athletes. Skateboard Park was designed to allow young skaters versed in street style to compete with the older riders of vert ramps, and this year's finals went just according to plan, with all the competitors either teens in jeans or pad-and-helmet-wearing thirty-somethings. Ryan Sheckler was the youngest winner of this event at 13 in 2003, but the Brazilian Barros becomes the first athlete who wasn't born when the X Games began to win a gold. He used a combination of stunning 540 airs and grinding slides on the elaborate course at the L.A. Live complex in downtown Los Angeles to reach a final score of 86 out of 100. Barros said it was "sick" to win gold in his first X Games. He didn't think youth was overtaking age in pro skateboarding just yet, but didn't deny that his youthful exuberance helped. "We're young, so we get more energy," Barros said of the teens in the final. "We just get more hyped up." McDonald won silver with a score of 81 and 17-year-old Kevin Kowalski won bronze with a 78. Earlier in the competition an even younger face, 14-year-old Curren Caples, wowed the crowd and appeared to be on his way to gold. Weighing 75 pounds with a face that looks closer to 10, Caples inspired Justin Bieber-like screams from young girls in the crowd throughout his seemingly effortless runs that included a 360 frontside air that he had failed to land several times in practice. But Caples fell frequently, couldn't find his rhythm and was clearly frustrated in the final jam session. Youth got a boost earlier in the competition when Rune Glifberg, the 35-year-old favorite and defending champion, failed to make the finals. Before Sunday, most events at X Games 16 saw professional, perfectly executed performances but predictable winners and an absence of new faces. Jamie Bestwick won gold in BMX Freestyle Vert for the fourth year in a row. Pierre-Luc Gagnon won his third consecutive gold in Skateboard Vert and added another in Best Trick. Daniel Dhers won his third gold in four years in BMX Freestyle Park If anything these X Games were more memorable for things that happened outside the competition: —Travis Pastrana's just-for-the-heck-of-it double back-flip after he had already claimed gold in Freestyle Moto X. The move that was so groundbreaking for Pastrana four years earlier now was tossed off almost casually, with a smile. —Bob Burnquist's repeated attempts, after the ESPN telecast was over and most of the crowd had left the Coliseum, to land an unprecedented 900 on the mega ramp in Skateboard Big Air, risking serious injury just to complete a trick. — Constant tributes to Mat Hoffman, the BMX pioneer who was flying his bike to ridiculous heights years before the X Games brought money or glory for doing such things. The film telling his story, "The Birth of Big Air," premiered at the games, and briefly put Hoffman back at the center of the action sports world. — Double gold medalist Tanner Foust and all the other finalists doing doughnuts and making dust clouds at the end of the first-ever SuperRally racing competition. "Oh my God that was fun," a gleeful Foust said afterward. "It's basically like the coolest video game ever." It's as though he were writing the X Games' new slogan. Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Malibu girl's death prompts safety push on Pacific Coast Highway - Los Angeles Times Posted: 31 Jul 2010 12:31 PM PDT Pacific Coast Highway is many things to the tens of thousands of people who traverse it daily. For the day-trippers who park on the shoulder and haul their coolers across the roadway, it's the route to some of the best beaches around. For the "Z drivers" -- commuters who take the canyon roads west over the mountains to PCH en route to Los Angeles -- it's the quickest way to work. For the cyclists who ride along the shoulder, it's a workout and a rush.For the 13,000 people who call Malibu home, PCH is their main street and the only route through town. And since the death of 13-year-old Emily Rose Shane, a local eighth-grader who was hit by a car that ran off the road as she walked on the shoulder April 3, the locals are sick of sharing it with a world that looks on it as a highway. Residents gathered this week for a public ceremony for the latest victim, Navy Petty Officer Oscar Avila Mendoza, 23, who died after his car was hit by a speeding wrong-way driver on July 16. The wrong-way driver, James Sorg, also died, and Mendoza's passenger was hospitalized. Community activists said the five fatalities on PCH in the greater Malibu area so far this year show that despite stepped-up law enforcement and added barriers on the road, the highway is still not safe enough. "As beautiful as Malibu is, we who live here know firsthand what an ongoing dangerous nightmare the Pacific Coast Highway can be," Julie Eamer, 51, and the mother of three, told Thursday's assembly. Eamer and two other local "moms with mouths," as they call themselves -- Susan Saul, 48, and Maria-Flora Smoller, 45 -- formed a grass-roots group called A Safer PCH after Emily Shane died. The group now runs an e-mail list with more than 350 subscribers, and its meetings draw dozens of residents. "This community came together for us when this tragedy happened," said Emily's mother, Ellen Shane. Born and raised in Malibu, Emily was a happy-go-lucky girl who liked to skateboard and dreamed of one day opening a dance studio. She was walking from a friend's house to meet her father at the shopping center on Heathercliff Road -- a route local kids take frequently, even though there is no sidewalk on that stretch of highway -- when Sina Khankhanian, 27, of Winnetka allegedly drove off the road and hit her. Read the full story here.-- Abby Sewell in Malibu Photo: Susan Saul, right, a founder of A Safer PCH, comforts Leigh Shane at an event this week. Credit: Anne Cusack / Los Angeles Times This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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