Brown takes a spill in Skateboard big air

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. He threw his board away and flailed his arms and legs in mid-air before landing on the flat portion of the ramp that leads into the quarterpipe. As he laid motionless, silence enveloped the arena.

“That was the gnarliest thing I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Pierre-Luc Gagnon, who was standing on the arena floor during Brown’s final run and immediately ran to his side.

After several minutes, Brown was helped to his feet and walked off the ramp under his own power. He told medical personnel that he did not want to go to the hospital, but he was taken away shortly afterward for observation.

Burnquist then followed that run with a winning score of 96.55, knocking Brown into second with a score of 95.33, achieved on his third run.

--Dan Arritt

Sit and spin for a win

Common sense tells you not to let go of the handlebars while riding a motorcycle -- especially when launching that motorcycle 35 feet into the air. Moto X riders at the X Games have never really been known for common sense.

Kyle Loza not only let go of the handle bars, but he lifted his body off the seat and spun around in a seated position above the bike in a self-invented trick he calls “The Volt.”

It was good enough to win gold in the Moto X best trick competition Thursday night at Staples Center.

“At the top of the ramp I started praying, then I closed my eyes, looked up and they said go,” said Loza, competing in the X Games for the first time. “I just took off down the ramp and I stuck it, it was pretty sweet.”

His original trick scored 94.20. Everyone else played catch up. Adam Jones and Todd Potter came closest.

Jones did a bar hop back flip and Potter landed a Kamakazi back flip and they tied for second at 91 points. Jones was awarded the silver because his two-jump combined score was higher.

Loza says he has been practicing the volt for almost two years in a foam pit and hasn’t been able to get it down until about six months ago. Before Thursday, he had never landed it on dirt. It was the first contest he has ever won.

--Peter Yoon

Moto X long haul

Scott Murray was an unknown until about two weeks ago when a video began circulating on the Internet showing him landing a double back flip on a motorcycle in the Michigan backwoods.

That drew interest from X Games organizers, who deemed it worthy of an invitation to try the trick in front of a worldwide television audience at Staples Center. Travis Pastrana won the Moto X best trick gold medal with a double back flip last year and nobody else is known to have landed one.

So Murray, who has no sponsors, towed his ramp halfway across the country and attempted the trick on his first run during the Moto X best trick competition. He under-rotated on the second flip, caught the front tire and crashed.

He walked away in pain and told organizers that he’d like to try again, but his bike was too badly damaged to make a second attempt.

“They kind of threw him to the dogs,” runner-up Adam Jones said. “The guy had never been in the limelight before and then they throw him here in the X Games. But, it’s a TV show for them and I guess people like to see crashes.”

--Peter Yoon

The dirt on lost event

The X Games isn’t hosting the BMX dirt competition for the first time in 12 years and at least one former gold medalist isn’t happy about the decision.

In its place, organizers have added BMX big air, an event in which riders have a choice of dropping down a 60-foot ramp or an 80-foot ramp and then clearing a 50- or 70-foot gap. Riders will then ascend a 27-foot quarterpipe before dropping back down.

Chris Stiepock, general manager for the X Games, said the addition of the big air competition meant one of the other three BMX events had to be axed. Riders were polled and Stiepock said they opted to eliminate the dirt competition, which had struggled with an appropriate course design in recent years.

Veteran BMX rider Ryan Nyquist said he gave the decision a thumbs down. “Big air in its place is a horrible choice,” said Nyquist, who won an X Games gold medal in the BMX dirt competition in 2004. “I feel it’s more of a ramp that’s on display than the riding.”

--Dan Arritt

Easy on the Pastrana

I took an afternoon drive with Travis Pastrana and, as anyone who knows of this crazed lunatic might guess, it was some wild ride.

I had not experienced such a rush since bungee-jumping off a bridge in backwoods Alaska several years ago.

Translation: I was scared half to death. I might have backed out had I not been strapped in from every angle, all buckles coming together at the crotch and cinched so tightly that I didn’t dare move.

But let me say that I’m happy to have stuck it out, and that I’m officially rallying behind the obscure but growing sport of rally car racing, which will be showcased Sunday as an X Games discipline.

Let me also take back what I said about Pastrana being a crazed lunatic. It was in the heat of the moment; something I’ve been muttering occasionally since he spun an unannounced U-turn, causing a wayward photographer to leap out of his skin.

But this is Pastrana’s way. A 23-year-old who made a name for himself by cheating death on a motorcycle, he only looks as though he’s out of control.

His hands and feet never stopped working as the souped-up Subaru bolted to 50 mph in nothing flat, slowed as abruptly and sped anew as it wove through a maze of barricades, its tires spinning wildly while my mind raced.

It was like one of those tilt-a-whirl rides at the amusement park -- multiplied by 50!

When my test drive was finally over, Pastrana looked at me, with a death grip on my recorder, and said, “You didn’t say much.” I replied that I said plenty, but it was all under my breath.

--Pete Thomas

Not-so-freaky Friday

It’s Girls Day today at Home Depot Center and aside from skateboarding and BMX clinics and autograph sessions, girls can take a free guitar lesson and rock to the tune of “Hell’s Belles.”

The headlining band is an all-female AC/DC tribute act that, according to its website, goes “to great lengths to encourage women to play music, to get involved, and to grab and hold a piece of the action.” The Donnas (rock) and Goodbye Gadget (punk) will play today at the X Fest music tent.

--Pete Thomas