Travis Pastrana

Travis Pastrana was the kid the ’90s created. He worshipped McGrath’s style, admired Emig’s toughness and secretly watched the Crusty Demons videos his parents wanted kept out of the house. Racing or freestyle? Travis wanted all of it.

At 13, he disappeared into the hills with the Crusty crew and became the first rider to launch the infamous “Diving Board”, a jump McGrath, Deegan and nearly every other top rider had inspected and rejected. Travis sent it, landed it, tried it again with a heel clicker and broke his wrist. Deegan later did the jump and got all the magazine covers, igniting a rivalry between the two that helped propel freestyle forward.

The racing establishment demanded that Travis choose a side. Suzuki wanted a champion, not a hoodlum. Freestyle was supposedly a fad that would destroy the sport, and they didn’t want Travis dragged down with it. But he loved jumping too much and was too fearless to control.

In 1999, still recovering from a pelvis that had been shattered and separated from his spine, Pastrana entered the first X Games freestyle contest. He won, then jumped into San Francisco Bay.

The clean-cut factory prodigy would go on to win professional 125 titles, but eventually quit racing and joined the lunatics. Travis never stopped building an empire or bringing FMX into the mainstream.