In just five short years, Freestyle Motocross has gone from a gritty backyard hobby, practiced by outlaws and unknown riders to a high stakes, high profile sport legitimized by the most elite athletes in the world. Travis Pastrana has been dodging calls from network TV execs to be the next Bachelor. Carey Hart watched his relationship with popstar Pink unfold in the pages of Teen Beat. It used to be that only a devoted bootlegger could dredge up a Crusty video. Now, anyone with a copy of XXX or Charlie's Angels can witness the explosive power of Freestyle Moto. For most of the people involved in the sport, these last five years have been a frenzied blur, but to Dane Herron, it's an epic saga.

Dana Nicholson and John Freeman (producers of Crusty Demons of Dirt) more or less opened all the doors for the freestyle Moto movement. In those days, the guys that were always on the bubble for a Factory ride in Supercross and Outdoors were rolling out with Dana, filming and trying new tricks. The movies brought Moto to the masses. People saw that these guys were all doing their own thing, doing things with their own style - no one telling them what they could and couldn't do. So they called it Freestyle.

During the reign of the Crusty Demons of Dirt videos starting in 1994, a company called 4 Leaf Entertainment assembled the first ever Freestyle Motocross Competition, following it up with several more events that year and eventually putting together an entire series. This series would realistically give birth and structure to our sport. Back then, a guy's bag of tricks was small. Heel clickers and candy bars topped the list. I don't even think seat grabs were being dropped yet. Winning an event was based on the way a rider used the course.

In those days, course designs had more lines to choose from, different types of transfers and even some type of cliff jumps. The boys were doing one-handed flatties and super small nac-nacs - tricks that riders are doing in their sleep nowadays. Sometimes guys would find lines that nobody had even seen. Out of nowhere, Travis Pastrana would be going for a 100+ foot gap. There was only an elite group of nut-cases even attempting this stuff.

The roster back then included Mike Metzger, Tommy Clowers, Brian Deegan, Travis Pastrana, Micky Dymond, Clifford Adaptante and Carey Hart. These guys, along with a few others, were gaining more and more recognition by the day. Before you knew it, riders were getting phone calls from industry companies. But corporate America wanted no part of this pack. Marketing executives saw the freestyle crew as rebels, outcasts, the bad boys of the Motocross world. But in 1999 everything changed.

That was the year that ESPN added Freestyle Moto to The X Games showcasing the sport to a huge new audience. With the caliber of events dramatically increasing, the course designs became more advanced. And as courses got gnarlier, the tricks became unreal.

The first X Games for Moto gave birth to some innovative tricks. Seat grabs were becoming more and more visible, but the double seat grab still had not been mastered by all. Not only did the freestyle tricks get scarier, but the step-up competition (a vertical jump where going as high as possible is the object) was out of hand. The '99 X Games step-up jump was the biggest of its time and the run-in was the longest ever seen. Riders were able to roll in off the backside of a take off jump, which meant they could shift into second gear... Second gear wide open into a vert wall. Records were being set one after another. The guys were wrecking themselves one right after another as well. Because of the intense pressure that goes with being on the world's stage, riders were constantly getting hurt.

In its debut at X, Freestyle Moto catapulted to become ESPN's highest-rated event at the Games. With ratings and competition pressure increasing each year, riders were trying hard to invent new tricks. Metzger coughed up the McMetz - a trick where both feet are put through the bars and back around while simultaneously taking the hands off. Also, double seat grabs were evolving. The new twist was called "heart attack" style, where the rider's body is vertical while the bike is perpendicular to the body. Only 2 to 3 short years into the limelight and virtually everyone was doing huge double seat grabs and whipped stale fishgrabs (reaching back grabbing the rear fender while throwing it flat). When freestyle started, no one could have guessed that a double grab would become standard issue. Tricks were progressing to the point where trying something new meant seriously hangin' it out. Talk of trying a backflip even surfaced.

It only took a few months, until the 2000 Gravity Games in Providence, Rhode Island, before Carey Hart sent the sport into a crazy wicked spiral that will never be forgotten. He tried the first ever-backflip. Carey made it all the way around and even over-rotated enough that he just missed stomping the landing. At that point, nobody cared if he stuck it. He had flipped a dirt bike all the way around and let everyone know that it could be done.

The backflip was the craziest thing ever attempted on a dirt bike, and now that Carey had opened the door, almost everyone contemplated the inevitability of trying it. Two years went by without anyone trying the flip. Mike Metzger took a special ramp designed by Freeride Technologies out to the sand dunes and threw himself upside down. He couldn't quite land the flip, but got it all the way around. Others like Nate Adams and Drake McElroy began stepping up to the plate, but neither was successful. Both took the most horrific crashes of their careers. Even Carey Hart, who tried again to pull the elusive backflip at the X Games in Philadelphia in 2000, couldn't get it. The riding community was starting to get rattled. Some riders who felt the pressure to try the backflip claimed that the flip was ruining the sport. Ruining Freestyle? No way! But the backflip did hammer home that Freestyle Moto is the most dangerous sport on the Planet.

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