Moto X Freestyle Riders Have to Weigh the Risk

The soreness Brian Deegan feels in his back and stomach is nothing compared to the angst he will experience today as a mere spectator during the Moto X freestyle finals. He wants to compete that badly.

Yet the 30-year-old from Temecula acknowledges that his decision not to take part in the popular X Games event -- which runs in split sessions at 1:30 p.m. and 7 p.m. today at Home Depot Center -- might be the wisest decision he has made, one that will keep him alive.

Freestyle motocross is a sport in which injuries are common, and deaths -- though they rarely occur and have not happened at any major competition -- loom possible every time riders take flight from the ramps that rise 30 to 40 feet above the hard dirt floor. The ante is upped every year as competitors get more daring on their 250-pound motorcycles, performing tricks such as no-handed back flips and 360-degree spins.

Nobody is more acutely aware of the dangers than Deegan, a 10-time X Games medalist, a husband and father with a second child on the way.

“I need to be there when those kids grow up,” he says.

His life passed before his eyes on the evening of May 19, on an operating table in Philadelphia, where he received blood infusions and had his vital organs lifted from his body for inspection, then put back in place.

He had been injured during a stunt for an episode of MTV’s “Viva La Bam.” A crosswind gust struck as he was back-flipping, and his motorcycle under-rotated and came down on the front wheel. The handlebars hit hard in his midsection. One of his kidneys was removed. His spleen and a major artery were lacerated. He lost four pints of blood as he lay in a heap and would have bled to death, he says, had not a piece of kidney become lodged in the ruptured artery, serving as a cork.

His wife, Marissa, was at home when the doctor called. She was used to calls from nurses, but not doctors.

“I asked, ‘Can he die?’ and he immediately said yes,” Marissa recalls, during a recent interview outside Staples Center, 4-year-old daughter Hailie playing nearby. “I freaked out. I’m pregnant and sick.... It was horrible, the worst thing I have ever been through.”

Marissa pleaded for her husband to quit, pointing out that they don’t need the money. His Metal Mulisha brand of clothing has helped make them wealthy and he has a team of younger riders representing his brand.

“He’s here and can enjoy life still, and keep going,” Marissa says.

But she knew that her pleas were falling on deaf ears. Deegan will keep going, all right, as high and as radical as he can, as soon as he is able. He competed in Friday’s less-arduous Moto X step-up competition, but finished last among five riders, and would’ve been in the lineup tonight with a bit more recovery time.

“It’s the one thing that I’ve had a passion for and nothing can separate me from my dirt bike,” he said. “No matter how gnarly the injury is, if I can get back on my bike and actually ride again, I’m going to. It would take a loss of limb, and I’d probably still ride again.

“Without riding, I feel like I’m dead. That’s my life.”

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In freestyle motocross, riders are judged largely by the degree of difficulty and execution of their routines. It’s an obscure sport with relatively few participants and only about 20 who are considered top FMX athletes. Many of those are riders who didn’t succeed at motocross racing.

Yet the sport is electrifying and immensely popular. That’s why it’s featured in both the winter and summer X Games. Travis Pastrana and Nate Adams, co-favorites in any competition they enter, are the equivalent of rock stars to their followers. Feeding off of the adoration, the two riders are continuously trying new tricks. A back flip, once unheard of, has become a staple, and Pastrana has been working on a double back flip in a foam pit at his home in Annapolis, Md.

“That won’t really be progressing the sport, though, because nobody else is stupid enough to try one,” jokes Pastrana’s agent, Steve Astephen.

During Thursday’s best-trick competition, Jeremy Stenberg won the gold with a single back flip performed on a 90-foot jump, setting a back-flip distance record. Kenny Bartram performed a back flip standing side-saddle on one of his foot pegs. Chuck Carothers, in midair, let go of his handlebars and attempted to roll over above his seat and return to his position before landing, but lost control and fell on top of his bike as it hit the ground sideways. Carothers was knocked unconscious and injured a shoulder. The crowd roared its approval after each successful landing and fell silent after each crash landing.

Of the riders, Kevin Young, a professor of sociology at the University of Calgary and a specialist in the field of risk, says: “Some people are proactively drawn to certain sports because the risk is part of the ‘high’ of the sport. They like the rush, they like the public reaction and they like the subcultural identity and kudos they receive.”

On a May afternoon in Philadelphia, kudos were delivered to the doctors who saved Deegan’s life. Broken bones and concussion are one thing. (Deegan’s previous worst injury was during the 2004 Winter X Games, when he fell from his bike in midair and broke a thigh bone and both wrists.) Damaged internal organs are another.

Pastrana, 21, who was briefly knocked unconscious, and seeing double even the next day, after his face slammed to the ground during last summer’s moto X finals, was in Europe when Deegan was injured in the Philadelphia suburb of Westchester. A rumor had reached Pastrana that Deegan had died.

“It was hard to know what to believe,” Pastrana says, asserting adamantly that serious accidents happen in any sport and that freestyle motocross “is not getting too dangerous.”

Regarding that kind of response, Young says: “Athletes don’t just learn how to do risk. They also learn how to make sense of it, to rationalize it away and thus to accept its place in the activity. As part of this process, getting injured is expected.”

Adams was still recovering from injuries -- a broken femur, dislocated shoulder and torn knee ligaments -- sustained during a competition last fall in Italy when he got a call from someone explaining what had happened to Deegan.

“I felt so bad that I immediately started praying for him,” recalls Adams, 21, the reigning Moto X champion. “I had no way to go see him, but I started praying because I knew there was a chance he was going to die.”

At least today there is little chance of that happening.