X Games

Jake Brown survived a harrowing 45-foot plunge to the bottom of the mega-ramp in the Skateboard big air competition Thursday night at the X Games, and Bob Burnquist walked away with the gold medal at Staples Center after producing the winning score on the ensuing run. Brown, a 32-year-old from Australia, was leading the event entering the last of his five runs. He landed the first-ever 720-degree revolution on the mega-ramp, but did not set up properly for the 27-foot high quarterpipe that followed his leap over the 70-foot gap. Fellow competitors thought he was crouched too low when he took off from the top of the quarterpipe and his momentum shot him away from the wall.

Canadian skier Sarah Burke, a leading pioneer of the freestyle halfpipe and the best-known athlete in her sport, died Thursday, nine days after crashing at the bottom of the superpipe during a training run in Utah. She was 29. Burke, who was a driving force behind the inclusion of the halfpipe in the 2014 Winter Olympics, was injured Jan. 10 while training at Park City Mountain resort. Tests revealed that she sustained "irreversible damage to her brain due to lack of oxygen and blood after cardiac arrest," according to a statement released on behalf of her family.

Mechanical issues and vehicle failure. Super rally, making its X Games debut, could have been a super dud. That's the way it was going at the Coliseum on Saturday night in the qualification rounds. Finally, though, the machine did not fail the man. Tanner Foust put his name into X Games history, winning the first super rally event here, and capped off a golden night: two golds in two races. Brian Deegan finished second to Foust in the super rally and the earlier rally car event in which he took a wrong turn on the new course, resulting in the red flag.

The BMX Freestyle Street competition has been an X Games mainstay for four years. Its first year, Garrett Reynolds won the gold medal. Reynolds did it again Sunday. He also happened to claim the two golds in between. So, as the only BMX Street gold medalist in X Games history, has the top prize lost its allure to Reynolds? Apparently, a little bit. "It's kind of like whatever for me," he said. "I just went out and had fun, wasn't really stressing it. So it doesn't feel much different.

9:23 p.m. — The premise is to slide down a 60-foot ramp on a skateboard, then jump a 50-foot gap onto a 20-foot rail. The challenge is to land on the other side of that rail, and then to continue up a 27-foot quarterpipe and perform a trick. No problem, right? Wrong. The challenge proved nearly too much for the six men competing in the skateboard big air rail jam, Saturday's last X-Games event. In a 30-minute jam format, the skaters went through a total of 63 runs, and landed just 10. That means the skaters failed to clear the rail in 53 of their attempts.

Imagine eight 550-horsepower noisy breadboxes that in one instant can be still but two seconds later can reach 60 miles an hour. Imagine them side-by-side, blitzing down Figueroa Street outside L.A. Live, topping 100 mph while the Los Angeles Police Department sits idly by, radar guns holstered. That's the image that danced in X Games officials' heads when they introduced rally car racing to the action sports event in 2006. And it's finally coming true this year. The Rally Car Racing event Saturday marked the first such race on downtown Los Angeles streets — three streets, to be exact.

8:48 p.m. — It's called speed and style, but the speed hardly mattered — excepted when it counted most. In the last event of the 2010 X Games, motocross riders combined two disciplines, racing and tricks, to put on a show at Staples Center. In the gold medal race, Nate Adams scored 89.33 style points, beating out Travis Pastrana's 88.00. But Pastrana finished 5.97 seconds ahead of Adams in the race, giving him a total score of 93.97 and the gold medal in the moto X speed & style event.

EVENTS X Games At the X Games, extreme athletes will perform across four venues in downtown Los Angeles, competing in categories such as Moto X Freestyle, BMX Vert, Moto X Speed & Style and BMX Park. Top-tier athletes from the United States are competing, along with some international athletes, all unafraid of face-planting from the lip of a giant vertical ramp. Event Deck at L.A. Live, Staples Center, Nokia Theatre and Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. Sat.-Sun. $9-$40. http://www.

The idea for the X Games, the latest edition of which begins Thursday in downtown Los Angeles, was hatched in a Connecticut bookstore by an ESPN employee in 1993. Two years later, the first X Games were held in Rhode Island and, looking back, the action sports event was rather whack. X Games officials looked upon the athletes they corralled, a so-called rebellious lot of adrenaline junkies, and remarked how crazy most of them looked. The athletes, in turn, glared at the "suits" embodying the so-called establishment and wondered if their talents were being appreciated or their image was only being exploited.

