ESPN created the Extreme Games to showcase emerging action sports on a major TV platform. The first event ran in late June 1995 in Rhode Island, setting the stage for later motorcycle-based disciplines to join the program.
In 1996 the event continued in Rhode Island and moved toward the now-familiar “X Games” identity. This mattered because stable annual scheduling and ESPN coverage helped action sports grow from niche contests into repeat-viewed competitions.
Freestyle Moto X became an official X Games competition in 1999, bringing motorcycle trick riding onto the same stage as skateboarding and BMX. Travis Pastrana won the first Freestyle Moto X gold with a 99.00 score, signaling how quickly FMX (freestyle motocross) was progressing.
At X Games 2000 in San Francisco, Travis Pastrana won Moto X Freestyle again. Reports from the event also noted him attempting a backflip during competition, reflecting how top riders were pushing beyond standard “style” tricks into full-rotation flips.
In 2001, Red Bull launched X-Fighters in Valencia, Spain, using a head-to-head format in a bullring setting. This created a major global FMX series outside the X Games and helped internationalize freestyle motocross events and media coverage.
In 2002, Mike Metzger won Moto X Freestyle at the X Games in Philadelphia. Coverage from the time emphasized the backflip’s growing role in competition, showing a shift from occasional “big moves” to flips becoming expected at the top level.
At X Games Los Angeles 2003, Brian Deegan won Moto X Best Trick with a 360-style spinning backflip he called the Mulisha Twist. This highlighted a new phase: medals could be decided by a single breakthrough trick rather than an overall freestyle run.
At Winter X Games 2004 in Aspen, Caleb Wyatt won Moto X with a no-hands backflip over an ice jump, nicknamed “Smirnoff’s Ryatt.” Winter X Games provided a second major annual stage for FMX, and the icy course increased both difficulty and risk compared with dirt setups.
In 2004, Chuck Carothers landed the first body varial in Moto X Best Trick at X Games Los Angeles (a maneuver where the rider separates from the bike midair and reconnects). It broadened what counted as “progression,” shifting focus toward rider-and-bike separation tricks, not only flips and spins.
At X Games Los Angeles 2006, Travis Pastrana won Moto X Best Trick with a double backflip, a landmark for FMX difficulty. The same event also shows how X Games rewarded both “one big trick” and overall freestyle performance, because Pastrana also won Moto X Freestyle that year.
In February 2009, X Games gold medalist Jeremy Lusk died after crashing during the X-Knights event in Costa Rica. His death underscored the real dangers of high-difficulty FMX tricks and added urgency to ongoing debates about safety, training, and course design in global events.
At X Games Los Angeles 2011, Jackson Strong won Moto X Best Trick by landing the first frontflip in that event. The frontflip mattered because it showed FMX progression was not only about adding more flips, but also about changing rotation direction and increasing technical variety.
In late 2012, ESPN announced plans to expand X Games into multiple international events. For Moto X, this meant more high-profile contests outside the United States and more chances for riders to build careers through a global schedule.
In April 2013, X Games held an event in Foz do Iguaçu, Brazil, as part of its international expansion. Moto X competitions were included, showing that freestyle motocross had become one of the core “global-ready” X Games sports by the 2010s.
By 2013, X Games was running multiple international Summer events in a single year (including Brazil, Spain, Germany, and the U.S.). This marked a clear outcome of the 1995–2015 period: freestyle motocross and other action sports had moved from a U.S.-centered experiment into a repeatable global event model.
Freestyle Motocross at the X Games and Global Events (1995-2015)