Pastrana back on top with gold at X Games

CARSON, Calif. – Travis Pastrana returned to the gold medal podium at the X Games on Sunday after an off-year, winning the Rally Car Racing Super Special, the final event of the action sports showcase.

“I’m really excited to be here and to have a chance to come back,” Pastrana said after jumping down from a top-of-the car celebration. “This feels really good.”

One of the X Games most dominant and dynamic athletes, Pastrana handily beat defending gold medalist and movie stunt driver Tanner Foust in the head-to-head final run over dirt, pavement and jumps.

The single-elimination, one-on-one event, as opposed to the timed stages usually used for rally, encourages an all-or-nothing style.

In the final, Foust cleanly cleared the giant jump in the middle of the Home Depot Center but hit the wall as he was leaving the arena for the street course and never quite recovered.

Also Sunday, veteran skater Rune Glifberg finally broke through in the X Games new showpiece Skateboard SuperPark.

The 33-year-old from Copenhagan, Denmark, won despite a shoulder injury incurred in practice earlier in the week that kept him out of Saturday’s Skateboard Vert competition.

Andy MacDonald of San Diego won silver and San Francisco’s Tony Trujillo won bronze.

The event, which organizers had hoped would inspire a competition between usually separate street and vert skaters, was more notable for who was missing.

TV promos had advertised a competition between the biggest star in street skating Ryan Sheckler and the biggest star in vert Shaun White, but both bowed out of Saturday qualifying.

The X Games lacked a lasting singular image this year like Pastrana’s double-backflip or skater Jake Brown’s horrendous plunge last year.

Most of the drama came on opening night, which began with the successful, fall-free return of Brown on the Big Air mega ramp, followed by an amazing and brutal duel between the event’s only two previous gold medalists, Danny Way and Bob Burnquist.

Way, designer of the event’s mega ramp, twice took nasty spills and lay still for several minutes, bringing gruesome reminders of Brown’s tumble.

He added to his already unmatched reputation for toughness when he fought his way out of the medical room and returned to the huge ramp both times despite what he later learned was ligament damage in his legs.

“What do you expect? The guy jumped over the Great Wall of China with a broken ankle,” said Burnquist, who stole the gold from Way with his final run, just as he had with Brown a year earlier.

Way was named Athlete of the Games by ESPN despite going without a gold.