A week removed from horrific car accident, James Foster wins gold in BMX Big Air

BMX freestyler James Foster’s mission to defend his gold medal from BMX Big Air last year became that much more difficult this year at X Games Minneapolis when he suffered a horrific accident a week before the contest.

James Foster shouldn’t have even been competing in this contest, let alone winning gold for the second straight year.

Anyone who’s dialed into the world of BMX knows that Foster was favored to defend his 2017 gold medal in BMX Big Air this year again in Minneapolis.

Foster won that medal, his first gold, on his fourth and final run, executing a backflip triple tailwhip off the kicker ramp into a barspin triple whip. He was so psyched, he threw his bike down the pipe — and his fellow competitors swarmed him with joy on the flat bottom.

This year, however, Foster almost didn’t compete at all.

A week and change before he took to the ramp in this year’s big air competition, Foster, a Redlands, California, native, was involved in a serious motorcycle accident on the 91 freeway.

“I was lane splitting, following another guy — which is legal there, you know, but I saw up ahead that another car started to change lanes,” Foster explained as FanSided caught up with him after his unlikely victory.

“I hit the brakes, but it’s an older Honda CB, heavy with bad brakes. He never saw me and kept coming, and I clipped his fender. It actually sent me off my bike, into the FasTrak lane.”

Foster “rode the motorcycle home all covered in blood” — probably an important detail to know about his mental fortitude when you’re watching him stare down the barrel of a 65-foot launch ramp, the cornerstone of the Big Air contest.

He didn’t know if he was going to be able to ride this week, and actually ended up having to drop out of the BMX dirt event, in which he won bronze two years ago. The high-impact nature of dirt was simply too painful with his injuries. But “the mega ramp is smooth…as long as you don’t mess up.”

Speaking of pain, what if Foster had to rate his pain heading into Friday’s event on one of those doctor’s office pain charts, with the progressively anguished faces? “I’ve been at a 6 or a 7 the last couple days,” he said, holding up his arm to reveal nasty wounds not yet scabbed over.

And BMX riders tolerate a lot of pain. That’s probably more like a 9 for us mere mortals.

“Well, BMX riders make a living beating ourselves up,” Foster laughs.

Foster couldn’t walk the night he got home, but he did everything he could in terms of icing his leg, elevating it, and taking Ibuprofen in hopes of recovering in time.

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“I was so lucky and fortunate to be able to ride tonight,” Foster says. “To win for my second time, I’m just totally speechless. It’s absolutely mind-blowing.”

Foster secured his gold medal on his second run out of four, when he launched up the 27-foot quarterpipe at the end of the course and threw down a quadruple tailwhip.

Oh, and that quad whip? He hadn’t even practiced it. Practice is not the place to try and go big in an event like this. “The consequences are so severe — physically, but also if you go down and you get knocked out, they pull you from the contest,” Foster explains.

Perhaps a symbol for everything Foster endured this past week — for what all BMXers endure, eventually — was the back of his black Nitro Circus T-shirt, which had become shredded thanks to a couple falls during his four runs in the Big Air event.

“I think it is like a symbol of what we go through,” Foster said. “It’s brutal.” At the same time, it’s a deep love of the sport that keeps BMXers going through the injuries — whether they happen on or off the course.

As for the shirt? “I’m kind of bummed,” Foster said. “This is the only one like this that I have.”

As a two-time consecutive BMX Big Air gold medalist, we’re sure someone would be happy to send him another.