Ryan goes into BMX "battle" giving well over 100%. Jared Souney © 2006 Lat34

BMX Dirt Finals Rumble To A Close Finish

BMX dirt finals rumbled to a power packed finish today here at the Dew Tour in Denver . And if the crowd’s energy was off the hook at the skate park finals earlier today, then the energy over at the BMX dirt finals was nearly nuclear. Everyone kept getting wilder and wilder as the riders kept going bigger and bigger.

Yesterday, during dirt prelims we saw the best of the best giving 100% to every trick in every run. Today, they were giving 1 million percent - (said with pinky finger pointing to corner of mouth). Yesterday’s prelim results had Corey Bohan, Luke Parslow, Ryan Nyquist, T J Ellis, Chris Doyle and Ryan Guettler in the top six positions coming into today’s finals. And they showed up ready for battle.

Some of the big runs we saw were: Luke Parslow’s first run where he linked a backflip tailwhip, front flip, and flip to barspin to X-up. Anthony Napolitan’s second run killed with a front flip, a double tailwhip, and a double tailwhip 360. Allan Cooke rocked an unbelievable superman seat grab backflip that got the crowd going. And Mike Clark floated a smooth no hand front flip followed by an unsuccessful double backflip attempt.

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But, one of the biggest stories revolves around the man who we will now call Tenacious T J. On his first run Ellis launched the biggest front flip we’ve seen at the Dew Tour so far, but overextended it just enough to catapult him into a serious face plant that knocked him out cold for several minutes. The crowd went eerily silent. That is until he miraculously woke up and walked away pumping his first in the air. He then went on to complete his second run. There was just no stopping him.

So, the BMX dirt finals are over but the rest of the Dew Tour has just begun. Stay tuned for BMX vert prelims and finals tomorrow.

- Steve Lemig