ESPN's annual no-holds-barred X Games action sports showcase features four days of tricks and stunts. BMX bikes, skateboards and supercross dirt bikes battle for top honors in more than 25 competitions. Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A. Noon-8 p.m. Thu.-Fri., 11:15 a.m.-9 p.m. Sat., 2-8 p.m. Sun. $30-$45. (213) 742-7340.

With two of the sports' top competitors out, Vicki Golden cruised to her first-ever X-Games medal, leading the Women's Moto X Racing Final from start to finish for the gold. Two-time defending champion Ashley Fiolek was held out of Saturday night's competition with a concussion after crashing during practice earlier in the day, and 2009 silver medalist Jessica Patterson crashed in an elimination round and failed to qualify for the final. "It would have been nice to have everyone out there," Golden said afterward.

Imagine eight 550-horsepower noisy breadboxes that in one instant can be still but two seconds later can reach 60 miles an hour. Imagine them side-by-side, blitzing down Figueroa Street outside L.A. Live, topping 100 mph while the Los Angeles Police Department sits idly by, radar guns holstered. That's the image that danced in X Games officials' heads when they introduced rally car racing to the action sports event in 2006. And it's finally coming true this year. The Rally Car Racing event Saturday marked the first such race on downtown Los Angeles streets — three streets, to be exact.

For the first time in X Games history, Rally Car Racing took to the streets of downtown Los Angeles. And, fittingly, the Rally Car Racing final on Saturday featured two Europeans who were also making their X Games debut. But as soon as Liam Doran, 24, defeated the legendary European rally cross champion Marcus "Bosse" Gronholm, Doran was ready to go out on a high note. "First X Games, gold medal, last X Games, I'm going home now," the Kent, England, native said, half-kidding.

When even the skateboarders start commenting on the heat, you know it's hot. But 16-year-old Nyjah Huston survived the temperatures as well as eight runs in two rounds Saturday to claim his first X Games gold medal. "One of the best feelings of my whole life," said Huston, a Northern California native who now resides in Huntington Beach. "Definitely the best win of my career. After getting silver the last two years, when you get gold, it just feels so great. " Huston advanced from an elimination round earlier in the afternoon, and then took to the concrete plaza four times in the finals, all in the glaring sun. "When you get to the end of your run, your legs are definitely giving out," Huston said.

EVENTS X Games ESPN's annual no-holds-barred X Games action sports showcase features four days of tricks and stunts. BMX bikes, skateboards and supercross dirt bikes battle for honors in more than 25 competitions. Staples Center, 1111 S. Figueroa St., L.A. Noon-8 p.m. Fri., 11:15 a.m.-9 p.m. Sat. 2-8 p.m. Sun. $30-$45. (213) 742-7340. Pogopalooza Extreme athletes use all sorts of devices to propel themselves skyward. In the case of Pogopalooza, it's pogo sticks.

After 17 X Games and 21 medals, it makes sense that Bob Burnquist would know what it takes to win gold. Burnquist proved that again Friday night in the Skateboard Big Air competition, landing two 540-degree turns in his fourth run to earn a score of 92.66 points. "It feels great," Burnquist said. "It's a dream. I never thought I'd be holding it down this long. " Burnquist landed two of the only six runs to include two successful tricks. Defending gold medalist Jake Brown failed to land a single run as he attempted a backflip over the 70-foot gap, and 14-year-old sensation Mitchie Brusco never even got to attempt his famed 900. In Brusco's final four runs, he failed to land his jump over the gap preceding the quarterpipe.

The ESPN X Games will bring together more than 450 of the world's best alternative sports athletes for the next 11 days in San Diego and Oceanside, where they will compete for medals and $500,000 in 10 sports categories. It's the fourth anniversary of the summer X Games and their second consecutive year in San Diego, where game officials say more than 221,000 fans watched the 1997 competition. The games debuted in June, 1995, as the Extreme Games and were held in Rhode Island and Vermont.

At X Games 17 on Thursday in downtown Los Angeles, Jackson Strong won the Moto X best trick contest with a trick no one had pulled off in that event's history: a front flip. The Australian native had practiced it for three years on a dirt bike and landed it here in a gold-medal performance. But soon after the event, he looked ahead. "One day, somebody is probably going to be doing a double front flip on a dirt bike," Strong said. "I hope I'm not around when that happens.

It's a trick Travis Pastrana has been trying to land for years. But Thursday at X Games 17 in downtown Los Angeles, the action sports star failed again and, worse, broke his right foot and ankle in the process, which puts into question his participation in other events this weekend. The injury occurred during the Moto X best trick final when Pastrana crash-landed on a dirt ramp in Staples Center after trying to flip and spin his dirt bike 720 degrees in the air, a trick he calls a "toilet paper roll.