2007 Toyota Challenge What You May Have Missed
Sep 25 2007 / Salt Lake City, UT
|
The Toyota Challenge in Salt Lake City was the fourth stop of the 2007 AST Dew Tour and featured some of the most exciting moments in the Dew Tour's history. Find out what you may have missed...
THE DEW CUP RUNNETH OVER
The PlayStation Pro in Orlando will no doubt feature some exciting contests but one thing won't be in question when it comes to Skate Vert, Skate Park and FMX. The Dew Cup for those three contests has been decided thanks to the results this weekend in SLC.
|
||||||||||
FMXer Nate Adams was the first athlete to clinch the Dew Cup thanks to a win on Saturday. If Adam Jones had finished in second instead of fourth, he would have had a mathematical chance of winning the Cup, but it wasn't to be. Adams definitely deserved the Cup with three first-place finishes and one second. No one else was nearly as consistent with Mike Mason being the only other rider to have more than one top three finish (two third-place). Adams took the cup last year thanks to Travis Pastrana staying home. This one is all his.
In Skate Park Ryan Sheckler won the first two Dew Cups easily so number three wasn't only expected, it was a given. What Sheckler was trying this season was for a sweep, which didn't happen thanks to the loss last month. This event he didn't seem like his regular self, but even Sheckler on an off day is better than most skaters out there. He took the jam session handily and that made the difference. He deserves the Cup and it doesn't look like he's going to hold back in Orlando, either.
The Dew Cup was probably the last thing on Shaun White's mind Sunday as he tried to salvage a perfect Dew Tour season against Bucky Lasek. A fall on his final run left Lasek in the driver's seat (more on that later) and when it was all said and done a third-place finish was not what White expected. Thanks to earlier results White found himself 101 points ahead of Pierre-Luc Gagnon in the rankings meaning he could skip the last stop and still have the honor. While skipping Dew Tour events was something he did plenty over the last two years, no doubt White will be back next month to show he can go out on top. Or maybe not.
HOLY [EXPLETIVE DELETED]
Let's be honest -- Sheckler, Adams and White winning the Dew Cup were foregone conclusions and they really just needed to show up to win. The main reason to be interested in this Dew Tour stop was not for those events. It was all about BMX Dirt and Park, both of which got some nice airtime this weekend, letting the people at home see what all the fuss was about last month when BMX officially became "The most exciting sport in the world" (at least according to us).
This stop didn't disappoint, with at least two major brand-new tricks being unveiled and the bar getting set higher and higher as tricks that were amazing just last month get landed more and more.
Case in point: Ryan Guettler, who ruled BMX Park and Dirt in 2005 on the Dew Tour was MIA for much of 2006 due to injuries and has not been part of the discussion much of 2007, despite showing up and being healthy. After missing the cut in BMX Dirt, Guettler sauntered on over to the BMX Park contest and threw down a 1080 like it was no big deal in the prelims. Whaaa? Up until then, only Mike Spinner had successfully landed that trick in competition, and Guettler effortlessly landed it twice more in the finals, throwing several dangerous double back-flips for good measure.
"That's all my hard tricks, all put together in a run," Guettler said afterward. Yep, I would say those are hard.
But it was actually Scotty Cranmer who brought the house down. Remember Cranmer? Lats year he was in the driver's seat for much of the season until Daniel Dhers came out of the woodwork and started whipping and flaring his way to the top of the podium. Cranmer had a massive slam in the finals in Orlando and that was all she wrote for the season. This year he's been around, but his Felt video parts that have been making their way around the web were more interesting than anything he brought to the contest. He did start showing life at X Games, where he finished a questionable second to Dhers, but he followed that with fourth at the Vans Invitational. Cranmer was shown landing the first-even front-flip tailwhip in a new Felt video released last week and he didn't disappoint fans, trying the trick in his first run then nailing it during the second. How important was that?
"The only thing I came here to do was land a front-flip tailwhip, so when I rolled away on that, I did not care what happened after that,"
All that happened after that was that you won. That's all.
Over in Dirt, there was plenty of craziness over Cameron White's barspin to tailwhip backflip. It was the first time it had been successfully done one Dirt in competition. It was a thing of beauty because of the air he got and how smooth it was and though White didn't win (he came in a close second), he was the talk of the competition. There were plenty of other nice tricks, but this one was the one people will keep talking about.
THE RETURN OF BUCKY... ALMOST
After Shaun White didn't put down Bucky Lasek last month while proclaiming Pierre-Luc Gagnon his only real competition, who wouldn't want Lasek to win this month's Vert contest? Well, he came close. When White fell on his third run, it was Bucky's 91.00 he was going for. The fact that PLG scored his winning score on the last run of the night was meaningless -- Bucky beat out the boy.
Shaun didn't seem to remember this when talking about that after it was all said and done.
"Pierre had an insane run, but I don't know, that last run is going to be haunting me for awhile," he said afterward, talking about how he fell. Gee, Shaun, what about Bucky?
Shaun was quite a quote machine this time around. We have a few more of his nuggets and more about his apparent self-appointed nickname
PERFECT WEATHER... NOT
After getting great weather in Portland, rain and wind again played a part at the Dew Tour. Prelims for FMX were delayed and the finals saw issues, but the whole contest did go down.pretty much on time. The special BMX SX Olympic qualifying event was rained out (read more here) so that sucked. The Skate Park finals were pushed from Saturday to Sunday morning, meaning fans missed out on TV of the action, but fans who were there got a treat as a best trick demo went off inside the arena for fans. Nice touch.
SO, WHY TO WATCH NEXT MONTH...
With three Dew Cups given out and a fourth basically decided (if Jamie Bestwick sneezes in Orlando, he wins the Cup)., why watch any of the action or go to Orlando for the PlayStation Pro? BMX, baby -- we've said it before and we'll say it again: that's excitement! While Daniel Dhers and Ryan Nyquist both lead for the Dew Cups and have a fairly good chance of clinching them, it almost doesn't matter -- there's enough cool stuff going on to keep you interested.
See you then...
- Greg Baerg
