X-Games finish

Did y'all just watch that? I didn't see Soven's run. I saw Chad and Parks and thought that Parks was definitely the better of the two. That was really weird at the end. The announcers were talking like Parks had it in the bag, then they cut to Murray interviewing Soven as the winner without announcing Parks' score. They showed a quick shot of him throwing his board down, but that's it. Weird.

They showed Parks' score - he finished 3rd. I thought it was the worst run I've seen Parks throw in a while, not even close to what he's capable of. It was his to win but he couldn't pull it out.

yea i watched it, i thought parks had it won... Guess not though

Yea I watched it as well, Parks first pass was kind of sketchy, but his second was money and his half cab double off the du is one of sickest things I have ever seen. Didn't see Soven ride but the announcers did make it out like Parks had it all wrapped up.

ah, CRAP, i missed it!

Crap, I missed it too. I even had it on but missed it while doing yard work.

how many times have we seen parks throw that double half cab off the double up? go for the 1080!!

yea i also thought parks had it in the bag but sovens run was also pretty awesome

I saw the whole thing.... Parks got robbed...1st place deffienetly and if not that he should be guarenteed 2nd.... i think someone got paid off..lol... i dont know but it seems wierd

Chad fell, parks didn't, parks did a double half cab = parks beating chad. However I didn't see sovens run but parks was pretty sketchy on the long slider and that one landing where he nearly fell.

Parks had some very technical tricks, he could of done more, but whatever tricks he pulled was definitly to deserve the win

So who won?

Does anyone know if it will be repeated on ESPN or ESPN2?

soven one but Parks got robbed royaly!

Nobody saw Soven's run because they didn't show it. Men's and women's combined coverage probably was less than 10 minutes. Totally disappointing.

1-Soven
2-Sharpe
3-Bonifay
4-Watson

This is an awesome performance for all of the guys!

Soven's interview was a joke after he find out he won, he mumbled and didn't say anything but "I don't even know, wow, I don't know, ahh, wow, I don't even know," Not a very good representation of the sport in my opinion, he is a bad ass rider but hopefully he will be a little more prepared in the future and not come off like a mumbling stoner, especially if he's gonna keep on winning all these tourneys.

Here are the full results with the prelims and finals as well as a few pics. We should have a lot more pics later this week.

http://www.wakeworld.com/news/2004/xgames4.asp

we should give soven a break, the guys only 15. i know if i was him, i would just be in shock too after beating out parks in the x games

Fruit booting got a ton more footage than wakeboarding.... Hmmmm

Good point Luke, plus not having seen Soven's run, it is kind of hard to say if Parks was ripped off.

yall see Parks' new board? Kinda more like the Byerly tail in a way. Still bat wing tail but more squared.

Saw it all first hand from a front row seat at water level.

The women threw down and got the crowd pretty amped for the rest of the day.

The men went off from the first rider to the end of the day, the slider action was incredible, we sat right in front of the big "A" frame and watched them just work that thing.

Parks was in the crowd early signing anything you put in front of him and taking pictures with everyone.

You couldn't have asked for better weather, air temps pushing 80* and the water stayed in pretty good shape for the most part.

I thought I was at the dentist there was so much floss running around.

Overall a great venue for watching a fun event.

we were there. soven's run was clean...parks' run was sloppy. thus, soven placing ahead of parks and sharpe, who had a not-so-perfect run, too.

in fmx, pastrana got hurt on the final run of the day when he crashed on a 3. he was in last place coming in to the last run, due to mechanical failure in his 1st run (busted spokes on a 3, apparently). he absolutely killed it until his final trick...a 3. his run was good enough to place in the top 5 (2nd) for tomorrow's final.

by the way, finally got to meet lloyd murray. he said i'm not at all what he pictured me. maybe he can come in here and tell everyone how he pictured me!

lloyd, if you're reading this, it was great to finally meet you. i hope i gave you good directions and you made it to dinner on time!

The judges for the tour have been the same for some time. They are getting tired of Parks throwing the dbl half cab every stop. Granted it's impressive, but it's a hucked no style move and he nails it every time.
He nailed it at the Irvine stop but the nod went to Daniel with a dbl back roll and Trevor, who was robbed with a BS 7.

Am I the only one that thought the water looked like total chop?

Parks' run left a lot to be desired. I didn't see Soven's, but I was kinda hoping Parks was gonna throw down something sick of the DU. Not something he lands time and time again.

As for Pastrana, hope he's ok. That was a pretty big header. I look forward to tomorrow and hope to see him throw the double back if he's ok.

yes, you might have been the only one. aside from canyon lake, that was the best conditions i've seen here in socal. these were the words shared by many at the event.

I thought the conditions were GREAT for mid-day riding, there was a cross breeze but it didn't affect the water much at all.

Between changing out ropes and getting a new rider the water settled down to not much more than some slight ripples.

