LOS ANGELES — An X Games dominated by age and experience finally got a dose of youth on closing day.
Fifteen-year-old rookie Pedro Barros beat veteran Andy MacDonald, 37, to win skateboard park on Sunday at a Games dominated by repeat winners and older athletes.
Skateboard park was designed to allow young skaters versed in street style to compete with the older riders of vert ramps, and this year’s finals went according to plan.
Ryan Sheckler was the youngest winner of this event at 13 in 2003, but the Brazilian Barros becomes the first athlete who wasn’t born when the X Games began to win a gold.
He used a combination of stunning 540 airs and grinding slides at the L.A. Live complex in Los Angeles to reach a final score of 86 out of 100.
Barros said it was “sick” to win gold in his first X Games. He didn’t think youth was overtaking age in pro skateboarding just yet, but didn’t deny that his youthful exuberance helped.
“We’re young, so we get more energy,” Barros said. “We just get more hyped up.”
MacDonald won silver with an 81 and 17-year-old Kevin Kowalski won bronze with a 78.
Earlier in the competition an even younger face, 14-year-old Curren Caples, wowed the crowd and appeared to be on his way to gold.
Weighing 75 pounds, Caples made seemingly effortless runs that included a 360 frontside air. But he fell frequently and couldn’t find his rhythm.
Before Sunday, most events at X Games 16 saw predictable winners and an absence of new faces.
Jamie Bestwick won gold in BMX freestyle vert for the fourth straight year. Pierre-Luc Gagnon won his third straight gold in skateboard vert and added another in best trick. Daniel Dhers won his third gold in four years in BMX freestyle park.
If anything, these X Games were more memorable for things that happened outside the competition — Travis Pastrana’s double backflip after he had already claimed gold in freestyle moto X and Bob Burnquist’s repeated attempts, after the ESPN telecast was over and most of the crowd had left the Coliseum, to land an unprecedented 900 on the mega ramp in skateboard big air, risking serious injury just to complete a trick.
