Steve McCann claims BMX Big Air gold at X Games L.A. 2012
Australia’s Steve McCann clinched the gold medal at X Games BMX Big Air event for the second year in a row after putting on a superb performance in the Final that went down at Chick Hearn in Los Angeles on Sunday, July 1.
America’s Zack Warden finished behind McCann in runner-up place to walk away with the silver medal, while his fellow countryperson Kevin Robinson rounded out the podium, consequently taking home the bronze.
With the best riders from around the globe gathered at the X Games venue to compete for top honours, fans expected to be treated to a contest that would be nothing short of exhilarating. The mega-event presented them with a perfect opportunity to establish
them as one of the best in their sport and thus a series of ground-breaking performances were definitely on the cards.
The eight-man Final turned out to be exquisite, with plenty of breath-taking runs. In the end, however, it was McCann who got to walk away with the win. The defending event champion failed to land his first three runs cleanly, but pushed the limits in his
fourth and final run, which featured a no-handed double front flip over the 64-foot gap and a 16-foot 4-inch double tail-whip on the quarter-pipe. The effort earned a score of 92.33 to seal the deal in his favour.
“I seriously wanted to do that run the whole time,” said McCann. “I was having a hard time with doubles. I went out to Travis Pastrana's foam pit two weeks before this, and they weren't even rotating. So I was pretty nervous the whole time tonight. The no-handed
one, as you could tell, I was just hoping it was going to come around. It came around pretty good.”
Warden was nothing short of phenomenal during the course of the final either. The 23-year-old St.Louis-based rider secured silver medal after earning a score of 92.00 off his third run, which included a back-flip over the 64-foot gap and a triple tail-whip
on the quarter-final, the first to have been landed in a competition.
Robinson claimed the last remaining place on the podium through a 91.00-point Run 1, which comprised of a big-gap back-flip into a 17-foot, 2-unch no-handed flair.
America’s Chad Kagy barely missed out on the podium after finishing with a best-run score of 90.66 points, which comprised of a back-flip tail-whip and a flair-whip 15 feet out of the pipe.
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