Page 2 of Coverage from the Vans Triple Crown Finals

theshrew13

• October 12 2001
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I stayed in Oceanside that night along with some of the other guys from the office, but it was a pretty mellow evening as everyone still seemed to be recovering from Interbike’s festivities.Fuzzy Hall and Shawn “Elf” Walters had been in Oceanside for a week building the jumps and they were more than ready to head back to Utah. As they pulled out of the Comfort Suites parking lot, they handed Keith Mulligan their room key so we got to crash for free that night. Not that I slept very well; Kevin McAvoy, Transworld BMX’sManaging Editor, kept waking me up every couple of hours because I was snoring!

Sunday morning rolled around and I thought it would be a short day, because the only contest left to run was street. Boy was I wrong. With 54 competitors, prelims took four hours, but it was worth hanging around because of three things¿Ruben Alcantara’s double-whip over a hip, John Heaton’s backflip-to-manual from a quarterpipe to a subbox, and Vic Murphy’s whole run. Watching Vic is like watching a little kid ride his bike–a really good kid.

When the time came for finals to begin, the Pros and the crowd were running low on energy. It had been a long weekend and an even longer day. But despite all this, some good stuff went down during finals. One of those good things was DMC’s second run. Dennis killed it and earned a first place finish. What a great way for him to end a contest series that he had put so much of his own energy into (Dennis helped Vans organize this year’s Triple Crown series). Colin MacKay had two solid runs to take second place, and Dave Mirra’s third place was enough to earn him the overall street title for the year, making this a very good weekend for Dave. Oh, and don’t forget, Dave was riding on a wrecked knee.

As soon as the final run was over, I got the hell out of Dodge. I didn’t care who won; I knew I would find out on Monday anyway. It had been a long weekend (especially with Interbike ending just two days prior) and I wanted to get home as soon as possible. Two hours later I was home; time to wash all the sand and sunscreen off and watch some mindless television on the couch.

Click here for more street photos.