Just watched in on Tivo. Did not get to see Soven. I like the kid. Thought Park's run was sketchy minus the double-up double (Did you see the dark circles under Park's eyes? He does not look very healthy. Does he live on beer?)

Both Soven and Friday gave lame interviews. Don't they know that this is their moment to promote themselves? Hey Soven, time to practice your "win interview".

soven's run can be seen here (along with parks and sharpe):

http://expn.go.com/expn/summerx/2004/story?pageName=040807_men_wake

and the women's runs are finally up:

http://expn.go.com/expn/summerx/2004/story?pageName=040807_women_wake

although according to this article (in contrast to the ww article), dallas did NOT land a crow mobe in competition (and i didn't see it in the vid).

---

quote:

Even in her moment of victory, Dallas says she aspired for a better performance in the finals. "I really wanted to stand up that first whirlybird," she says. " I'd have been set up to try a crow mobe next. I want to land that in a comp so bad!"

---

Thanks for posting that. After watching the video it's no contest. Froggy killed them. Parks and Chad didn't throw any risky tricks. Froggy stomped a crow mobe 5 and a whirly •••••••••• stock tricks clean and hit the sliders relatively well. Parks could have stood his run up three years ago and probably cleaner.

Chad's run was impressive but it didn't have the risk that Froggy's did.

Fair voting as far as I'm concerned, way to go froggy.

He did sound like an idiot on his interview but nobody here can say how they would react to having a camera and mic shoved in your face knowing there are a ton of people watching.

Glad to see the person who took some risks won the event.

I thought Park's run was better than Chad's. but thats just me. I'm happy for Froggy. I thought someone should have given Parks a pasifier after the scores can out, becuase it looked like he wanted to cry. I can understand that he never wants to loss, but isnt he a professional? Act like it.

Don't you think the media played a little into that? Was it necessary to focus in on his reaction?

thats there job. if the childish reaction wasnt there, then we wouldnt have seen it.

I thought Murray did a good job with the intelligent commentating during Sharpe's run.

me too. I hate for the sport that everyone that got interviewed seemed like they barely knew the english language. Granted Dallas and Froggy arent even adults yet. Shaun did a great job.

If those were the best conditions in all of SoCal, I'm really glad I don't live in California. We were on the water by 8am and had absolute glass until about 11am.

Yep, Thats the best it gets here, so all you think of coming out to SOCAL stay home and ride on your Butter and leave the horrible conditions to us locals.
Have fun with the floods this year.
Late

"They are getting tired of Parks throwing the dbl half cab every stop. Granted it's impressive, but it's a hucked no style move and he nails it every time."

yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!!!


props to philip soven. did he throw a whirly-dick? im tryin to watch the vid but it isnt loading for me right now...

actually phillip didn't hit a whirly d**k. it was a whirly 5.

here's how i interpreted phillip's run from watching the video (im not great with sliding so bear with me):


first pass:

dum dum (ts front roll with a backside 360)

to rail: frontside lipslide gap to switch

switch method crow 5 (ts front roll with a fronside 540)

nose or nuclear? (couldn't see the grab well enough) ts backroll to revert

ollie 180 back to regular

to rail: fronside boardslide to switch

switch ts 7 (landed wrapped) (end of first pass)



second pass:

oriental (hs raley with a slob grab)

to rail: backside boardslide to bs 270 out

batwing (ts raley with an indy grab)

whirly 5 (hs tantrum with a backside overhead 540) (landed wrapped)

surface 180 to regular

to rail: backside boardslide to bs 450 gap off

*** FALL *** g-spot (ts backroll to blind) (last trick of second pass)


DOUBLE-UP: hs off-axis 7

come on guyys im dissapointed in the coverage again this yera as well but after watching all of the xgames events this year in its entirety id say thats what wakeboarding gets..

Those Motox and bikeX,and skateboarders riders throw out their hardest runs and put all they have on the line to win Xgold..its apparent they work all year just to compete at these big events ,they not only throw their biggest tricks with their body and reps on the line they throw never been done tricks before..its insane to see what these guys throw down then turn on wakeboarding and see total BS runs from what we have as our pros showing thew world what wakeboarding is about..

im irritated and dissapointed with the stock BS runs the pros threw down this weekend as well as most pro events..i see stock amatuer event tricks still being thrown and its bad rep for all of us..

dont get me wrong its nice to see but parks shouldnt have won anyway i thought chad had a better run..i mean yea parks threw w switch whirly and switch sbend but they were sketchy and rather small for a pro ,then he had no big spins and lacked stlye in his whole run..i agree where was a grab ts 900 or a hs oa9 or a bs 7 from these guys..these stock tricks look terrible from where i sit.i see better riding from expert/outlaw rider at local events..maybe its me but its time for these guys to bring it in the tourneys ,well bring it all the time ,even the new videos lack new and interesting tricks from our Pros..

feel free to dissagree but you wont change my mind,i mean watson evn misse a grab on a tsbackroll and so he landed a ts back in his run,wow evne with a grab thats a intermediate trick and not needed for us to see in the biggest TV exposure of the year for the wakeboarding world..

