Rally
17 Medals: Travis Pastrana's X Games Story
From FMX to double backflip to rally cars, this is Travis Pastrana's history at X Games.
Early X Games Years
Let's go back to Y2K. For you youngsters, that would be the year 2000. The society-crushing computer meltdown was a complete letdown, Madonna’s bastardization of Don McLean’s American Pie was topping the charts, and in northern California, a 16-year-old lad by the name of Travis Pastrana was competing in freestyle motorcross. After receiving a score of 94.00 for his run, Pastrana would claim his second gold medal of his burgeoning X Games career, holding off rivals Tommy Clowers and Brian Deegan.
“It was a great run, I just won. Wooooo!” screamed Pastrana afterward, before reminding everybody of his tender age by adding: “And my mom didn’t ground me!”. Travis Pastrana had arrived.
A youthful Travis Pastrana with his X Games gold
© ESPN Images
X Games Expansion
Since those heady days back in 2000, Pastrana has been raised up into the Pantheon of the FMX gods, with the Maryland native’s crowning achievement arguably being the Double Backflip that he pulled at X Games in 2006. But the ever-curious Pastrana was searching for other thrills and found them on four wheels. He tried rally for the first time in 2003 and began competing the following year, going on to contest rallies in the Production class of the World Rally Championship as well as claiming four consecutive Rally America titles between 2006-2009.
Pastrana has turned his attention to rallycross
© ESPN Images
Now
Then in 2012, Pastrana shuffled the deck again and began competing in the NASCAR Nationwide Series. In the same year, he launched his own rallycross team and began racing alongside team-mate Bryce Menzies.
The pair will be in action in Los Angeles this weekend at the X Games, the event that launched Pastrana’s career back in 1999 and where he’ll be competing for what, incredibly, would be his 18th X Games medal.
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