Future generations of action sports stars watched the best men in BMX meet the challenge of the ASA BMX Triples (Triples) ramps at Northern Illinois University’s Convocation Center tonight and saw Scotty Cranmer (Howell, New Jersey) take home the trophy as the winner. After three rounds of competition, Cranmer met Ryan Nyquist (Los Gatos, California) in the finals and prevailed over an athlete he considers an icon. “Nyquist is a legend - like Michael Jordan to me. I may have won, but we both did great runs,” 
The twelve-man field, which consisted of several X Games gold medalists, world champions and former Triples champions, was separated into two-man battles with the best man in each pairing advancing to the next round. Cranmer advanced to the finals as the winner of each of his battles, but Nyquist made his way to the finals via a new feature added to the Triples script in 2010 – the Battle Back Round.
Nyquist bested Colton Satterfield (Salt Lake City, Utah) in Round One to advance to the quarterfinals where he met Daniel Dhers (Caracas, Venezuela). Dhers’ technique and style moved him past Nyquist into the semifinals, and sent Nyquist to the Battle Back Round. 
Each man who failed to advance from Round One and the quarterfinals met in head-to-head battles in the Battle Back Round for a back-door chance to ride in the event’s semifinals. Nyquist first met Rob Darden (Concord, California), then Dustin Griess (Minneapolis, Minnesota) and Austin Coleman (Lake Forest, California), in the Battle Back Round on his way to the “Lucky Loser’s” spot in the event’s semifinals. In a close semifinal battle against O’Fallon, Illinois’ Zack Warden, which saw both men stick both of their runs, Nyquist advanced to the finals as the judges’ pick. 
“That [Battle Back Round] is a lot of work. I kept having to ride and ride – I was getting out of breath,” said Nyquist. “But when I made it to the semis and then the finals, the hard work was worth it.” Cranmer won his battle against Dhers in the semifinals to advance to the finals, then threw down a run which included a bar-spin on the 25-ft. roll-in ramp, double whip back flip over the first jump, no-handed front flip over the second jump and x-up flair on the quarter-pipe to claim the win.
“It’s a cool event and I came to this here 100% ready to ride.”
“Scotty made me to do tricks I hadn’t done in two years,” said Nyquist. “I would see what he was doing and think, ‘What am I going to do?’, then just pull tricks out of thin air. That’s what makes this event so cool. You’ve got to keep pushing. He did.”
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After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.