OK im done for now ..

still on a whole best Xgames ever..

BTW now that i see soven stepped it up ill reveise my comments for him only..i wish Harf would have made it he seems to care how he shows in big events ..way to go Soven great job..bad job by Espn for not showing it to us live..

I think soven def. deserved to win, but parks did almost his entire run switch.....which may be really easy for him, i duno. Anyways, whoever said he does the double half cab way to much is right on.....if he tried a 1080 i think it would have at least gotten a little attention from espn. Also, i think harf not making the final really played into the lack of coverage the wakeboarding got, since he didnt have the chance to win 4 in a row. Either way, I thought the riding was mediocre (what was shown at least) and that they should have tried to step it up more for a nationally televised event on ABC.

Joe
It was great to finally meet you and I'll admit (as I said to you) that I had a totally different picture of you in my mind after these years of electronic meeting - OK I'll admit it publically - I thought you were "older, fatter and white" (like me probably) and was surprised when you introduced yourself. I can't explain why - I just did.
Anyway - my regretable move of the day came with Parks run. He turned for the double up and I was talking to someone I had just met who was standing on the fence. As Park finished his run, I told him that I thought he would do the double (no rocket science here) - then I saw Travis (the best boat driver in the world) go past where I thought he was going to turn. As he made the second turn I thought he (for some unknown reason) had decided to come back to the rightside of the course (not seeing that Parks was about about to hit the double) and redo the double. I said something to that effect to me new friend on the fence - and as he turned to hear what I had to say - Parks made the trick and this poor guy missed it because of me., I felt awful and apologized profusely.
PS Joe - traffic to San Diego was AWFUL -

lloyd, hahahahaha! that was great! i got a kick outta that!

sorry traffic was bad. but, you know socal traffic...rush hour is every hour of the day!

anyway, thanks for taking the time to talk to my girlfriend, frankie, and me. we still need to do that interview!

WORST COVERAGE EVER!!!!!!!!
I was so irritated, and not just becuase of them not showing Froggy's run. It seemed like it happened in almost every event I watched. If your not a consistant X-games top finisher of the past, you dont get coverage. If they want this to be the "superbowl" of "action" sports. Then they need to do their research on every rider they invite. They need to pay attention to all the events leading up to their self proclaimed "extreme olympics" And have a little bio on each of them. So when some "unknown" is sitting on top, they dont have to keep focusing on last years winner who is in dead last, saying "will he be able to pull off the upset". They need to start showing these guys/girls the respect they deserve!

is there any way to save those vids on comp'??

Wish they had more of this covered, especially on TV... gotta say I agree with the results, however - they were all badass and pulled some sick moves but Soven was clean and the others were not.. although I do like Sharpe's slider style the best.

Saying that the wakboarders don't put everything on the line like other events is not fair. Wakeboarding is the only event where you only get one chance to make your mark. Every other event gets 2 if not 3 chances to throw down. Give the wakeboarders 2 or 3 runs and your gonna see a totally different level of riding.

The format has to change to get competitive wakeboading up to par with other extreme sports.

you can see video of the top 3 on expn.com. haha, i watched skateboarding, wakeboarding, and bmx... I have to say, nothing too impressive was done in any of the sports. It looks like repeats of last year except for santro's 900. But philip soven did throw 2 540 mobes and his ride was pretty balanced with big spin tricks and big inverts with some good sliding. I dont see how those guys throw down that many amazing tricks in that amount of time.

now that's a good point... why don't they have 2 or 3 runs??? after all they were only 10 guys and 8 girls... that way we would have seen even sicker tricks... I'm not saying this would be good for the pro tour, but at least for events like the X-Games and Gravity Games...

yea, they had one prelim run and then the final 4 got one run. i think the x-games is more about money and not about progression. those espn guys have no idea about these sports. Read matt hoffman's autobiography...He got kicked out of the x-games in the first year for saying how fake it was. A few years later he is back kicking the ••••••••• of all vert bmx. He said the person running the X-games had no idea of what was going on. The letter the guy wrote had bs like 'this is going to be the most extremely cool daddy experience ever' 'we are going to rock the extreme sports world with these games'. Those busines guys who have never touched a skateboard/wakeboard/bike know nothing about the sport and what it takes to truely represent the sport. They want to fit all the categories in a 10 minute time slot...not showcase each sport. They want to get as much sponsor time with the smallest amount of coverage time instead of showing each riders true capabilities.

