Diogo Canina, $5000 richer.
TJ Ellis tailwhips his way to third place
Koji Kraft, nose-dive 360.
BMX Big Air Triples Finals
Brazil's Diogo Canina takes the win!
The first ever standalone Big Air BMX Triples event wrapped this evening in Costa Mesa, CA with one heck of a final round. Austin Coleman, TJ Ellis, Rob Darden, Diogo Canina, Koji Kraft… you knew from the get-go it was going to get crazy.
The Big Air BMX Triples course made its debut last year at the Action Sports World Tour stop in Phoenix, Arizona. After a few minor tweaks in design, it landed in Costa Mesa for its own event. If you’ve ever seen BMX dirt jumping, it’s a lot like that, only a lot cleaner (there’s no dirt to fall on), and requires less maintenance between runs (dirt gets rutted easily). It also takes some aspects of the Mega Ramp like a huge roll-in and quarterpipe finale, and the whole thing makes for a great contest.
Twenty-Four riders made there way through qualifying rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday night before being slimmed down to a twelve-man final tonight. The Final format was three rounds of head-to-head competition. In each round the riders got two runs through the course, and the best run counted. A slip up or a safety run could mean early elimination, so the big tricks were coming out all night long. Frontflips, superman backflips, backflip tailwhips, and even a windshield wiper (tailwhip to tailwhip back), a trick very few people have ever done, from Ricky Moseley.
When the dust cleared from the first two rounds, three men stood atop the roll-in: TJ Ellis, Austin Coleman, and Diogo Canina. All three of these guys possessed the big tricks to win, and all three of them knew it. But Diogo Canina’s huge flipwhips and overall consistency were not to be stopped, even by Coleman's no-handed frontflip and Ellis' 360 double tailwhip. It was banger after banger tonight, but first place heads back to Brazil with Diogo, followed by Austin Coleman in second and TJ Ellis in third.
The Big Air BMX Triples format makes for an exciting event with no holding back from the riders. It’s full-throttle all the way through the night. Now that the course is dialed in, and the riders are used to the format, it can only get bigger from here.
Austin Coleman, second place.