One of the lines that was crazy was done by Alistair Whitton and Morgan Wade and as far as I remember Gary Young did it too. They jumped from the ramp on the top over a big section into the hip which was nuts! Gary Young is the master of the lines and ruled. He did make it to the top 5 Super Final. 
Chase Hawk was riding with an injured thumb from an earlier crash over the spine. He did well without pedaling once. True styler. Corey Bohan is another rider who is enjoyable to watch but he G-forced himself out of the top five. His barspin to manual on the sub box to tailwhip-in would have been sweet but the landings weren't smooth in Bohan's book. Enarson rode well but not well enough for a medal at X-Games 14. That double tailwhip on the wall took him too many attempts to pull off. Morgan Wade knew how to ride the thing but crashed a few too many times which kept his runs short. You see, after a 30 second introduction run the 10 minute jam started. When you crashed you were out and the next rider dropped in. 
Every run was scored and in the end three of them counted towards a final score with the highest and the lowest score being dropped. The more runs you had, the better the changes are that you had three good ones in there. Depending on the time that the riders too before dropping in and also the length of each rider's runs (maximum 30 seconds), it turned out that each rider had about 5 runs on the course of which 3 counted. If you only had two decent runs on the course it would seriously effect your final score. 
The top 5 riders who made it to the "Super Final" were Ryan Guettler, Diogo Canina, Daniel Dhers, Rob Darden and Gary Young. It was amazing how quick of a come-back Guettler made after his bad 1080 crash th previous weekend at the Dew Tour. A few teeth short he entered the X-Games and rolled the dice, the way Guettler does it. If it works, he finishes on top, if it does not work, he has to deal with a lower classification. After carving a bowl he tried a 1080 down a section but his rotation stopped around 900 and he had to bail out. His other original line was a frontflip over an island into the back of the spine. It took balls to do it but it resulted in two crashes that ended his runs that included double whips, flatties over the hips, no-handers anywhere, a 270 to opposite 540, his signature indian style flair and much more. 4th for Ryan. 
5th went to Gary Young. He liked the course and it showed. It was right up his alley and the speed he created by pumping the ramps was amazing. He tried a new line in the finals a few too many times which did not work out for him. Too bad because he might have well stepped on the podium had he pulled it off. But that's the way it goes in competitions. If you play it safe, you might not even make it to the next round. To stand out you have to show something that nobody else is doing being it new tricks, new lines, and original riding. 
Rob Darden is on fire these days and knows how to ride a contest. His riding is solid and includes everything. Not necessary original tricks but he 720-s, double whips, flairs, double barspins his way around the course in a good style and keeps the rubber up. It was good to see him step on the podium to collect the bronze. Alternate rider number two (Diogo Canina) has had a good week. He won $ 6000,= USD at the ASA comp earlier in the week and then got to ride the SuperPark contest because some riders got injured. From the start Diogo looked great. He used the whole course and did his tricks big. His flairs went t
o the moon and back, he downside whipped, went upside down in the cradle and had good lines all over the SuperPark. When I posted that he won a gold medal at the ASA qualifying comp earlier in the week, his friends in Brazil thought he had won the X-Games. Well he grabbed silver at X-Games 14 in Los Angeles and was a happy dude. South America scored another medal with Venezuelan Daniel Dhers grabbing the gold. Daniel rode a lot in practice and to many people's surprise adapted to the SuperPark quickly. Daniel is simply dialled. He does not need a 15 meter
run up to do a double whip over the spine or a flatspin 720. When you have your tricks wired like Daniel has, a split second is enough to throw these babies out. You know what tricks Daniel can do and he brought them to the SuperPark at the X-Games and walked away with the gold medal. He might not have flowed around the course like some other riders but with the tricks he showed there was no way around it; Gold for Daniel. We have not seen footage of the SuperPark contest on TV. I'd like to see how it looks and if it was a good idea to replace the boxjump and big spine. TV ratings are important for ESPN and their sponsors. SuperPark brought good riding but not too many revolutionary tricks that TV can repeat again and again. We'll have to see what happens. Maybe the park will end up in someone's backyard and we're sure some good sessions will happen then.
BdJ
After doing a BMX 'zine for ten years (1987 - 1996) FATBMX made it on the internet. The year was 1998. Here to stay.