Levi Sherwood 3rd at Red Bull X-Fighters Mexico City
Sunday 10 March: Frenchman Tom Pages had a capacity crowd gasping in disbelief with his electrifying freestyle motocross tricks en route to winning the Red Bull X-Fighters season opener in Mexico City’s rarified atmosphere.
MEXICO CITY – Tom Pages of France won the opening round of the 2013
Red Bull X-Fighters World Tour on Friday with a thrilling FMX
performance in the high altitude of Mexico City, beating Dany Torres of
Spain in an action-packed final to the delight of 38,000 enthusiastic
spectators. Defending tour champion Levi Sherwood of New Zealand took
third place in the Monumental Plaza de Toros bullring in the first of
six stops on four continents. Local hero Erick Ruiz of Mexico had a
spectacular Red Bull X-Fighters debut with a superb run with polished
tricks but was eliminated in the opening round.
Returning
to the FMX hotbed of Mexico City for the first time since 2010, 11 of
the world’s best riders completed breathtaking jumps of up to 15 meters
high and 30 meters in distance over a mound of dirt piled 13 meters high
in the center of the cavernous bullring. At an altitude of 2,240
meters/7,350 feet, Mexico City’s thin air robbed the engines of
horsepower and forced the riders in the world’s most prestigious FMX
tour to make adjustments. Mexico’s colorful bullfighting traditions were
kept alive throughout the evening. Pages also won the Swatch Best Move
award with his Special Flip.
It was the second career
victory for Pages and an emotional triumph for the effervescent
Frenchman, who was wearing a jersey with the Eigo Sato’s name on it as a
tribute to the Japanese FMX athlete who sustained fatal injuries in a
training accident last month in Japan.
Pages nailed three
difficult tricks – Special Flip off the seat of his bike, the Volt that
left him spinning in mid-air and the Flair -- turning 540 degrees in
mid-air "I don’t know if this will be my year or not. I’ll keep
practicing and try to learn new tricks.”
- Thomas Pages (FRA),
- Dany Torres (ESP),
- Levi Sherwood (NZL)
- Rob Adelberg (AUS),
- Josh Sheehan (AUS),
- Maikel Melero (ESP),
- Todd Potter (USA),
- Truman Caroll (AUS),
- Erick Ruiz (MEX),
- Martin Koren (CZE)
The next Red Bull X-Fighters stop is in Dubai (UAE) on April 12.
Tom Pages
Levi Sherwood
L to R: Dany Torres, Thomas Pages, Levi Sherwood
Photo credits: Joerg Mitter, Predrag Vuckovic, Balazs Gardi, Mauricio Ramos, Adrian Massias, David Leah