Not sure where to vent my frustations, so it goes here.
In the big air contest, Deegan did NOT throw a 360 like the judges seem to think, It was a poorly thrown back flip with about 10 degrees of sideways in it. I've watched it about 30 times because everybody in my house has an opinion of what they saw. He should hang his head and walk off knowing that he is not a better rider, and got lucky in a mis-judged run.
I remember Tony Hawk talking about a mis-announced run in Pensicola Florida. Tony was off the ramp rotating and rotating and sticks it, the crowd goes nuts and the announcer calls it a 900. It wasn't until later that Tony found out that his 720 was announced as a 900. The joke for a while was the 720 was now known as the "Pensicola 900". Same thing here with Deegan. I think all the riders knew it too, you could see nobody was real happy. Whatta ya gonna do, have sour grapes on TV and risk a bad label for yourself?
During a backflip the front tire comes from underneath during a landing, in a 360, it comes in from the side. Also, the body goes 180 degrees in a backflip from the taek-off angle, looks to me as though a correctly executed 360 leaves the body at 90 degrees from the take-off angle. I had to think about that explanation for a while so if it's wrong, cut me some slack. ;)
Nate Adams had a better trick, better executed, during big-air.
In Freestyle, Pastrana was better and made his first 360 attempt while he had time. Deegan landed his after he ran out of time, so did Pastrana. But Pastrana's run was great, he showed the most control and did the 360 attempt during his run, made it or not.
Deegan got lucky with the win in Big-air, because he didn't deserve it.
I give a lot of credit to guys like Bartram and Pastrana, you can see that these guys have so much more talent on a bike than most of their freestyle peers, especially Pastrana. :worship: