Travis Pastrana is to motocross, as the Harlem Globetrotters are to basketball. Travis Pastrana, with a 26th birthday on October 8, has youthful potential as a serious motocross and supercross racer in the mode of Ricky Carmichael or James "Bubba" Stewart. He even won the 2000 AMA (American Motorcyclists Association) 125cc "Lites" season championship at the age of 17. Indeed, he still competes from time to time in motocross and supercross races, but his niche is as a stuntman, in the Globetrotters' tradition of Goose Tatum and Marcus Haynes, Meadowlark Lemon and Curly Neal. That's why Travis is a star on MTV's Nitro Circus.

Pastrana's legacy remains his status as the first and only person to land a double back flip on a motorcycle, first achieved in front of stunned fans on August 4, 2006, as the 12th X Games in Los Angeles. Videos of the momentous occasion abound on places such as YouTube. More difficult to find, is an in-depth explanation from Travis Pastrana regarding exactly how he figured out how to perform such a stunt, and then how he mustered the courage to make the first attempt. Travis, like a magician, appreciates the value of mystery and he's not about to explain his tricks.

Courage? Craziness? Maybe a little bit of both. Travis Pastrana not only performs double back flips on motorcycles, but he once did a back flip in a monster truck, albeit "only" a single back flip in this case. Furthermore, Travis has jumped out of an airplane without a parachute, relying on a co-jumper with a parachute to catch him and ease him to the friendly surface of Planet Earth.

One witty analyst wrote that MTV and Travis Pastrana's various corporate sponsors recently honored him in Hollywood with a lifetime achievement party, "in order to honor the living legend, while he's still, you know, living." With his carefree outlook, Pastrana himself laughs at these types of jokes. The King of the Double Back Flip clearly loves his sport and appreciates his fans.

SOURCES:
/en/TRAVIS/Bio/
http://www.motorcycleshows.com/motorcycleshows/Home+Page+News/Travis-Pastrana-King-of-the-Double-Back-Flip-and-M/ArticleStandard/Article/detail/482990
http://laist.com/2009/08/16/travis_pastrana_gets_toasted.php

If you're pro skateboarder Jake Brown, you might want a snazzy nickname to go with your oh-so-tame birth name. But you probably don't want to fall 45 feet to achieve this.

Australian Jake Brown, 34, became Jake "Unbreakable" Brown after he walked away from a horrific crash during the 2007 X Games at the Staples Center in Los Angeles. Brown was on the mega ramp. In his usual fearless style - fearless even among pro skateboarders - he completed a daring 720 turn over the ramp's 70-foot gap, but he missed the quarter pipe lips. Medics say Brown saved his life by landing on his side.

"It might have been funny if it had not been potentially deadly," wrote Andrew Dalton for the Associated Press. "Jake Brown's legs churned in midair like he was trying to run. His shoes shot off in different directions when he slammed to the ground. His body looked like a rag doll as he slid to the base of the ramp." Dalton concluded, "It looked like a fall Wile E. Coyote would take," referring to the Road Runner's cartoon predator.

Jake Brown was motionless for about 8 minutes. Then he got up, walked off, waved to the crowd and asked buddy Jason Ellis, "Do I get another run?" Well, even Jake "Unbreakable" Brown is not unbreakable. He cracked several vertebrae, and he still has a metal pin in a wrist that was broken. He even bruised his liver; have you ever heard of a football player with a bruised liver? Jake Brown needed several months of rehab before he could return to smaller ramps and six months before he again challenged a mega ramp.

Even before the Staples Center fall, Jake Brown had a reputation for adverse risk. ESPN once reported: "Jake Brown has some of the hardest vert skateboarding tricks dialed in, like 720s and his double kick flip mute. However, in competitions, Jake Brown tends to go for the biggest tricks, which often backfires if he doesn't land them. But skating conservatively is not Jake Brown's style."

Reporters now want to know if Unbreakable Brown feels fear on the mega ramp. Jake affirms that this is true, but he adds a qualifier. He says he always has felt fear, even before the 45-foot freefall, because this is a natural emotion for a cutting-edge skateboard stuntman. Online viewers will note that Jake Brown was carted off in a wheelchair, not a stretcher. "I knew what happened," Jake explains in his trademark unflappable style. "I just wanted to test my body and see how wrecked I was, you know?"

Sources:
www.dailyillini.com/home/index.cfm?event=displayArticlePrinterFriendly&uStory_id=6d7c665b-3f6e-412a-9c8d-1440173744ec
http://articles.latimes.com/2007/aug/05/sports/sp-xside5
http://skateboard.about.com/od/proskaterbios/p/ProJakeBrown.htm
www.lgactionsports.com/athlete.html?athlete_id=72&sport=skateboarding
www.grindtv.com/athlete/jake_brown/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jake_Brown

Gretchen Bleiler, a pioneer in women's pro snowboarding, explains why she aims to combat global warning by building awareness.

"I mean, if we don't have snow in the next years, I'm going to be out of a job," says Bleiler, 27, born in Toledo and one of the first women to make her mark in pro snowboarding. She now lives in Aspen, where she was won three X-Games championships in the half-pipe. This makes Gretchen Bleiler well-known among the snowboarding set, but she gained larger fame with her silver medal at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin.

"The X Games are sort of becoming the modern day Olympics, because I think younger kids are growing up watching the X Games now, but the Olympics are the biggest event in all sports," Bleiler explains, before drawing a logical conclusion: "The X Games are the bigger competition for snowboarding, but the Olympics are the biggest competition for everybody worldwide."

Gretchen Bleiler started snowboarding at the age of 11. This was during the early 1990s, so she was aware of no female snowboarders as role models. Instead, she took inspiration from her three snowboarding brothers. But now that Gretchen is so well-established, today's girls have someone they can admire. Gretchen Bleiler fits the bill by visiting schools, and she even was interviewed by Scholastic Magazine. She's involved with the Women's Sports Foundation. To promote women in snowboarding, she has organized the season-closing Snow Angels Invitational at Aspen.

Ms. Bleiler also is a magnet for the media with her natural and sunny good looks, but sorry fellas, she's engaged to snowboarder Christopher Hotell.

Gretchen Bleiler has capitalized on her success to establishing a signature sports clothing line with Oakley, which includes everything from the snowboarding suits to the gloves. She does far more than simply endorse, initiating the design from start to finish.

Her increasing public profile also allows Gretchen Bleiler to push hard in the fight against global warming.

"I've been very athletic my entire life and have always enjoyed being outdoors, so the environment has always been very important to me," Gretchen Bleiler says. "After the Olympics, I realized I had a platform to talk about the causes I believed in, and the environment and climate change are definitely at the top of the list."

She urges her fans to visit the web site stopglobalwarming.org.

Sources:
http://www.shredbetties.com/riders/story/gretchen_bleiler/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gretchen_Bleiler
http://gretchenbleiler.com/index.php/bio
http://teacher.scholastic.com/scholasticnews/indepth/winterolympics/sports/index.asp?article-gbleiler