THE X GAMES

White earns gold

It was like Turin all over again.

Shaun White, who as a snowboarder came from behind to win the halfpipe gold medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics, rallied in similar fashion on the skateboarding vert ramp to win his first Summer X Games gold medal.

Having fallen during his first two runs, as he did on the halfpipe in the Italian Alps, White unveiled a near-flawless routine that included six 540-degree spins, a 720 and several other technical maneuvers.

His third-run score of 95.75 propelled him from sixth to first and relegated Pierre-Luc Gagnon (91.25) to second and Mathias Ringstrom (88.25) to third.

“This is pretty big for me -- I almost broke down afterward,” said White, his freckled face beaming amid sweaty red locks. “I saw my whole family and they know what this means to me.

“It’s one of those things where I’ve always wanted to be a skateboarder, and as you can see I’ve got my own pro model and I’m smiling and doing my thing: winning a few events.”

White, who finished eighth in the same event last year after taking silver in 2005, remains undefeated after three major skateboarding competitions, having come to the X Games with two Dew Action Sports Tour triumphs.

He also was undefeated heading to the snowboarding venue at Bardonecchia, and said his poor skateboarding performance at last year’s X Games, following Olympic glory, has been a driving force.

“It hit me that I’ve never had a season in skateboarding like I’ve had in snowboarding,” said White, 20, who is also a six-time Winter X Games gold medalist. “It’s huge that it’s all coming through like this.”

Although the theater was not Olympic-caliber grand -- the vert competition was held in the sun-baked Home Depot Center parking lot -- the drama and emotion mounted as White’s final run approached.

Gagnon, White’s Carlsbad neighbor before the latter moved to nearby Rancho Santa Fe, said he knew his second-run score of 91.25 would not hold if White could just stay on his board.

But Gagnon, skating three places before White, could not improve on his third run, falling during his final trick -- a nollie heel-flip 360 -- but still receiving a 90.25.

“If I’d have nailed my last trick it would have been real exciting,” said Gagnon, 27, who won the bronze medal in Thursday’s big-air competition.

White, performing ninth in a field of 10, used all TV down time to practice bits of his dizzying routine, at one point spiking his board in disgust after a fall.

A hush fell over the crowd in the moments before he dropped in and, as at Bardonecchia, the outcome was known as soon as he’d spun his last 540.

“He nailed it,” Gagnon said. “He had a lot of back-to-back spins and a lot of amplitude.

“He’s gotten so much better since last year.”

-- Pete Thomas

Teamwork pays off

As the dust settled Sunday afternoon at the X Games and the roar of the engines began to fade, Tanner Foust and Chrissie Beavis were one of the last to leave the infield.

Foust, the driver, and Beavis, his navigator, had done what few expected at the Home Depot Center, coming from behind in the final two rounds of the Rally Car racing to beat Subaru teammates Travis Pastrana and Ken Block and win their first gold medal.

Pastrana, who was disqualified in his semifinal against Foust for crossing into his lane and crashing into him as they turned for home, finished third to avoid the first medal-less X Games of his career.

Neither victory came easy for Foust and Beavis. “Our last two runs, my handbrake was broken off and so I was having to change driving style,” said Foust, who also works as a stunt driver. “That’s not a good thing.”

In the two-lap final, Block and Alessandro Gelsomino beat Foust and Beavis off the line and had a sizable advantage after the first lap, but Block mis-shifted on the street portion, allowing Foust to make up ground. Foust beat Block back into the stadium and had a slight edge as they turned toward the finish line while coming from opposite directions.

“I was thinking, ‘Oh my God, there’s no dust at the finish line, we might have a chance at this,’ ” said Foust, a 34-year-old from Steamboat Springs, Colo. “I just poked the nose out and skated right through.”

Foust found himself in a similar situation in a semifinal against Pastrana and Christian Edstrom. Both cars entered the stadium at nearly the same moment and turned for home side by side, but Pastrana drifted into a barrier that separated their lanes and then banged into Foust’s Subaru before crossing the finish line half a car length ahead. A few minutes later, it was announced that Pastrana was disqualified.

“We just charged a little too hard in that last corner and basically ran him over,” Pastrana said. “They made the right call on that, definitely we were dead even coming into the final corner.”

-- Dan Arritt

Bronze for Pastrana

Pastrana didn’t leave the X Games empty handed, but his luggage will be a lot lighter than usual.

Pastrana, who had medaled in 12 of 14 events before this year, including eight gold, won only one medal this year, a bronze in Sunday’s Rally Car racing. This came on the heels of his most successful year at the X Games, when he won Moto X best trick with the first double back flip in competition, picked up his sixth gold in Moto X freestyle and won the inaugural Rally Car racing event.

Pastrana opted to skip the best trick, freestyle and Supermoto competitions this year and focus on the newest motorcycle event, Moto X racing, and his latest passion, rally cars.

“It was definitely a big difference than last year here,” said Pastrana, who will turn 24 in October. “Last year, everything went my way, I couldn’t ask for anything better. This year, I didn’t put a lot of time in training for the motocross portion. . . Inside, you hope to do better.”

Still, he won’t be hanging his head when he flies to his home in Annapolis, Md.

“I had a blast,” he said. “Technically, this is the worst season ever to me at X Games, but at the time, I’m doing what I want to do.”

-- Dan Arritt

Debate goes on

X Games competitors -- are they or aren’t they athletes?

It’s a question that has been asked since extreme sports broke into the mainstream consciousness.

Skateboarder Chris Cole, who is consistently training when on tour and practices three or four days of the week when he is not, probably had the best answer: “Yeah, we’re athletes. I don’t think a fat person could do what we do, so yeah, we’re athletes.”

Sacha Kljestan, soccer player for Chivas USA, said, “To do skating or biking or stuff like that you have to be pretty athletic, so I think they are athletes. I don’t think they are far below, but they are not up high like basketball athletes or football players.”

Said Scott Bair, action sports columnist for the North County Times in San Diego County: “It’s not just the level of risk, it’s just any time that you get thrown up 30 feet in the air and then pull a motorcycle back under you . . . probably takes some strength and flexibility and athleticism to get all that stuff done. So athletes, no doubt.”

Then again, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk doesn’t really care what you call X Games competitors.

“They can call us artists, athletes, outcasts, whatever, I’ve heard it all,” he said. “As long we get to do this for a living, it doesn’t matter to me what you call us.”

-- Jaime Cardenas