Laia Sanz wins the gold medal at the Los Angeles X-Games

Rider Laia Sanz claimed the win at the final race of the 2013 X Games in Los Angeles, held at the Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers usually play their NBA games. In this spectacular setting, the 13-time world champion took her third gold at the X Games, rounding off a brilliant debut season in the "Olympics" of extreme sports.

By Gloria7 August 2013 · 3 min read

The rider Laia Sanz claimed the win at the final race of the 2013 X Games in Los Angeles, held at the Staples Center, where the Los Angeles Lakers usually play their NBA games. In this spectacular setting, the 13-time world champion took her third gold at the X Games, rounding off a brilliant debut season in the “Olympics” of extreme sports.

The KH-7 rider did not get off to a good start in the women’s Enduro X final, but she drew on her trials technique to clear the obstacles on the course better than her rivals and, above all, without making mistakes, which allowed her to cross the finish line in first place with a comfortable 37-second lead over the second-placed American, Maria Forsberg, the Spanish rider’s main rival.

Laia, who was making her debut on the handlebars of a Honda CRF 280R by JCR/Honda, once again staged a comeback after being relegated to seventh place at the start. On the first lap she moved up to third place and on the second she took the lead by capitalizing on a crash by Puerto Rican Tarah Geiger, who had been leading the race up to that point. From there, Sanz pulled away with very confident riding that took her straight to victory.

With this result, the Catalan rider matches Forsberg’s three golds and closes out the summer X Games season with three wins, in Foz do Iguaçu, Barcelona and Los Angeles, and a silver in Munich across four appearances, an impeccable record.

Sanz’s statements:

I’m very happy. It’s my first year at the X Games and I didn’t expect to be up front in every race. It has been a perfect year with medals at all four events, even in Munich, where things went very badly for me, so I couldn’t be happier.

Also, in Los Angeles I got Munich off my mind. Here I had a much more competitive bike, and I have to thank the whole JCR/Honda team, and Johnny Campbell in particular, for the support they gave me. This win is a consequence of the great groundwork we have done over the last ten days. The only thing I lacked was a good start, which is one of my areas to improve, but after that I think I rode a smart race. Even though Tarah was pulling away, I knew that if I didn’t make mistakes I would find the moment to pass her, and in the end that’s what happened.

Source | Laia Sanz press