The biggest thing that you didn’t see on the X Games coverage was women’s wakeboarding.. Why? Well there’s a couple of thoughts on that subject. One: The women’s footage wasn’t strong enough to host it’s own segment. Or two, and by far the biggest scandal/rumor of the year: Andrea Gaytan cussed on camera and missed the awards ceremony so ESPN cut the footage. We asked Andrea for her thoughts on the deal….
OK, you can tell us. You missed the awards ’cause you were drunk right?
(laughs)
Seriously, tell in us in your words what happened, after you found out you lost.
I was disappointed. I mean, it was the first time any girl had completed 10 different inverts in a competition and I was stoked. Tara had fallen on her last trick of her second pass, so I knew I had won. But then the scores came up and she beat me.
The judges said you hit the wake on your half-cab roll.
That’s bull. I’d like to see the tape ’cause I know if I would’ve landed on the wake I would’ve fallen for sure. I mean, I know I wasn’t riding the cleanest that day, but I know I stuck all my tricks.
World Sports & Marketing says you cussed on camera when you saw the results. Did you?
(pause) I don’t remember saying f***, but if I did then that was wrong. I’m usually really good about that kind of stuff.
OK, but what about the missing awards
ceremony?
Well, like I said, I was disappointed. I stuck around to do some interviews, but then my friend Neil said, “let’s get out of here.” We were on our way to the roller coaster right there by Mission Bay and there was a bottle of Captain Morgan’s on the floor. I thought it was a good moment to kind of forget the whole thing so Neil and I chugged a little. We went on the roller coaster, played some video games, just messed around and kept drinking. The next thing I know I woke up at 3 in the morning (afternoon?) in my hotel room with my car key on my necklace and the first thing I thought was, “I missed the awards ceremony.” By the next morning everything was blown out of proportion and I was this big bad person.
So as punishment World Sports has banned you from competing on tour the rest of the year. Is that going to hurt you at all?
No, not at all. My sponsors don’t care and I talked with the ESPN people and they weren’t even mad about me missing the ceremony either. They gave me my medal and my check right there and everything seemed fine. Honestly, I’m tired of the tour. I’m tired of killing myself for nothing and all they’ve really done is taken the fun out of competing.
X-Games Results
Men’s Final
1. Jeremy Kovak97.68
2. Darin Shapiro96.20
3. Parks Bonifay95.01
4. Hunter Brown82.06
Men’s Semifinals
1. Darin Shapiro92.78
2. Jeremy Kovak91.34
3. Parks Bonifay81.31
4. Hunter Brown80.93
5. Andy Lazarus76.99
6. Thomas Horrell76.91
7. Dean Lavelle71.64
8. Shaun Murray54.73
9. Jeff Heer 50.61
10. Mike Weddington40.40
Women’s Final
1. Tara Hamilton90.96
2. Andrea Gaytan89.93
3. Jaime Necrason49.57
4. Farrah Dawson40.48
5. Sonja Scheffler28.44
6. Tina Bessinger19.21
