Tanner Foust, a stunt driver on movie screens this weekend in “The Bourne Ultimatum,” surged ahead in the home stretch to take the checkered flag - and the gold - in the Rally Car Racing Super Special competition, the final event of ESPN X Games 13.
Rally Car, which features a driver and a co-driver racing street legal cars on closed sections of roads called “stages,” is in its second year at X Games, and this year’s race marked the first time teams raced head-to-head. They did so before a sellout crowd at The Home Depot Center.
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Foust and co-driver Chrissie Beavis led early in the final race but lost the lead to Ken Block and his co-driver Alessandro Gelsomino - only to blast forward in the last inches of the course and cross the finish line .68 seconds ahead of Block and Gelsomino.
“[Block] was leading us going out, and on the way back he must have caught bad breaks because he got really close and I was thinking ‘Oh my gosh, there’s no dust at the finish line, we might have a chance at this,’ “ Foust said afterwards.
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“Big finishes somehow always happen at the X Games,” Foust shrugged.
Travis Pastrana, the Moto X Freestyle legend of double backflip fame, said recently that Rally Car Racing now occupies “99.9” percent of his time. During a semi final heat, Pastrana crossed into Faust’s lane in a similar push for the finish line, and was disqualified. He later took the bronze in a heat run to determine third place.
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“I thought [Foust] might be a little bit ahead - I just totally overtook that corner a little bit, and completely ran right through the barrier,” Pastrana said. “They made a call, and we’ve been on the other side of calls a lot.[w]e’ll take it - we’re still at the podium.”
Robinson Named Most Outstanding Athlete
At the medal ceremony that followed, BMX Freestyle rider Kevin Robinson was named Subaru’s Most Outstanding Athlete of X Games 13. He will receive a 2008 Subaru Impreza WRX.
Robinson won gold in this year’s BMX Freestyle Big Air event and bronze in the BMX Freestyle Vert competition, where he landed a double flair. He remains the only rider in the world who has successfully landed the trick in competition. A native of East Providence, RI, Robinson competed in the very first X Games in 1995 and has only missed one of the 13 total X Games to date.
