Coming into this FMX final, Travis Pastrana had the upper hand. He was last to go on both rounds at got to see everyone’s cards before he had to decide if he wanted to bet or fold his cards. It was debatable whether Pastrana should’ve been seated first in the finals, but the judges were sure to tighten their scores; even his 'claiming' arm-pumps and cheers from the crowd wouldn't get him as far in finals as they did in prelims.

But Travis did do one thing right in Prelims and that was to use the course like a skatepark. Hitting the wallrides in between jumps, throwing in quarterpipe airs and fly-out tricks proved to bump up his originality score and everyone else followed suit in the Final event.

Ailo Gaup diverted from the usual mega flip and spin tricks for a moment to blast an air out of the dirt quarter pipe and stun the crowd with a backflip fly out in the middle of his run. Add that to a backflip heel-clicker and an opposite wallride and you’ve got a leader of the pack in the first round.

For 90 seconds Ailo was in the hot seat, and watched as his 90.67 slowing slip away as Nate Adams went to work on his backflip demonstration of epic proportions. The Destroyer came right of the box with a Holyman to double grab and landing no-handed, getting any notions out of the way that he is slacking on technical tricks. Nate’s flip list went on to include a gigantic flip Cordova off the step-down, a flip nac-nac to heel-clicker a backflip fly-out of the halfpipe and a wallride for good measure. Nate did have one sketchy landing on a stock backflip where he came up short and nose bonked to the bottom of the dirt landing right in front of the judges tower. Nate kept his head on straight and pinned it around the next corner to pull a perfect flip no-hander to one-hander lander and continued with his amazing run and an amazing score: 91.33.

Pastrana saw what he had to beat, and he thought he could bluff his way through the first run with some crowd pleasing tricks like a big backflip fly-out, a huge 90-foot ruler, a legit backflip heel clicker and a lazy boy fender grab with some arm pump raditude for the crowd. When the dust settled and all the scores were tabulated, Pastrana would be left in fourth place.

Round two was a second chance for the riders to double down and make some magic happen. Jeremy Stenberg was sitting in third place before his second run and knew he had to clean up his careless extension from run one. Everything was going as planned with a huge backflip nac-nac, a perfect backflip no-hander, a backflip one-hander nac-nac and a textbook Rock Solid. Twitch was killing it and roosted his way toward the halfpipe where he lined up for a backflip fly-out from the same spot that Ailo had looped earlier. Off the lip it was quickly apparent that he had gone too high, too fast and Twitch ejected at peak altitude into a 35 plus foot free-fall. Reminiscent of Cary Hart’s flip-gone-wrong in 2000, the crowd watched the replay of what would equal swan diving off a four-story building. A conscious Stenberg was helped off the course with what appeared to be an injury to his left leg and a disappointing end to what could have been a better score.

Ronnie Renner had the awkward responsibility of riding behind Stenberg’s jaw dropping crash, but he made the best of it with some huge whips and his signature robot dance and bar hump at the end of his run.
Ailo’s name came back up on the run order and he had a second chance to take back his lead from Adams. Ailo came out cranking with a huge backflip heel clicker but had a dead sailor early in his run and it was over for Ailo. He lost his groove and another deal sailor sent him packing.

Nate Adams was next and could have done a victory run, but Pastrana was still within striking distance so Adams came out swinging with better extension and amplitude than his first run. To everyone’s surprise Adams was able to increase his leading score to a 93.00 and an even bigger margin for Pastrana to overcome.

Travis came out with bigger and better tricks and moved from jump to jump with race speed as he tried to fit in all the tricks he could. Starting with a backflip sidesaddle lander to sidesaddle wallride, Travis fired off a Saran-wrap flip to one hander lander, a stunning Ruler, a flick heel clicker and a technical Rock Solid to one-handed Indian Air in the rest of his fast paced run. Travis ended his run with a backflip dismount and a belly slide down the halfpipe, knowing he had come close to Adams - but not sure how close.

With only .73 of a point separating them, Pastrana’s 92.23 wasn’t enough to best Nate’s backflip demo of a run and it was the Destroyer who walked about with an extra 15 grand and the points lead for the 2006 Dew Tour.