Dhers and Mad Dog Take Top Two in Park Prelims

By Brendan Vail – Today’s park prelims had tons of action from a long list of riders. Thirty people competed, with the top nine making it through to tomorrow’s finals where they will meet Dave Mirra, Garrett Reynolds, and Marcus Tooker. There was a good mix of technical riding as well as big tricks thrown in all over the course.

Daniel Dhers was back on his game, after finishing ninth in Chicago, pulling out tricks like 720 cancans and one handers, huge tailwhip transfers on the big quarter pipes as well as tricking the step down with  360 x-ups and 360 tailwhips on his way to first.

Fourteen-year-old Brett “Mad Dog” Banasiewicz got his way into second place and deserved it. He pulled his first triple tailwhip as well as tailwhip flairs, front flips and much more.

Yesterday’s Dirt winner Ryan Nyquist brought his skills to the park course and did tricks like rocket barspins and 720 barspins across the box jump. Nyquists final run was simply a display of his toothpick abilities and he sat on his front peg for 20 seconds, and then did another long toothpick and drank from a water bottle as well.

Internet video sensation Mark Webb scooped up 4th place for the UK by doing a variety of jumping tricks  and technical moves like a 360 tailwhip to tailtap on the spine, and tailwhip to tailtap to foot jam to vader jam. A decade was also thrown into one of his liptrick combos.

A few riders took some pretty hard falls during the contest. Ryan Guettler went down hard on a superman backflip, Anthony Napolitan got caught up on a truck driver over the box, and William Thompson tried spinning a 900 on the big quarter.

Morgan Wade did a gigantic transfer that most people wouldn’t even think of doing, Jeremiah Smith had some solid runs full of smooth tricks like 270 barspin to tuck no-hander over one of the hips. Pat “Big Daddy” Laughlin had some pinstriped jeans on when did big stretched super man seat grabs as well as his signature X-factor, which he threw into the middle of a flair.

The Park Finals are at 1pm on Sunday. Tune in to NBC to watch them live.