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 Despite a broken ankle, Jeremy Stenberg makes a no-handed backflip look effortless. |
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 The winners podium: Mat Rebeaud (second), Jeremy "Twitch" Stenberg (winner), Nate Adams (third). |
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 Mike Mason has one of the biggest rock solids in the business. |
Freestyle Hits the Fair
Twitch Wins in New Head-to-Head Format
By Jared Souney
For the past four years, Nate Adams has stood on top of the podium at the LG World Championships of Freestyle Motocross. In the event’s first four years in Pomona, California (held in conjunction with the Los Angeles County Fair), we've seen four years of domination and top prize money for Nate Adams. This year, though, there was a lot of talk about whether anyone could overtake Nate for the win. Much talk centered around Adam Jones, who was coming off a win at X Games 13 just two months ago. Others pegged Mike Mason as a possibility, and Mat Rebeaud was here to try and bring the Championship back to Europe.
Few had Jeremy “Twitch” Stenberg picked to win this year. Twitch is obviously more than capable when he’s on his game, but he was far from healthy in Pomona. Two weeks ago he broke his ankle at the Salt Lake City AST Dew Tour, and if you saw him hobbling around the pits today, often on a crutch, you never saw his runs coming. You would have never known that guy on the course was the same guy seen icing his ankle all day long. Despite his injury, Twitch pulled out big tricks including huge flip variations like supermans and no-handers, as well as old classics like giant rock-solids.
This year featured a new head-to-head format, which had two riders at a time battling each other and cutting things down to a final round of three riders. The showdown between Nate Adams and Adam Jones (or Adam vs. Adams if you will) that many were looking to see — the X Games final round rematch — never happened. Adam had a bad crash in the semi-finals that sent him to the hospital in an ambulance, and brought the competition to a screeching hault for a good 20 minutes as the medical team tended to him and the course was cleared for competition to resume. All of the riders were noticeably rattled, but they pushed on. The good news, is that Adam is recovering and looks to make a full recovery.
The final round of the night featured Matt Rebeaud, Twitch and reigning champion Nate Adams, the only man with an LG trophy after four years of this event. It was the Red Bull, versus the Rockstar, versus the Monster. Of course, only one energy drink can win on any given evening, but the Taurine levels soared to an all time high.
After some great runs from Twitch and Rebeaud, everyone was looking forward to the Nate show. Nate is dialed, and had been doing every flip variation known to man throughout the day (including lazyboy and cliffhanger flips), but 2007 would not be a five-peat for Adams. After his first line, Nate faltered, and then headed for the pits, appearing to try to call time-out. There were no time-outs with this format however, and before you knew it the clock had run out… Nate’s run was over. In an interview following the contest, Nate commented that he thought he had a flat tire. With only two tricks in the bag for that run, it was clear Nate was the third place guy.
When the scores were announced you could see in Twitch’s excitement that he didn’t expect to have a $30,000 evening. He even noted that he was unsure if he’d ride at all. He obviously rode, and it was well worth it. When Twitch is back to healthy status, things are going to get really interesting.
There’s no question that Nate Adams will be back next year looking for redemption. But five in a row was not to be. Of course, four in a row is pretty good too! Now we’ll have to see if Twitch can repeat, but I would imagine Nate will have something to say about that, as will Adam Jones, to whom we wish a speedy recovery.