Leo, Ive read Hoffmans book, by the way. Excellent read!!!! I used to race BMX back in the day, so Im familiar with a lot of the guys mentioned in the book. But even if your not familiar with the sport, its still an excellent book. I thought it was pretty funny when he was talking about the whole X games experience.

How about the finalist get to do their final "canned" run.

Then have all 4 go for a double up contest with four or five hits at it each. Take the combo of both to pick a winner. Then you get some sick double up action with maybe the 1st 1080 landed in the XGames. With each rider getting multiple double ups there is incentive to throw down hard and it won't take a lot of time to get them in either.

I think this would be a pretty good format for the once a year "Nationaly Showcased" X Games. But maybe not the tour in general.

(Message edited by rock_n_boardin on August 09, 2004)

Yea Ryan, that book was pretty good. I read the whole thing while sitting at borders one day. The x-games was funny. First he is banned from the x-games then the beg for him to come back because he is what sells air-time. It was a joke and kind of still is. ESPN should just let the pros decide how the contest works. I do like how skateboard street is actually a street course and not a little skatepark.

Yeah, it kind of seems like they are really letting the skater's make a lot of decisions about their contest, which is really cool. It seems like the FS MX and skating are the two big events and wakeboarding is at the bottom of the barrel when it comes to coverage. Even the fruit booters get more coverage. The only other thing ESPN has done right is, they got rid of street luge, lol.

they use to have extreme rock climbing and canoe racing or something like that. but wakeboarding is at the bottum. I dont know why because they go bigger then every sport except MX. you would think that since wakeboarding is a 'rich mans sport' it would get more coverage because that would mean more money for sponsors.

Everybody needs glasses,I'm not sure what you guys/girls were watching but Parks took it by a landslide.Quit hating on Parks just cuzz he can throw down tricks no one else can.when somebody else throws a double halfcab down then you guys/girls can talk about it beeing sketchy+there was nothig sketchy about his run but the 1st invert.and personal opinion ~ I thought he did the most difficult run.CONGRAGULATIONS TO LITTLE SOVEN.

STACK ~ ohh and thanks for the web link to the x-games

come on guys we're lucky the wakeboarding got any coverage at all, no offense to all my boys out thier, but not one person put anything on the line to win, all stock tricks, nothing super crazy or unseen, I did like Chad's 9 off the d-up, I haven't seen that often, but all in all nothin great, I love wakeboarding more than any other of the sports, but it was the last thing in the x-games I would choose to watch.....

I love wakeboarding but I agree with Dirty. As a spectacle it couldn't hold a candle to that big air skateboarding competition. That may have been the sickest thing I have ever seen. That and the moto FX. Pastrana took it hard but was a tough kid. And how about the dude throwin' the body varial. I think I pooped my shorts when I saw that.

Maybe for the wakeboarders they need to change the judging format to make them take more chances. Give them all like 4 passes and take the best score of those passes. Like they do in alot of other events. Then they can throw down their safe run and then go for it with some nasty moves.

I totally aggree Jonathan. I posted something in another thread that basically had the same idea. I was thinking they should get 3 passes, but only score 2 of them, and let them throw one out. Then also two double ups, but only score one. And even throw a kicker out there somewhere.
Also, what about having other ways of starting, besides just starting from the dock. They could have a couple options for them. They could have a monster slider drop in, or a slider drop in with a transition on the end into the water. And even a small pool, over a land gap, to the lake. That would make things way more exciting. And with being able to throw one pass out, we would start seeing wayyy more non-stock tricks.

For the record here is a list of tricks thrown by all 3 medalists not including sliders or A Frame:

Philip:
Dumb Dum, crow mobe, crail front roll to revert, slob 7,hoochie, batwing and whirly 5 and a 7 off the DU

Sharpe:
Hadle pass KGB, crowe mobe 5, whirlybird,FS 7, tootsie roll, and a 9 off the DU

Parks:
Half Cab Method roll (Bobbled) crow mobe, method pete, bS roll to Blind, S Bend, whirlybird, BS 180 and a Double Cab roll off the DU

I know Parks was pissed but Philip clearly won. His pass was flawless and clean. Parks rode well but bobbled a few tricks. The big surprise was Sharpe! He killed it as well.

Watson's pass included:
BS front flip, pete, KGB,Crail batwing, whirlybird, FS 5, BS 5, and a 9 off the DU

Stack was pretty close...

i was at staples for the skate big air and seeing it on tv does no justice. the roll in was as big as the holiday inn hotel it was next to and the 70' gap was huge!! then to see guy go 20' out of a 25' quarter pipe was unreal.

I agree, here's a pic from above:

hahn, actually, parks' first trick was a switch hs slob front flip.

And Philip's crow mobe was a switch 540 w/ a method grab as Chris stated, so I think Stack was right.

chad also threw a crow 5...but froggy did do a whirly 5 also. I thought those were the most impressive tricks of the day.